Commonweath Conversations comes to Lynn

LYNN – Blue Line expansion, the success of the Lynn commuter ferry, plans for a Market Basket – all of the city’s projects and hopes were on the table Tuesday, and around the table sat a third of the state Senate and local business and city officials.”We decided we should go out across the Commonwealth and get to see and experience things,” Senate President Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst) said Monday. “This is our opportunity to hear from you what are the issues, hopes, challenges and opportunities to improve life in the Commonwealth.”State lawmakers are traveling across Massachusetts for a series of Commonwealth Conversations, visiting eight regions of the state with stops in several communities in each. The delegation visited Eastern Bank headquarters for lunch Monday and a roundtable discussion and presentation on the city’s economic development efforts and goals.The event gathered about 50 people, including state representatives Lori Ehrlich, Donald Wong, Brendan Crighton and Bob Fennell, state Sen. Thomas McGee, town administrators from Marblehead, Swampscott and Lynnfield, City Council President Dan Cahill, and representatives of city agencies, including the Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development (LHAND), Lynn Economic Development and Industrial Corporation (EDIC), Downtown Lynn Cultural District, community development and representatives of the Lynn Business Partnership who helped organize the stop. (Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy was not present; and Rosenberg and Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr had to leave during the presentation.)The majority of the meeting consisted of presentations by city officials on downtown revitalization efforts and plans to develop the waterfront, highlighting many projects that have been supported financially through state grants.The presentations had common themes: encouraging people with disposable income to want to visit and live in Lynn and the region, and making it easier for these people to get here.James Cowdell, EDIC executive director, noted that 250 people have moved into the downtown during the past eight years, and credited the restaurant scene as a tremendous draw for residents and visitors. Cowdell noted that the owner of the Blue Ox, a wildly successful restaurant to open in downtown Lynn, estimates that 70 percent of his business comes from outside the city. New restaurants such as Rossetti, D’Amici’s and the soon-to-be-open R.F. O’Sullivan’s have also located in downtown Lynn within the last few years.Cowdell also briefed lawmakers on efforts to revitalize the waterfront: a long goal of the city that has progressed from planning, to approving ordinance and zoning changes, to the first stages of development.Power lines that used to hug the waterfront have been removed; a new commuter ferry exceeded ridership expectations in its first year; North Shore Community College is expanding; and two major properties – the former Beacon Chevrolet site and the former GE Gear Plant – are under agreement with developers.”There is so much untapped potential,” Cowdell said. “Where else is there 150 acres of oceanfront land that is not developed?”But people need to be able to get to and from Lynn to take advantage of this land, the restaurants and the cultural programs being offered at Lynn Auditorium and in the Downtown Lynn Cultural District, one of only five such districts in the state.Transportation projects have taken several forms; from a $5.3 million project to rehabilitate Wyoma Square to harbor dredging to create a contiguous loop in and out of Lynn Harbor (ships now come in and back out in the same channel). Then there is the omnipresent goal of extending the Blue Line.McGee (D-Lynn) said the future of cities such as Lynn depend on rapid transportation. Logan Airport is growing and most passengers north of the city access the airport by roads in Greater Lynn, McGee noted.The MBTA’s performance during the recent winter makes talk of expansion challenging, but McGee urged