ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
Gene Raymond of Raymond Design Associates talks about building a new Pickering Middle School during a site-planning meeting at City Hall.
BY THOR JOURGENSEN
LYNN — General Electric field on Summer Street and land off Parkland Avenue are potential sites for two new middle schools designed to replace the Pickering Middle School and handle future enrollment increases.
City officials named the locations as the local choices for building new schools during a Monday meeting with design consultants. The meeting kicked off a four-month-long site selection process that will include public hearings.
With a new Marshall Middle School opening this month, school officials have set their sights on replacing the 99-year-old Pickering.
The school is likely to handle expanding elementary school enrollment. But meeting participants said severe traffic congestion around the school and Magnolia Avenue flooding problems rule out Pickering as a future middle school site.
City schools started the year with 3,000 students. But Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy said the city “needs to have room for about 4,500 middle school students.”
While design consultants have examined middle school locations citywide, GE Field and Parkland Avenue emerged as preferences for several reasons.
The Parkland Avenue land located behind the “Barkland” dog park is city-owned, said city Inspectional Services Director Michael Donovan, and has not been built on.
The city faces challenges building off of Parkland Avenue if the site survives the selection review. Its proximity to Breeds Pond raises potential flooding concerns and the prospect of an extensive environmental review.
Kennedy acknowledged Pine Grove Cemetery commissioners are eying the land for more burial space.
“They have come to me and said, ‘We have no room to expand,’” she said.
Superintendent Catherine Latham said it makes sense to build a West Lynn middle school, stating, “It’s where the kids are.”
GE field is located in a floodplain. But Gene Raymond, lead architect for Lynn’s next round of school projects, said the field’s location off Summer Street poses fewer traffic problems compared to other middle school sites, including Pickering.
Kennedy said building a second school off Parkland Avenue also makes sense for what she termed political reasons. Building new schools requires bond financing approval by voters and Kennedy said Ward 1 residents who now look to Pickering as their middle school will “think they are going to get a new middle school.”
Plans to build two new schools could include changes at Breed Middle School designed to reconfigure the school’s layout to a more modern cluster concept. It would be similar to the one adopted for the new Marshall.
That change could potentially reduce Breed’s 1,300-student enrollment slightly, underscoring the need for additional middle schools.
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].