ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
From left, Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy; Tom O’Malley; James Cowdell, executive director of the Lynn Economic and Industrial Corporation; Charles Gaeta, executive director of Lynn Housing Authority and Neighborhood Development; state Rep. Daniel Cahill; state Sen. Thomas M. McGee; and state Rep. Brendan Crighton help break ground at the Gateway North housing project on Washington Street in Lynn Tuesday.
By THOR JOURGENSEN
LYNN — Construction workers are transforming a muddy lot into a 71-apartment built to bring a new look and new residents to Washington Street near North Shore Community College and the Lynnway.
Local officials dipped shovels into a dirt pile at 700 Washington St. Tuesday to ceremoniously break ground on the start of construction of Gateway North, a building scheduled to be occupied by June, 2018.
Nine years in the planning, the Gateway North project is proof, that “Lynn is on its way,” said Lynn Housing Authority and Neighborhood Development (LHAND) Executive Director Charles Gaeta.
Gaeta said LHAND worked with state and federal agencies to map out the $31 million project intended to enhance Sagamore Hill, the neighborhood of two- and three-family residences and apartment buildings oriented around Washington, Newhall and Sagamore streets.
Once built, the five-story project’s exterior design and landscaping will seek to blend Gateway North into the surrounding neighborhood.
“This is a connector that is going to link Sagamore Hill, downtown and the (North Shore) community college campus,” Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy told 60 people attending Tuesday’s groundbreaking.
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State Sen. Thomas M. McGee said Gateway North will be the latest addition to a corner of Lynn that has seen transformation since fire gutted Broad Street mill buildings in 1981. The community college’s Lynn campus, named for McGee’s late father, former Massachusetts House of Representatives Speaker Thomas W. McGee, rose from the fire’s ashes. Former brick mill buildings on Broad and Washington streets were converted to housing.
Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency Executive Director Timothy Sullivan said Gateway is a pioneering example of workforce housing built for future residents with a wide range of incomes.
LHAND Director of Planning and Development Peggy Phelps said rents in Gateway will range from $900 to $2,100 a month with units classified under tenant income classifications including market-rate and “workforce.”
Kennedy, McGee and U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton credited Gaeta and LHAND with staying true to a vision of Gateway as a residence providing homes for tenants with a variety of incomes and located on a street that has not seen development in years. Gaeta said the project occupies a special place in his heart.
“It’s what Lynn is made of: Hard-working people looking for a safe place to live,” he said.
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].