Lynn Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy. File Photo
Don’t ever say city officials can’t get anything done during the summer. In separate meetings on Tuesday, school officials and Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy advanced plans for new middle schools and the City Council and Planning Board set the stage for lower Washington Street’s renaissance.
The proposed Gateway housing development reviewed by the council and board members will make Washington Street near the Lynnway home to people who will frequent downtown. Some of them will be workers who board commuter trains for a ride to their jobs in Boston. Others may be students attending the expanding North Shore Community College campus.
Lower Washington Street, to put it mildly, has been a low-intensity zone near the city’s center for too long. The great swath of grass next to the college was once part of Lynn’s industrial heart until fire swept down Broad Street. The Pelican Pub is about to hold dubious claim to being lower Washington Street’s last remaining bar.
New residents living on Washington Street can give the Sagamore Hill neighborhood a new lease on life and extend the downtown revival already energizing Central Square. To their credit, councilors and board members are committed to looking ahead to make that revival possible.
Kennedy and top school officials share the same progressive attitude with their decision to send a two-school plan to replace Pickering Middle School to state officials for review. Getting an initial state signoff on the schools is just the first step to convincing local residents that two new schools are needed and that the proposed locations make sense.
Both proposed sites are located on two of the city’s busiest streets. Crosstown traffic turns off the Lynnway and travels up Commercial to Lynn Common. Drivers transiting from West Lynn to East Lynn use Parkland Avenue.
The reality in land-poor Lynn is any and all prospective school locations are hard sells. The Brookline Street land where Marshall Middle School now sits was one of the last industrial sites in the city.
Building in the woods off Parkland Avenue allows Ward 1 residents to continue to lay claim to a middle school even after the existing Pickering becomes a spillover school for expanding elementary enrollment.
Building a school on McManus Field turns Commercial Street and Neptune Boulevard into an education zone with Lynn Vocational Technical Institute, the Commercial Street annex and two nearby elementary schools located in a cluster. Why not think big and imagine a science, mathematics and technology training path that takes elementary school students through Washington School to a new STEM-oriented middle school and over to a 21st-century Tech?
Dreaming big dreams on Washington Street and for future school sites translates into a brighter future for Lynn.
