After nearly half a century of advocating for Queen City entrepreneurs, the Burlington Business Association is closing up shop. 

The association announced the news on August 10 in an unsigned email to supporters and businesses. It had been without a full-time executive director since Kelly Devine left at the end of last year after 17 years at the helm.

The nonprofit said other organizations, including Building Burlington’s Future, are well positioned to continue its work of championing the businesses in Vermont’s largest city.

“We believe in Burlington. We believe in its downtown, its people, and its future,” the message said. “This isn’t a goodbye to that belief — just a passing of the torch to the next chapter.”

The Lake Champlain Chamber, meanwhile, is preparing to step into the void. On the same day the Burlington Business Association said it would close, the chamber announced a new Downtown Business Alliance division dedicated to “strengthening the economic health and vibrancy of Burlington.” The chamber will be hiring an “advocacy manager” to lobby for downtown businesses.

In 1978, business boosters formed what was then known as the Downtown Burlington Development Association as a way to “save our downtown,” the group wrote in its farewell email. Its dues-paying members helped transform Church Street into a pedestrian mall and supported projects such as the waterfront bike path, City Hall Park and the Champlain Parkway.

In its goodbye, the association acknowledged that Burlington still faces “real challenges,” primarily “ensuring that the Downtown and Waterfront are clean, safe and fun spaces,” as well as weathering the tough economic headwinds facing downtowns across America. 

“These challenges have made the work harder; and they’ve made it clear that no single organization can carry this moment alone,” the message read. “It will take the whole community — businesses, residents, city government, and neighbors — working together to find a path forward.” 

Building Burlington’s Future is a nonprofit founded last year by a group of activists, politicians and residents interested in creating a new coalition through which to address the Queen City’s thorniest issues, including public safety.

The group is already running two programs created by the association: the “downtown ambassador project” and “downtown action group,” according to Building Burlington’s Future executive director Sam Donnelly.

The BBA created the downtown ambassador role in 2024 to instill a sense of community and security among business owners and employees. The role is currently held by Andrew LeStourgeon, who serves as a general neighborhood resource. He helps connect disparate groups with one another and to broader resources to address challenges they may be facing.

The downtown action group, a monthly meeting of business owners that the BBA used as a way to solicit feedback for its advocacy efforts, will continue but with changes, according to Donnelly. BBF plans to also include community-focused nonprofits in the discussions. 

Donnelly, who briefly worked for the association before helping to found the new nonprofit, said his group maintains a different structure and approach but shares similar areas of concern with the now-defunct association. 

Donnelly said his organization does not strive to be “the voice of business in Burlington” but will continue to take a broader, more holistic approach to vital but divisive issues such as public safety in the Queen City. 

“There’s room in the discussion for businesses to participate, and if there’s any way we can help continue that work, we’ll definitely step up to do that,” he said. 

BBF board chair Michele Asch spoke during a three-hour public comment period at a recent Burlington City Council meeting where the public weighed in on Democrats’ “Burlington Forward” resolution. She called upon the council to move ahead with the measure despite intense criticism from Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, Progressives and harm-reduction advocates. The effort was a necessary step forward, Asch said, to “keep children first.”

Donnelly said “Burlington Forward” is an imperfect but necessary framework to improve public safety. He said he hoped that, despite the intense partisan divisions, the council’s committee process would return something that would earn bipartisan support.

“I think there is a lot of effort and a lot of work already happening under this current mayor’s administration that we need to recognize and build on,” Donnelly said. “And there’s also areas where it’s completely fair … to say, ‘Hey, we can do better in some of these areas.’”

Though the timing of the Burlington Business Association’s closure came as a surprise to Lake Champlain Chamber president Cathy Davis, she said the group had been preparing to take a bigger role in the Queen City since Devine stepped down. The nonprofit advocates for business interests across Chittenden County at all levels of government.

Davis said the chamber will have “very similar” goals to the now-defunct association and aspires to be as effective as the former organization.

When it comes to the downtown public safety debate, she said the chamber hoped to put more resources into advocacy for business interests in a conversation that had “devolved” to the point where people were talking past one another. 

“The thing that astounds me, actually, as we confront these challenges is the incredible level of compassion and care from this business community,” Davis said. 

In a recent letter to the editor published by VTDigger, Davis expounded on her decision to keep the chamber’s offices in downtown Burlington despite the disruptive and disturbing behavior its employees have encountered there. She called for more “diligent enforcement” against “illegal drug and alcohol use, drug dealing, prostitution and loitering” in the Queen City.

The city’s Community and Economic Development Office director Kara Alnasrawi, a former Burlington Business Association board member, said businesses need someone to advocate for their interests and explain to them what’s happening in local government. 

“I look forward to seeing which organization is going to fill that gap in terms of helping to organize and voice the opinions and desires of the business community, and I look forward to working with them,” Alnasrawi said in an interview.