Community Sailing Center's new and improved waterfront will be ready by early May

Seven years ago, Burlington's Community Sailing Center was trying to figure out how to avoid bankruptcy. Today, the 30-year-old nonprofit is closing in on its dream waterfront to go along with the purpose-built headquarters completed in 2017 near the former Moran power plant − now the Moran Frame − where the center previously based its operations.

"It was really grim," Executive Director Owen Milne said of the Moran. "Porta-potties, tents and no running water."

Not only does the new building have running water and restrooms, it even has showers. Now the Sailing Center will have a waterfront to match its building. Milne said the new docks, launching ramp and sailboat cranes on Lake Champlain will be completed by May 3.

"It's a turnaround story," Milne added. "Facing bankruptcy in 2017-2018, and now looking at building the most cutting-edge waterfront facilities on our side of the lake."

That's good news for the thousands of schoolchildren and adults who flock to the Sailing Center every summer in Burlington, to learn how to sail, or to put their own sailboats, kayaks or paddleboards into the water for a day on the lake. The Sailing Center serves some 8,000 people every year, and in the future, thanks to its new waterfront, hopes to host international sailing regattas on the lake, which would represent a new source of tourism and income for Burlington and Chittenden County.

Red ink on the water: The Sailing Center gets ambushed by a funding shortfall

The trouble for the Sailing Center began shortly before its new three-story, 22,000-square-foot building, clad in dark blue siding, was completed in November 2017. The building cost close to $5 million, according to Milne. The Sailing Center raised enough for construction of the building, but not enough to build the docks, launching ramp and boat cranes it wanted to have on its new waterfront.

The plan was to continue using the relatively primitive waterfront at the nearby abandoned Moran Plant it had used for decades, until the Sailing Center could raise the additional $4.2 million it needed for the new waterfront at the new building. As if that wasn't a big enough challenge, Milne learned about 45 days after he started as the executive director in July 2017 that $1.7 million in federal funding the Sailing Center was counting on to help pay for its building was not going to come through.

The Sailing Center had hired a consultant to help navigate the federal program through which it could sell tax credits on the open market to raise the $1.7 million. The program was intended for economically depressed areas, which included the former Moran Plant − the address the consultant used on the application.

"When we caught that, we said to them, 'Hey this isn't our address any more. Our new address is this,'" Milne said. "They put that (new address) in the system and found out we were not eligible (for the tax credit program)."

The boundary line for the economically depressed area ran in between the new location and the nearby Moran Plant and the new location was about 150 feet on the wrong side of the line.

:The consultant said, 'There's nothing we can do, sorry,'" Milne remembered.

The Sailing Center had about $400,000 it could put toward the $1.7 million shortfall, leaving $1.3 million it had to borrow to pay off the contractors on the building. The total Milne and his staff needed to raise was $5.6 million.

"We were in a position where we were facing down 12% interest, which our budget wouldn't have carried," Milne said.

Mascoma Bank offers an interest rate that means survival for the Sailing Center

Fortunately, Mascoma Bank came to the rescue, offering the Sailing Center a loan at a rate below 5%, Milne said, saving it from bankruptcy. That loan was paid off two years ago, thanks to intensive fundraising. The Sailing Center has also raised all but $150,000 of the money it needs for its waterfront. On March 1, the Sailing Center will launch the public phase of the waterfront campaign.

Milne said a little less than half the $4.2 million for the waterfront came from government-supported grants; the remaining money is coming from private donations.

"A lot of those private donations have been from people who make $100,000-plus donations, and now we're ready to open this up to the rest of our community to engage everyone in making a $50 git or $100 gift," Milne said. "So we're starting on March 1 our public campaign that will help close this up."

Sailing Center's new waterfront will eliminate bottlenecks from the past and open new opportunities

The main elements of the waterfront currently under construction at the Sailing Center are a 50-foot-wide launch ramp, a 200-foot-long central dock, and a deep-water launching area with cranes to lower sailboats with large keels, six feet long or longer, into the water.

"We're going to have a crane setup that allows us to put boats in and out of the water right here," Milne said. "It will be a place for us to be able to host internationally sanctioned regattas on Lake Champlain from this location."

The wide launch ramp will replace a 10-foot-wide ramp the thousands of kids who take sailing lessons every summer have been funneled through for the entire existence of the Sailing Center, both at Moran and at the makeshift waterfront at the new location that is being replaced in May.

"It increases the capacity on all ends, and spreads the populations out to create less bottlenecks with different types of activities they're doing, whether taking a kayak, small sailing boat or larger boat, or to be a spectator on the dock," Operations Director Colin Davis said.

Watching the waterfront come to life while planning for a new flow

Davis has been with the Sailing Center since 2004, experiencing nearly every permutation of the organization.

"I would say for what we're going to do it's one of those things we worked on for a long time," Davis said. "How many different times did we sit in front of plans before we finally saw the building? This is a similar thing. We've been talking about this and drawing it up. To see it come to life is pretty exciting."

But "frankly speaking," Davis said, he also has some concerns.

"You're changing the operation, you're changing the flow," he said. "You're changing it for the better, but you're changing it nevertheless. That has an effect on the staff you use, how they're being used, how they're interacting with the site. How do you coordinate all that? In the long run it's great, but there's always a transition of trying to connect the dots between what we did and trying to do it in a new way."

More: Burlington's Community Sailing Center recognized nationally for its diversity initiative

The Sailing Center has seven full-time staff, and up to 40 seasonal staff in the summer, including instructors and people to move boats around. Some are what Milne refers to as his "sage staff," people who are retired or late in their careers, and have a deep well of wisdom to offer young sailors.

"We serve about 8,000 people a year, kids and adults," Milne said. "We teach them how to sail, but we also have a high school sailing team and a middle school sailing team. We have floating classrooms. The teachers will bring the kids down. We do a STEM education program with them and then we take them out and do experiments on the lake."

The Sailing Center is bringing sailing and the lake to children of color

About 1,500 kids come through the STEM program at the Sailing Center every year, learning about water quality and monitoring for invasive species. It's why teachers asked Milne to be sure to include a classroom as part of the new Sailing Center building. When it's not being used by students, the classroom is often rented by local companies for meetings.

Milne said roughly one out of every three kids coming through the Sailing Center's door is being "supported by our philanthropy."

"It's not just if we weren't here this wouldn't be happening," he said. "If we weren't here and fundraising a lot of these kids would never go out on the lake their entire lives, despite living next to one of the most beautiful bodies of water in the country."

One in four of the kids in the summer camp this summer will be non-white, according to Milne, which he says never happens in the United States. It's why the Sailing Center was the subject of a story on CBS News in 2022.

"It's typically a white sport, even in the most diverse places," Milne said. "Despite being in a relatively white state we are one of the most diverse sailing programs in the country. It takes a lot of work. You can't just put a scholarship up and say, 'Come do it.' You have to do a lot of outreach, talking with parents, getting them excited. Otherwise they wouldn't even think about sailing."

A waterfront scene to fill your heart

The Sailing Center has a spectacular outdoor deck at the third floor level with an expansive view of the lake that was intended as a place to bring the kids when thunder and lightning threatened and they had to get off the lake. It wasn't long before couples were asking to have their weddings there, not unlike local companies co-opting the classroom for their meetings.

For Milne, the deck serves yet another purpose on warm summer afternoons when he has a minute to go out there and just watch what's going on around him, down below on the waterfront. On a February afternoon, there are only construction workers down there, working toward the May 3 opening, but this summer it will be a quite different scene.

"I know it's kind of hard to visualize right now, but coming up here and watching 150-plus excited children coming off the water for lunch, they're all excited and jazzed about having overcome some challenge, patting each other on the back," Milne said. "It does fill your heart for sure."

Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosi@gannett.com. Follow him on X @DanDambrosioVT.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Burlington's Community Sailing Center close to finishing waterfront