LYNN — As the city prepares to reapply for millions in state funds to build new schools, Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy may have solved the controversy over where one middle school should go.
In an interview with The Item’s editorial board this week, the mayor said she is considering a site behind North Shore Medical Center’s Union Hospital, off the north side of Woodland Avenue.
“It came up in a discussion I’ve had with Union Hospital about their closing and what would happen to the campus and the land they own,” Kennedy said.
Union Hospital, a division of Partners HealthCare, owns four acres on Lynnfield Street near the Route 128 and I-95 intersections.
Last year, voters rejected the $188.5 million project to construct two schools for students in the Pickering Middle School district and West Lynn. A 1,008 student-school would have been built on Commercial Street at McManus Field. A second 652-student school would go near Breeds Pond Reservoir off Parkland Avenue.
But opposition grew to the Parkland Avenue site as neighbors complained a school would exacerbate traffic problems. The other factor that may have sunk the vote was a tax increase of about $200 for individual homeowners annually for the next 25 years.
Donald Castle, president of Protect Our Reservoir, Preserve Pine Grove Cemetery, who organized the fight against the Parkland Avenue location, said the proposed spot is promising.
“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” he said. “A majority of the kids who would attend the new school live in that neighborhood. I like it.”
But Castle said his group wants a seat at the table to explore all the school site options.
“We never got the opportunity to review why some sites were in and some were out,” he said. “So I’m glad to hear the mayor is exploring other places to build the school.”
Under rules of the Massachusetts School Building Authority, (MSBA) the quasi-independent government authority that reimburses communities up to 80 percent of the cost of a new school, Castle said Lynn had 10 days following last spring’s vote to reapply with a new site and remain in the pipeline for funding.
“This is what our group suggested all along,” he said. “But the mayor dropped the ball.”
Still, Kennedy said the Union site is in its infancy. The city plans to resubmit a request to the MSBA for reimbursement to solve overcrowding and conditions in the middle schools.
“It’s not ready for prime time,” she said.
It is very early in the discussion stages, she said, and the city would have to know how much the land would cost and whether Partners would make it available.
Laura Fleming, a spokeswoman for the North Shore Medical Center (NSMC), said hospital officials continue to work with the community to develop a plan for reuse of the campus after Union Hospital and NSMC are consolidated in 2019.
“We have not considered any specific plans at this point,” she said in an email.