Landlord Stu McGowan Is Getting Out of Real Estate

The neon-colored houses that have brightened the neighborhoods of Burlington’s Old North End may take on more muted shades over the next few years, as longtime landlord Stu McGowan puts his buildings on the market.

Over 25 years, McGowan has rehabbed and maintained some of the neighborhood’s oldest housing stock for renters looking for decent — and reasonably priced — apartments. And you can’t miss the places he owns. The color schemes, each with three different garish hues, have long been McGowan’s calling card.

But as he puts 15 buildings on the market, it’s not just the chartreuse, violet and fuchsia that may go away. The low rents may disappear, too.

McGowan has sold five buildings over the past several years, and now he’s ready to sell off most of the remaining apartments, except for six near his home on Intervale Avenue.

“So, this has been a thing that I’m sort of dipping my toe into, but yeah, I’m not dipping my toe anymore,” McGowan said. “They’re all up for sale, and they’re all great buildings. Bones are solid.”

One of those properties, a commercial building on North Winooski Avenue that’s home to Barrio Bakery, is on the market for $1.12 million. Two apartment houses, on Park Street and Washington Street, are listed by KW Vermont at $560,000 and $364,000, respectively. All three buildings have been listed for 115 days; in April, McGowan dropped the prices on each by $15,000.

McGowan, 62, said he and his wife, Joan Watson, 75, are ready to “take it easier,” after 20-plus years of living at the 24-7 beck and call of tenants. They have no regrets. “I loved it,” McGowan said, but they’re ready to spend more time with their grandkids.

“So, you know, part of this is also that we’re 13 years apart,” he said of Watson, “and she’s at the age where she should just be able to do whatever she wants, to not worry about much of anything.”

Known for his New Jersey swagger, McGowan has never been subtle about his love for Watson, his former pottery teacher at the University of Vermont. Every Valentine’s Day, he finds a way to declare his devotion. This year, he emblazoned “Stu ♥ Joan” in hot-pink graffiti on the side of their brick house. (He thought he’d be able to power-wash it off, but it turns out chalk paint is not actually made with chalk).

The two couldn’t be more different: McGowan is an extrovert with a penchant for friendship on the fly and a tolerance for risk; introverted Watson provides a steadying ballast. But together they’ve led principled lives, dedicated to a philosophy summed up by their daughter, Emma, as, “If you have a lot, give more.”

McGowan started his real estate venture in 1999 with one rehabbed building and grew his inventory over the years. Eventually, he would renovate 52 buildings in Burlington’s poorest neighborhoods. McGowan’s now-defunct ShoeLess Konstruction company, which trained young people in the trades, not only painted the exteriors in gaudy tones but also replaced plumbing, electrical and heating systems in dozens of buildings.

Money was tight. Initially, the projects were financed through a sustainable-communities fund at Chittenden Bank. The banker, Kristie Wildes-LaFountain, believed in McGowan and convinced the bank to believe in him, too. “He wouldn’t be where he is today without her,” said longtime friend Erik Hoekstra, a managing partner at Redstone in Burlington.

Hoekstra, who also didn’t start his career with inherited wealth, worked with McGowan on a large project and bonded over “being scrappy and working hard,” he said. “We couldn’t afford to make a mistake.”

Rather than hiring a general contractor, McGowan managed the construction himself. “What made his formula work was he was hands-on, swinging a hammer with a crew he knew well,” Hoekstra said.

At times, that wasn’t enough to keep the projects out of hock. ShoeLess Konstruction nearly went bankrupt several times. McGowan leveraged one building to buy and rehab the next. The financial risk was nerve-racking, and Watson wanted no part of that.

“I asked [Joan] for advice on house number 3, and she said, ‘You can’t talk to me about financing. I’m going to go crazy,'” McGowan recalled. The couple agreed she would only weigh in on the paint colors.

It would have been easier if McGowan hadn’t decided to keep the rents as low as possible — and never raise them. Though the business had to sustain itself, he had no interest in gouging neighbors in the Old North End, he said. Each year, he could have collected “about $100,000” more than he did from his tenants.

“Stu’s approach is community driven,” Hoekstra said. “He really cares about his tenants. If you were his tenant, you didn’t see your rents go up. If you stuck with him, he stuck with you.”

McGowan stuck with the Old North End in other ways, too. He has been a coach and an umpire for the Little League for 30 years, and in the early 1990s he led the Parent-Teacher Organization at H.O. Wheeler elementary school, which had the highest number of free and reduced-rate lunches in the state.

The PTO had two members when McGowan became president; within a few years, the group counted 140 parents. Jane Knodell, a former Burlington City Council president and longtime UVM professor, said McGowan had a huge impact on engagement in the schools. “I hold so much honor for him for that,” she said.

The PTO effort morphed into a study of demographics at Wheeler and a recognition that the Old North End needed a better socioeconomic balance with other schools in the city. McGowan led a committee that came up with a magnet-school concept for Wheeler, which became the Integrated Arts Academy; and Lawrence Barnes School, now known as the Sustainability Academy at Lawrence Barnes. Today, students from other parts of the city gravitate to those magnet schools.

While McGowan worked 10-to-15-hour days running ShoeLess Konstruction and Watson coordinated the Pottery Co-op at UVM’s Living and Learning Center, they opened their house to the neighborhood. The doors were unlocked. Kids came and went when they needed a listening ear or a place to hang out. Dinner was at 6 p.m., usually prepared by one of the kids. Four neighborhood boys became fixtures in the household and soon were incorporated into the daily routine and family vacations.

“I was never bored at home or at work,” Watson said.

“Joan was pivotal in encouraging Stu to expand the idea of community and family,” recalled Steve Fuchs, a former business partner at McGowan’s startup, a youth-centered educational video production company called the NoodleHead Network. When kids started showing up at their house, Fuchs said, Watson’s attitude was “We should take these kids in.”

In the mid-2000s, as the brood graduated from high school and the couple prepared to send their own two kids — and two nonbiological ones — to college, McGowan took on a new challenge: transforming houses into affordable condos.

That business model worked for a while. McGowan bought abandoned buildings and converted them into condos that sold for $140,000 to $170,000 — an attainable price point for first-time homebuyers. Between 2004 and 2008, he sold 35.

But when the Great Recession hit in 2008 and banks tightened mortgage requirements, the condo business fell flat. McGowan pivoted back to management of his 30-some apartment buildings. At the high point, he had 78 units. Eleven years ago, McGowan stopped rehabbing buildings and closed ShoeLess Konstruction. During the pandemic, his sister and brother-in-law took over management of the rentals.

Shifts in the real estate business are par for the course, as far as McGowan is concerned. A serial entrepreneur, he relishes the adventure of making something from nothing. The NoodleHead Network, for example, started in “the bunker,” aka McGowan’s basement. His big idea was to let middle school kids script, act in and produce videos about life in other countries, in conjunction with school-sponsored trips. He and Fuchs produced 30 videos that were distributed to large school districts around the country.

A more recent venture, now on hold, is ShareYourself, an online mutual-aid platform for startups.

McGowan said he sees himself as a community organizer who just happened to run businesses. But his mainstay, renting apartments, has become a lot tougher over the past five years. Hoekstra, who also has a large rental portfolio through Redstone, said costs have gone up significantly. Tax rates surged 9.5 percent this year, insurance premiums are climbing due to exorbitant construction costs and climate impacts, and petty crime in the city has spiked, he noted. The average value of a single-family home in Burlington shot up 56 percent in 2022, according to an analysis by Seven Days.

In 20 years, McGowan had not increased rents for tenants who stayed with him (one renter was paying $680 a month for a three-bedroom apartment). But when taxes went up in 2022, he was unprepared for the sticker shock and had no choice but to increase rents.

“It was difficult financially,” McGowan said. “The tax increase was a financial hardship that almost ended us.” He criticized the city for not giving landlords, and their tenants, time to adjust. “If you want good, affordable housing,” he said, “taxing the guys supplying it is not a great idea.”

McGowan righted the ship with incremental increases, and now the rentals cover his costs.

“I’m not running away,” he said of his decision to sell his buildings. It was just time to “cash out” and move on to the next adventure.

At the moment, that has taken the form of a three-story, pyramid-shaped playhouse in Alburgh. It’s a cross between a hideout and a treasure-hunt palace, with a firehouse pole and secret passageways. McGowan started the project in 2021, before he had grandkids. Now he has four under the age of 4, and he’s ready for playtime.

Correction, July 2, 2025:
This article has been updated to clarify Stu McGowan’s roles in the Little League.