Council Approves Lincoln-Kennedy School Sale
– Allison Goldsberry
The City Council approved the sale of the former Lincoln-Kennedy School, the last of the city’s old schools for sale, for $2.3 million to North Shore Construction and Development, Inc., of Woburn.
The sale was approved after a contentious three hour debate in which neighbors quibbled over the amount of public parking spots. Some neighbors were in favor of more spots to accommodate residents and visitors while other neighbors, wary of congestion, argued for less spots.
Though the original Request for Proposal for the school, crafted after several public meetings with input from neighbors, initially specified thirty to sixty spots, the Council unanimously voted to limit the parking to thirty to forty spots.
The developer has proposed fifty housing units, eight of which will be affordable. Four of the affordable units will be set aside for Medford residents and the other four units will be made available to artists.
The Kennedy School building will be transformed into twenty-two townhouses, while the Lincoln School building will be converted into twenty-eight single-floor units. The majority of the units will have two bedrooms and will average around 1,500 square feet.
Each unit will have two parking spaces. The public parking will be in a separate area on Yale Street and resident parking will be accessible from Harvard Street.
South Medford Neighborhood Zoning Change Approved
After a unanimous vote of approval from the Council, the zoning has been changed from commercial to residential for eight homes on Alexander and Bonner Avenues.
Residents found out last summer that their homes were in a commercial zone when plans for a drive-through Dunkin Donuts on Mystic Avenue were in the works. They decided to petition the city to change the zoning to residential to prevent further “commercial encroachment†in the neighborhood.
An attorney for William E. McCarthy Realty Corporation, a business in the area, said his client opposed the zoning change because it would impose restrictions on commercial property owners.
City officials could not pin down exactly when or why the zoning in that neighborhood was changed to a commercial district from a residential one. It appears to have been that way for about forty or fifty years.
Domino’s Denied Late-Night Permit
The Council denied a request from Domino’s Pizza on Mystic Avenue to operate until 4AM. Nearby residents expressed disapproval for the late hours due to traffic and noise concerns. Neighbors said Domino’s is advertising it delivers until 4AM on weekends though it’s currently only allowed to operate until 2AM. Domino’s can appeal the denial in several months.
Dear Alison,
I do not think the neighbors were “quibbling over parking.” I think the argument was over something more serious than parking. It was really about the Council’s ignoring a neighborhood’s need in which the current debate about parking spaces offers one sorry case in point.
Many members of the S Medford Yale/Harvard/Princeton neighborhood, including myself, are flummoxed by the notion that the School Reuse Committee spent a year evaluating the Kennedy/Lincoln challenges, unanimously recommended 50-60 parking places, enjoyed the support of more than 100 neighbors voting in favor of that number –only to have the Council lower the number of parking places, not once but twice, for reasons that remain unclear at best.
One of the most challenging aspects of our South Medford neighborhood along Harvard and Main Sts is the lack of parking. So, there is a tremendous need for overflow parking, which is currently being satisfied by the vacant school parking lot; it picks up the slack rather nicely.
At the last Council meeting, Councilman Penta repeatedly claimed that only 20 cars park in that lot today, when in reality, up to 50 cars can park along the fence at the Kennedy School and Lincoln School. Anybody who walks by the Kennedy-Lincoln can see that up to 3x 20 cars can park in those combined lots. Unfortunately, nobody on the Council ever reached official agreement on the number of parking places currently being used by the neighbors, shoppers and businesses, but that did not stop them from moving to a unanimous vote to limit parking access in the coming development.
On the whole, the Kennedy-Lincoln re-development sounds terrific, thanks to the Mayor who worked long and hard to come up with a design that everybody liked and a Re-use committee that worked long and hard. So, it just seems enormously disrespectful for the Council to make recommendations based on bogus numbers on a project for which so many everyone have worked long and hard. It is disrespectful to the neighbors on Harvard Street who have virtually nowhere to park, to the people who shop on Main Street; and to the store owners. Twenty parking places may not sound like much, but for people in South Medford, it is the difference between being comfortable and being terrifically inconvenienced.
Sincerely,
SBodner
Allison,
There are three issues some of us in the neighborhood have with this decision:
1) The majority of the councilors as well as several of the neighbors indicated that the decision to reduce parking should not be made at the city council meeting, rather once we see some designs from the developer — so that an informed decision could be made. One councilor was adamant that the reduction be made at the meeting. We don’t understand why.
2) The councilors did not have objective and accurate data on how many cars actually use those lots currently and have, instead, been relying on a photo taken by one of the the petitioners. It was suggested that the city send someone to Yale Street to count cars — optimally on several occasions and at different times of day, to get an accurate number, but this was ignored.
3) The City Council Agenda item was titled “Sale and Transfer of Lincoln/Kennedy School”. There is no mention that the specifications in the RFP could or would be changed at that meeting, nor was their any formal notification after the change. This may be clear communication to insiders, but not to the average citizen.
Many residents had no idea that what they had defined and voted for initially could or would be changed. This process is confusing, inefficient, disheartening and, frankly, it seems broken.