PHOTO BY PAULA MULLER
Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy and building owner Charles Patsios talk as the demolition begins on the Factory of the Future Building in Lynn.
Few sights could be more welcome than the giant excavator slowly chomping away at the big beige building on Federal Street.
Vacant since 1988 and saddled with the ironic name, Factory of the Future, the big plant has been hidden behind tall fences and formerly closed-off Federal Street until 2013 when Swampscott developer Charles Patsios and Lynn city officials gave the General Electric site a nice hard shove into the 21st century.
GE is still the biggest business in Lynn and city officials watching the Factory of the Future’s demolition begin this week were careful to ensure the excavator did not start its work by ripping down the signature cursive GE logo. The building’s outer walls will be stripped off over the next month and interior walls, wiring and floor will be removed to provide a sturdy skeleton for a new Market Basket store.
Bringing jobs and new commerce to a former vacant site in the city’s center is great news, but the Factory of the Future’s demolition is even more important as a symbol of change. Stagnancy is the worst barrier against progress and the former GE West Lynn site with its acres of depressingly empty asphalt embodied stagnancy.
Company officials, city leaders, Patsios and Market Basket deserve credit for bringing progress to Federal Street and it will be exciting to see how the empty land around the Market Basket site fills out with additional businesses or other uses.
The greatest hope for the Factory of the Future site is for it to become a spark igniting development and renewal across the city. Another former GE site where giant naval turbines were once built is poised to catch fire once Patsios and state transportation officials can reach an agreement on expanding use of the River Works commuter rail stop.
Once that detail is ironed out, it will be only a hop, skip and jump across the Lynnway to ignite development along what is arguably one of the most underdeveloped Eastern Seaboard waterfronts.
Progress — like hope — is infectious and here’s hoping Patsios’ and the city’s progress on Federal Street spreads across Lynn.