There’s no denying progress is being made on Lynn’s waterfront with Minco Corporation/The Dolben Company’s 231-apartment building under construction with a November completion date.
Aptly-named “Breakwater,” the $100 million project on the waterfront’s North Harbor site is proof that the city working with developers can bring change and investment to the waterfront.
Lynn’s waterfront commercial zone for years has been a place where lofty ideas were announced with big speeches and optimistic expectations, only to see grand visions go up in smoke and land on the unrealized dreams list.
Located opposite North Shore Community College, the North Harbor site spent decades on the unrealized dream list. That is, until Minco worked with Lynn Economic Development and Industrial Corporation (Lynn EDIC) to assemble the 14-acre site into a project plan in 2013 and launched the complex financing and permitting process involved in assembling a major development.
Breakwater is taking shape blocks away from the Gateway North project that opened housing opportunities for residents on a once run-down stretch of Washington Street. Visible from Breakwater is the market-rate residential Munroe Street high-rise poised — like Breakwater — to trigger revitalization of an entire Lynn neighborhood.
With final completion dates and occupancy set for mid 2021, Breakwater sets the stage for work to begin on a publicly accessible waterfront walkway. Through a complex land swap agreement with the state, the Minco project is also turning a vacant Central Square lot into a new park in the heart of Lynn’s arts and cultural district.
It’s worth pausing and appreciating the potential of a project that will transform one of Lynn’s gateways; generate property taxes, and improve downtown.
Lynn EDIC Executive Director James M. Cowdell called Breakwater “the first of several waterfront projects in the pipeline.” He could have just as easily described the project as an economic pump primer capable of creating a sum greater than its parts. The waterfront walkway spawned by Breakwater will help open the waterfront’s potential and the Central Square park made possible by Minco and the state will help elevate downtown’s continued transformation.
