Lynn officials impatient over Athanas’ property fate

LYNN – The Athanas family continues to remain tight-lipped on the status of the former Anthony’s Hawthorne – a prime piece of real estate located in the heart of the city.Long since vacant, the Athanas family has yet to disclose to the public what they intend to do with the site and city officials are growing more impatient as time wears on.Bill Bocknak, project manager for the Economic Development and Industrial Corporation (EDIC), said he recently met with Athanas family representative Wig Zamore to discuss potential developments with the site.However, Bocknak said his conversation with Zam-ore failed to shed new light on the ongoing topic.”I know they are waiting for the results of environmental testing on the site, and that should be known within two weeks. Those results have been what’s keeping Jim (Cowdell) from being more aggressive, but they’ve been dragging their feet.”Zamore disputed Bocknak’s claims that the family isn’t working fast enough and said they are doing all that they can at the moment.”We are working with Steffian Bradley (a Boston architectural firm hired for the design and preliminary studies) and we hope to have some realistic plans in place for the site,” he said. “The environmental aspect is just a part of this and it has to be done before there are final plans, but we would also like to wait for an economic up-cycle to develop anything downtown.”The family previously expressed interest in transforming the former eatery at 95 Oxford St., into a four or five story building that would contain underground parking, commercial space on the first floor, and residential units on the remaining floors.In addition, the family also said they would like to acquire the former Whyte’s Laundry site located next to the main post office to create a parking lot, which would be made available for customers shopping at the proposed commercial spaces.Zamore said it would most likely take several years to have an exact vision in place, and the pollution issue would only further stretch the process out.”I can’t put a timeline on the process, because if it becomes a superfund site, it could be a very long time before the Environmental Protection Agency sorts it all out,” he said. “But the family obviously wants to do something beneficial for the city.”Bocknak said Whyte’s owner, Elaine Goldsmith, is in the process of completing environmental testing on the site as well as a section of the Hawthorne site to see if a flow of contamination made its way across, and is doing all that she can in light of financial problems.”Whyte’s is doing all that they can to prepare for a clean up, but I don’t get the same sense from Wig and I don’t know why,” he said. “The clean up costs would be too expensive for Goldsmith to take on, so we are looking into arranging a covenant not to sue, and if we secure that, Goldsmith would relinquish the property to EDIC.”If that happens, Bocknak said he would apply for a Brownfield’s grant.”We’re waiting for the report of phase 3, which I was supposed to get on June 1 from ECS in Wakefield,” he said. “Then we’ll be able to have a final strategy for the cleanup in place.”The Whyte’s site has been an eyesore ever since former owner Russell Goldsmith tore the building down in 2000 to make way for a proposed expansion to the post office.The plan came to a halt when the post office froze construction plans in 2001, and when the freeze was lifted in 2003, efforts to acquire the property from Goldsmith never materialized.