Kennedy: GE site should be sold by year’s end

LYNN – Senior executives at General Electric this week told city officials that the 22 acres of vacant company-owned land that has lain fallow for more than two decades bordering Federal Street should be sold for development by the end of the year.Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy made that announcement during her state-of-the-city address to members of the Lynn Area Chamber of Commerce (LACC) Friday morning at the Lynn Museum.”A new spirit of communication and dialogue (between the city and GE) has been established and I am extremely encouraged ? I can say to you now that we are on target to have that 22 acres of land sold by the end of this calendar year,” Kennedy said.Kennedy said she and members of her administration have had four meetings with senior GE Executives, including company lawyers, Real Estate managers and land-mitigation specialists.”At the end of each meeting we discuss what the next steps will be (on the sale of land) and how soon we will meet again,” Kennedy said.She said GE execs are now deciding whether to subdivide the site or sell it as one parcel, and the company is now in a 45-day notification period after which it will market the land.While earlier this year the Greater Lynn Y had expressed interest in possibly building a new facility on the property, Kennedy on Friday said she does not believe the Y “has the same level of interest” it had in the site “and has begun to look at other alternatives.”The mayor said she has been assured by GE that the city will have a say in how the site is eventually developed. She said the company has received several unsolicited expressions of interest in the site by developers.”Once (GE) receives an offer, the city will have a seat at the table so we don’t get stuck with, say, a self-storage facility there,” she said. “We don’t want GE simply going after the highest offer. We want to see life brought back to that parcel ?We will have some influence on what goes into that property.”Kennedy said the new relationship between GE and the city came at her insistence.Not long after taking office, she said she “threatened to drive to New York to meet face-to-face with (GE) executives.”I wanted to send a message that the city of Lynn is serious that this land could no longer stay in its current condition,” Kennedy said, noting that action prompted the recent round of meetings.City finances ‘solid’Two-and-a-half years into her first term as mayor, Kennedy also touted Lynn’s fiscal shape and her administration’s major accomplishments.”As I stand here today I can unequivocally say that Lynn is on solid financial ground,” she said, noting the city has a reserve fund of $17 million.”Our auditors are quick to note that only a handful of communities across the commonwealth can boast of reserves like this,” she said. She cited one of the reasons as a $4 million savings in health insurance from agreements reached with city employees’ unions that extend through the new fiscal year.”When I became mayor, I was constantly asking questions about why things were being done a certain way, and the answer I always got was that ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it.’ I’m pretty sure in the last two-and-a-half years that phrase has all but vanished from City Hall and everyone from department heads to part-time workers has been willing to consider new approaches,” she said.Citing cost-saving examples of those new approaches, she said, “the snow-plowing contract was never put out to bid and was always automatically renewed. I put this contract out to bid and the city realized a savings of approximately $50,000.”Kennedy said new contracts for general liability insurance and workers’ compensation insurance saved the city “six figures.”Kennedy said she has also focused on improving business throughout the city, and has instituted a number of polices – such as requiring all city workers complete an online ethics course and sign a conflict of interest policy and Internet-use policy – that had never been in pl