Barge Canal: Heart of the South End

Dear Barge Canal friend,

Happy New Year 2026. We have many good reasons to be wary of what’s ahead, in the world, in the U.S. and at the Barge Canal. However, there are reasons for hope and the promise of new beginnings.

The wide-ranging conversations that the Friends of the Barge Canal began in 2025 about our vision of an interconnected, vibrant, accessible South End with a protected and restored Barge Canal at its green center coincided with the City beginning its “BTV2050” planning process. This means land owners of one parcel talking to developers of another parcel talking to City Planning, talking to Friends of the Barge Canal (FBC). It also means, and perhaps most importantly, conversations with South End institutions and businesses like Burlington City Arts, the Burlington Farmers Market, the Pinery, Unsworth artist studios, Hula, Dealer.com, etc. These are, along with the surrounding neighborhoods, the entities that create the current vitality of the South End. When you think about it, they are a cultural and economic driving force for the City. The Barge Canal is its beating heart.

FBC met last week for our second conversation with the City Planning Director and CEDO’s Real Estate Development Manager. Our goal was to begin planning for a Barge Canal/South End Focus Group. This group will begin meeting in March, 2026 under the auspices of the City of Burlington. There are big changes already in process and under discussion in the South End including development on some of the acres of parking lots and on one of the parcels on the Barge Canal. These development proposals involve multiple owners, developers and plans and include the potential for 1500 housing units. The focus group will be the beginning of a planning process that considers the South End as one entity that includes neighbors, developers, land owners, institutions and businesses and will consider how to protect the Barge Canal in the center of the growing South End. We Friends of the Barge Canal are elated! This promises to be the fulfillment of the effort by FBC to convene an “all-parties” conference on the future of the Barge Canal.

FBC fully supports new housing in the South End. We see opportunities for construction on the many acres of under-utilized paved surface parking lots that surround the Barge Canal. We see the damaged but living land and water of the Barge Canal as holding essential aspects to the South End neighborhoods, businesses and indeed the entire city. These include wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, stormwater management, flood control, transformation and containment of toxins and soil stabilization. Climate change brings major challenges in all aspects of urban life from homelessness to flooding. Future planning can at least try to address these many aspects at once.

As we’re warily opening the door of 2026, we face the same massive challenges, but real “hope and promise” for the Barge Canal may be on the way in the New Year if we move with attention and imagination.