Pomerleau had a deal with the railroad; he'd buy the land; they'd build the towers there.  That was 1980.  Howard was very concerned about public access to the lake at that point.  He talked to me and some other people.  Tom Hudspeth was a university professor, I was an attorney, he was a doctor; so it was kind of like we were the three people that led the charge on creating more public space down here in light of what was being proposed by Pomerleau at the time.  And his project went down the tubes. 

And there was a later project that was proposed about 1985 or so in the aftermath of that vote...  There was a vote in 1985 that Bernie Sanders--was mayor at the time--was supporting, was going to be a hotel seven stories high right about where that little esplanade is right there.  And the hotel would have actually been on the 3rd through 7th floors, would have actually hung out over the lake a bit.  There would have been condominiums all along that area up there...  That case, we fought over that; the Alden project was what it was called, it had a Fanueil Hall feeling to it.  That was what Bernie Sanders was proposing for development down here.  We ended up defeating that bond issue.

QUESTION: Was Howard Dean still involved in it at that time, 1985?

SHARP: Well that's kind of interesting.  When we got into that part of the bicycle path in Waterfront Park, Howard sided in favor of the Alden project along with Mayor Sanders and 12 out of 13 aldermen.  You've got to remember that this whole area was a wasteland for years and years and years.  It was waste oil storage tanks and everything else and they really wanted some development down there.  So that was where Howard and I kind of parted company as it were. 

I have great respect for Howard and I think he's terrific on environmental issues, but people have differences of opinion.  So I kind of led the kamikaze charge on that, that ended up nixing the Alden project and created the park space that we have here.  But none of that would have happened if it hadn't been for Howard getting me involved in creating the bicycle path in the first place in 1980...  He really can take a lot of credit for having gotten the Burlington bicycle path together and having foreseen that something like that could be done and organizing other people to do what needed to be done to create it.

QUESTION: How did he operate.  Was he a hands on...?

SHARP: He'd been involved in the Jimmy Carter campaign; that's how I knew him from politics...  I think he got a hold of me about the opposition to the Pomerleau project that had  been proposed, and that's where the Citizens' Waterfront Group formed.  Then we did the little spit of land out here, we cleared a part of that railroad right of way...  He was out there laying the bricks and he and I surveyed the whole area to see that we could put these pieces together--the railroad right of way out in the North End, down through the downtown...and then extend it all the way to Oakledge Park in the South, and he and I actually physically walked a lot of that territory ourselves and he was physically out here putting bricks in with everybody else when we did that.  He also helped move railroad ties from the railroad right of way out in the North End to help create the bicycle path there, as well as organizing the people and speaking at meetings...

The reason both of us hit it off well on that is because both of us believe that car transportation is a big waste and that we need to do much more for bicycle paths and alternate forms of transportation.  That's shown up in his support for the Champlain Flyer.  That's part of Howard the non-car philosophy and getting the bicycles and the alternative means of transportation.

QUESTION: What is the Champlain Flyer? 

SHARP: It's a railroad line that they put in.  It runs from here down to Charlotte and Shelburne.  Hopefully people will commute into Burlington to work and they'll come in on the train rather than bringing their cars up Shelburne Road.  The price tag on it was about $15 million, substantial amount of money; most of it came from the feds, and there's been quite a bit of controversy over how much ridership there's actually been on the line and whether it makes it worthwhile.  As governor he made sure that happened.

QUESTION: What kind of person was he in those days?

SHARP: He was very energetic, very bright doctor...  He was very competent...  He's a very good physician, has an excellent bedside manner.  He's very personable, very sociable, and his heart's in the right place...  He was a pretty common, ordinary type of guy; he still is.  You see him around with his kids doing different things.  He's an ordinary type of guy, and he was then.  But he was also a resident at the time, or a young doctor.  He was living over on Converse Court...  Third floor apartment over Ben Nye's place on Converse Court.  It was a third floor walk up, pretty old, but adequate.  Howard lived there before he married Judy or right after they were married.  I think it was when they were newly married...  It was a two bedroom very modest apartment that him and Judy shared before the kids...
 

TOM HUDSPETH added via August 7, 2002 e-mail: "When we first went to the City Council and asked that they put a bond issue for a rails to trails conversion on the March ballot, we (Howard, Rick, and I) were laughed at. 'Ne'er-do-wells will come into our back yards and steal our barbeque grills and rape our daughters, and our property values will decline,' etc., several contended.  So we rolled up our sleeves and got to work and found out all about rails to trails programs in Anchorage, Austin, Minneapolis-St.Paul, Seattle, etc., where crimes of property and crimes of person had actually decreased once bike paths were developed, and property values had actually increased. We put together a dog and pony show emphasizing these results and presented it to civic groups, Rotary, Kiwanis, etc.  And we stood on Church Street and talked to passers-by and had a petition drive, and gained enough signatures to get the item on the ballot anyway (although it surely would have been a lot easier if the City Council had approved our request in the first place!), and it passed. And I think all the bond issues for bicycle path expansion and improvement have passed except for one (at a time with lots of other money items on the ballot, and involving a section of the bike path on boardwalks through wetlands in the Intervale where I and others weren't so sure it was appropriate).
        

"We've got an enormous amount of bike paths around the state because once I got to be governor I ordered the Transportation Agency to fund bike paths the way they funded roads.  So we went to the local people and said if you design a bike path we will pay for 80 percent of it and furthermore your engineering costs and acquisition costs you can use as your match.  So we've built these things all over the state now, but this is the most spectacular one."