Main Street Landing has been in business since 1982. We are entering our 30th year of being on Burlington’s Waterfront creating positive change. Thirty years ago the Burlington Waterfront was a place that most parents told their children to stay away from. It was full of rail tracks, barbed wire fencing, a scrap metal yard, grainery with a handsome rat population, empty brick buildings, and overgrown weeds and shrubs. Just imagine living in Burlington during that time and never going to the waterfront because it just wasn’t a place where people were supposed to go. The Union Station was then owned by The Green Mountain Power Company, and the Haigh Mill and McKenzie Buildings were abandoned. The Pease Grainery and McNeil Power Plant were still in operation, but soon to be closed down. The tall brick chimney at the Haigh Mill reached lonely into the sky as did the Pease Grain Tower. Both structures were considered historic although in disrepair. It took years before the City of Burlington would allow Main Street Landing to have them removed. They were icons of a time long ago when the Burlington Waterfront hosted Presidents and yachtsmen, children on sleds, and ladies in big hats arriving from New York by train or steamship.

The Burlington Waterfront fell into decay at the end of the majestic steamship and railroad era. Let us just look at the waterfront today. We have a Community SailingCenter, ECHO and the Leahy Science Center, a Skate Park, daycare, performing arts center, restaurants, bike path, park and boardwalk, beautiful trees and flowering shrubs, renovated historic buildings alive with commerce and retail, numerous visual arts venues, a tourist lake boating industry, and outdoor summer festivals that bring tens of thousands of people to the shores of Lake Champlain each year.

In just thirty short years, the Burlington Waterfront has been transformed into one of the top locations that tourists visit when coming to Vermont.

This next year – 2012 – is an exciting year for Main Street Landing. We are producing a 45-minute DVD on the History of Burlington’s Waterfront which takes our history show created in 1983 and updates it to present day. There is a wonderful historic narration that follows 600-historic images and supported by a beautiful musical sound track. Being premiered in February, 2012, at the Film House, we will also distribute the DVD to schools, libraries, and organizations interested in learning and teaching the rich and vibrant history of our Waterfront.

Main Street Landing’s Performing Arts Center in the Lake & College Building at Sixty Lake Street is a versatile and distinct daily rental facility. Mariah Riggs is its Director, and Ren Hall is the Daily Rental Dude who assists clients who utilize the daily rental spaces. There are seven spaces in the building that range from the state-of-the-art Film House with a capacity of 220 people to the intimate Board Room for meetings of thirty-five people or less. Main Street Landing strives to assist their daily clients with personalized professional care and diligent customer service. If you are planning a business meeting, art opening, conference, concert, dramatic play, or film screening, Main Street Landing has a space that will fit your needs. The Gallery is our new daily rental space that will feature changing artwork by local artists and is designed to be utilized for a wide-range of uses from meetings to events.

“Movies at Main Street Landing” is a new project which premiered on November 15th, 2011 with the Wizard of Oz to benefit the United Way of Chittenden County. We are bringing great cinema to the big screen for free to the people of the Burlington area. This is a weekly event every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. in the Film House at Sixty Lake Street. It is designed to benefit the people of the area both culturally and as a fundraising tool for local non-profits. We will work with a different non-profit each month. We create the established event, and they can shape it to fit their own vision. The film selection will focus on a different “theme of the month”. For example February is “A month with Oscar” and the movies that are scheduled are some of the most critically acclaimed films ever made like “Gone with the Wind”, and “The Godfather”. The movies are shown as they were intended in Dolby Digital surround sound and on a 25’ screen. This series is Main Street Landing’s way to foster cinematic appreciation in our community. Movies at Main Street Landing is about cultural enrichment – both through supporting charitable organizations, and also by bringing classic and great cinema-for-free to the Burlington citizenry.

This article was taken from vermontbiz.com

Let’s face it, Burlington deserves passenger train service. Wouldn’t we all benefit from being able to leave our cars at home and travel in the comfort and freedom of rail? I believe most people love trains and will ride them. So why is it that I’m still waiting for the train?

Look at the rich history of rail in Burlington. It was in 1850 that the Rutland Railroad established a straight rail route north to Burlington, known as the Western Corridor — this was 160 years ago. Burlington grew up and around rail, and it was rail that helped define Burlington as the destination for folks coming to Vermont.

The last passenger train (except for the short-lived Champlain Flyer) stopped running in 1950 (the year I was born) and the train station was sold to Green Mountain Power. In 1985, Main Street Landing purchased the station and turned it into an artist community. Then, in 1997, 10,000 square feet was added to the 1916 building to create what we see today, the Main Street Landing Train Station.

We have the station, yet for over 60 years, Burlington has not had sustained passenger rail service coming into that station. So, let’ s look at the economic and social benefits of rail. According to a study this year by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, rail transit provides a positive return on investment. Direct transportation cost savings average about $450 annually per capita, and it increases regional Advertisement employment, business activity and productivity. The rail can contribute to urban redevelopment, and property values increase near rail stations. Quality transit improves mobility for nondrivers, improves community livability, and improves public health.

The Vermont Rail Action Network has analyzed the environmental benefits of rail and concludes: “44% of greenhouse gasses in Vermont are produced by transportation (nationally, it’s 28%). Shipping by rail instead of truck reduces pollution (on average) by two-thirds, noise by one half, and uses only 29% of the fuel, and produces only 23% as much greenhouse gasses. The U S. transportation system is 96% petroleum dependent, accounts for 71% of the country’s oil use, and consumes 25% of the world’s net output. Passenger trains are 20 to 40% more efficient. Passenger service means improved rail infrastructure which will help accommodate better freight service to and from Vermont. A fifty-car train takes 300 semi-trucks off our highways, and many of Vermont’s businesses have large bulk commodity needs not being met right now by rail.”

Again, we must ask ourselves, if rail can help our economy, support the social fabric of our communities, and benefit our environment — what’s the hold up here? I believe it’s political will and lack of leadership. And, of course, our love affair with our automobile. But things are going to change in a big way as people rise up and demand alternatives to roadway travel. Why? Because the dollar drives human desire and ultimately the marketplace. Economic, fast, efficient and comfortable rail travel will become a welcomed alternative for many in the coming years ahead.

Since Peter Shumlin has become governor, an exciting can-do attitude for rail radiates from the Statehouse. Under the leadership of the Agency of Transportation Secretary, Brian Searles (also the AOT Secretary for Howard Dean), Amtrak is expected to pull into Union Station within three years. Conversations are under way with Canada to continue Amtrak from Burlington to Montreal by solving the customs delay. We will see a six-hour train ride from Burlington to New York. One thousand people a day could be arriving at the Queen City looking for hotel rooms, restaurants, shops and cultural amenities.

Just imagine the economic jolt to Vermont’ s economy when ski trains, tourist trains, scenic autumn trains, vacation trains, commuter trains and interstate trains connecting Washington, New York and Advertisement Burlington to Montreal, start rolling into town. Just imagine it, and keep that little tune in the back of your mind … “Don’t you hear the whistle blowing?Rise up so early in the morn.Don’t you hear the captain shouting“Dinah, blow your horn?”

Burlington Free Press

Innovation to me means developing and implementing new ideas, policies and procedures that change our way of thinking, our products, our communities and our world. Focusing your vision toward a goal that strongly references your values and ethics can create a truly inspirational and innovative business.

Main Street Landing for the past 30 years has focused the redevelopment of Burlington’s waterfront on ecology and social justice. Our commitment to localism and community, public transit, economic empowerment, the arts, green development, healthy and energy efficient buildings, and public access grew out of our deep and profound connection to the earth and the human condition. Companies that landed here decades ago were founded by a generation steeped in environmentalism and social justice, and they are rocking our economic world. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield created an empire with an idea that ice cream should be made with pure local products, housed in bright Holstein packaging, with funny and cool (no pun intended) names and recipes that touch the child within us.

Jeffrey Hollander and Alan Newman, co-founders of Seventh Generation, decided in 1988 that cleaning products should be made of ingredients that won’t harm the environment, and that everyone should honor the American Native belief that we should protect the environment for the next seven generations.

Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, founded by Beth Sachs and Blair Hamilton in 1986, is dedicated to reducing the economic, social and environmental costs of energy consumption through cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable technologies.

NRG, founded by Jan and Dave Blittersdorf in 1982, manufactures products that measure and understand the wind.

Jake Burton, founder of Burton Snowboard, was so innovative that he created a whole new snow sport that has taken the world by storm.

Bob Stiller founded Green Mountain Coffee in 1981, and they have transformed the way the world understands business because they believe that financial success goes hand-in-hand with their ability to make a difference in the world.

Then we have Will Raap, who in 1983 founded Gardener’s Supply, an employee-owned company that provides gardeners with innovative products. Raap went on to create the Intervale Center, a nonprofit in downtown Burlington that hosts a variety of farms growing organic food. All but one of these businesses are members of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, the largest business organization of its type in the country with 1,500 members.

These types of Vermont businesses usually operate under a different business model. They treat and manage their personnel differently; they use unique and creative marketing and public relations methods; and they usually focus their goals and resources on protecting the environment and raising the human condition. They are also the companies that are receiving the awards and earning accolades as the fastest growing and most successful businesses in Vermont.

It’s thinking out of the box and the coloring outside of the lines that usually defines the business model that makes the world a better place, sustains the economy, serves local citizens and enjoys a high profit margin. These companies are bold, unique, inspirational and magnificent, and they are economic engines that have brought Vermont international attention and gratitude. Today, more of these businesses are being created by a younger generation whose lives have been affected by climate change, 9/11, economic hardships and the global marketplace.

As Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, said: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Melinda Moulton is the chief executive officer of Main Street Landing in Burlington.

View this article in the Burlington Free Press