The Boston Globe
The opening of a new oceanfront park on the site of a former landfill is the anchor for a new way of thinking about Lynn.
LYNN — “Somebody a long time ago made a big mistake,” Fred Hogan said as he stood on the shoreline here and looked out across the Atlantic Ocean. Depending on where you look, you can see Nahant, some of the Harbor Islands, and, in the distance, the Boston skyline.
The mistake is behind him. Or it was. And as the Lynn city councilor turned around to look at the brand-new Lynn Harbor Park, he kind of shook his head.
“If you knew what this used to look like …”
It was a dump. Quite literally, a festering landfill blanketed by swarming seagulls that was so massive it took more than a million tons of soil to cover up. And it was just one of the eyesores on the Lynn waterfront, which had become a dumping ground for all sorts of ugly industry, effectively shutting the community off from its own coastline.
About a decade ago, a company named Charter Development was brought in to shore up and cap the failing landfill, which presented all sorts of environmental concerns due to its proximity to the ocean. That’s when Bob Delhome, the founder of Charter, approached city officials with an audacious idea — instead of just capping the landfill and fencing it off forever, what if we turned it into … a park?
What if they took a page from Spectacle Island, the harbor island that went from being a dumping ground to a destination, and created something similar, but you didn’t need a boat to get there? Heck, what if they hired Brown, Richardson + Rowe, the landscape architects who designed Spectacle Island?
It was a crazy idea, everyone agreed. And it took a complicated public-private partnership between Charter and several city and state agencies to pull it off. On September 23, after years of work, the city will host an official ribbon-cutting for the 30-acre park.
But while the park itself is new, its impact has been felt for years, because its impending arrival has served as an anchor for a new way of thinking about the city and its ocean.
On the parcel just next to it, a massive mixed-use development is underway that is set to include 850 housing units, 26,000 square-feet of retail and restaurant space, and an 8-acre public park that will connect to Lynn Harbor Park and become part of an ocean promenade that will eventually extend nearly a mile from the Saugus River to the causeway that leads to Nahant, and connect there to Lynn’s beaches.
The South Harbor development, by Boston-based Samuels & Associates, is the largest private investment in city history. And it is just next to a recently completed 550-unit apartment building called The Shipwright, which is on the site of a former Building 19.
“This is all part of a plan to change the way Lynn residents think about themselves, and their waterfront,” Mayor Jared Nicholson said on a recent day as he led a reporter on a tour of the park, which includes a basketball court and two pickleball courts, but is essentially one large grassy hill. But what a hill it is, offering a 360-degree view of much of the North Shore, as well as the city down below.
A few blocks inland, Nicholson points to the Lynnway, the main thoroughfare through the city, which is a mix of big box retailers, car dealerships, and fast food restaurants. “The Lynnway is focused on cars. It’s focused on getting people through the city.”
The dream, Nicholson said, is to transform the area between the Lynnway and the coast into a new street grid, filled with housing — something the city desperately needs — and mixed-use developments that will get some of the traffic off the Lynnway and into what will ostensibly be a new neighborhood, focused on pedestrians and public transportation.
It has to be done cautiously, Nicholson said, focused on Lynn residents, who often come to the city seeking housing they can afford. Oceanfront condos do not scream affordability, and even with 10 percent of the developments earmarked as affordable, there is the risk that with the redevelopment will come a gentrification that could make the housing crunch even more painful for lower-income families.
When the project was announced in 2023, protestors objected to the $45 million tax break given to the developer and complained that 10 percent affordable housing was not nearly enough.
The mayor said that he understands the concerns, and said that as cost pressure comes out of Boston with people looking north for cheaper housing, the city must “make sure that Lynn development is primarily for the people of Lynn.”
As far as gentrification goes, there are brakes built in. Much of the ugly industry in the area isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, too large and necessary to be easily relocated, such as a massive water treatment plant just behind the park.
And the whole area, quite frankly, stinks. A transfer station on a street behind the park emanates an odor that is impossible to ignore, and relocating it is high on the wish list for anyone within smelling distance.
It’s a new beginning, city officials said, something Lynn and its oceanfront were desperately in need of.
“The waterfront was always so blocked off that people didn’t even know what was down there,” said Tom McGee, a former mayor and state senator who is now chair of the MBTA board of directors. “So to be able to take these places you wouldn’t want to go and make them something special, to reclaim this resource and make it a signature location for future generations to enjoy, is something to be proud of.”
Already, the park, which has been unofficially open for several weeks, has hosted a basketball tournament and seen hundreds of families come out for a kite flying day.
“To come down here and see all those families, all those kids playing, it’s hard to describe what that means,” said Councilor Hogan, a Lynn native who represents the waterfront area. “I get goosebumps when I think about what we’ve started here.”
