It’s amazing to think that a grand vision for Lynn Harbor laid out 40 years ago is now on the verge of meshing with the biggest housing development the city has seen in years.
Minco Corporation’s $100 million apartment complex — currently under construction across from North Shore Community College — is redefining the gateway to downtown at the end of Market Street and the waterfront.
The development is also refocusing the vision designers contemplated in 1981 for the ambitious Heritage Park project. Its lawn and walkways, located yards away from the Minco site, are visible for only a few seconds to commuters speeding down Michael J. Carroll Highway bound for the Lynnway and Boston or headed in the opposite direction during the afternoon-evening commute.
But Heritage Park is poised to emerge from the proverbial shadows once a waterfront pedestrian walkway stretches from Seaport Landing past the park and the Minco project and down the waterfront.
Heritage Park’s $18 million budget in 1981 was small compared to today’s development price tags. The vision outlined for the waterfront and the state dollars attached to the project were indicative of Lynn’s status 40 years ago as a political powerhouse.
When the late Thomas W. McGee, Massachusetts House speaker, and the late Water J. Boverini, former state Senate majority leader, picked up the telephone, state officials on the other end of the line did their bidding.
Former Gov. Michael S. Dukakis toured the Heritage site several times during the project’s design and construction phases, listening as city officials described plans for recreational space, the “heritage center and museum,” luxury condominiums on the marina and the pedestrian overpass spanning the highway.
A state planner summarized the project as ” …under-utilized portions of the waterfront wrapped around ambitious private investments.”
That quote appeared in a Daily Evening Item story in October 1981, weeks before Lynn faced perhaps its greatest modern challenge in the form of a fire, which swept through industrial buildings on Broad Street a minute’s walk from the Heritage Park project site.
The Great Lynn Fire of 1981 dealt a blow to the city’s center and provided a canvas for resilient city officials, aided by the powerful legislative delegation, to reimagine downtown.
Heritage Park hasn’t been forgotten in the decades since it was conceived. But it hasn’t been in the forefront of city planning and development discussions until the North Harbor site and Minco’s project moved the city closer to realizing the waterfront’s revitalization.
Lynn’s march on the way to making a great city even greater has faltered during the past four decades, but it has never taken a step back. Now it is advancing with residential construction on the waterfront and new opportunities to appreciate Heritage Park.
