Author Archives: ldna

There were seven car break-ins in the area of 256 Market St. (National Park Service Parking lot) on Sunday night. Car windows were broken; radios and GPS devices, etc. stolen.
Don’t leave anything in your car!!!
If you are currently parking on-street, you may want to consider parking in the garage on Maket St. until this theft spree is resolved.
Also, due to the Folk Festival, there is no overnight parking allowed in the NPS lot Thursday through Sunday this week.

The great barren land of Dutton Street has begun to be transformed!

If you have ever taken the long, long walk from Gallagher Terminal down Thorndike to Dutton to Market St., you know the sad, barren land of buildings meeting the sidewalk, and except for the small burst of life at the Mill City Property building at the corner of Broadway (its lovely flower baskets), this has to be the least attractive entrance into the city.

Rounding the corner of Dutton and seeing a beautiful row of trees and some additional hanging flower baskets lining the area between Market and Broadway, was to me, a relief; a thrill; a vision of the future.

Ok, maybe my level of excitement is a bit much, but this is the first improvement I can remember in that area since 305 Dutton cleaned up the old Giant Store.

I hope that everyone that makes the trek from the Acre to Downtown every day appreciates this small burst of beauty.

For the past four years, the Center City Committee (CCC) has participated as a sponsor in the annual Newcomer’s Night, usually held in September. The idea is to welcome new residents and businesses to downtown with a block party in the Enterprise Bank parking lot on Middle Street. Besides food, drink and entertainment, there are tables manned by various organizations with information about things to do or see in Lowell, restaurants and businesses to visit, and general information about the community.

Newcomer’s Night is coordinated by a volunteer committee that includes COOL, The City of Lowell DPD, Merrimack Valley CVB, the National Park, the DLBA, and Enterprise Bank as well as the CCC and has generally been held in September but may be pushed out to October this year. New residents are targeted by flyers and some direct mail.

The CCC has been exploring ways to make this kind of information available on an on-going basis to folks as they move in, and to keep the information up to date and available. One solution that has proven difficult to sustain, is to provide flyers, brochures, business coupons and other materials to the various residences. It is difficult to sustain because the CCC, like many other organizations in Lowell, is entirely made up of volunteers and has no staff to coordinate the updating and distribution of the materials.

There are existing websites with a lot of the information already out there but, like the long-wished-for-but-never-realized central events calendar, getting everything in one place and kept up to date would take at least a full-time job and maybe more. Nevertheless, one of the CCC’s work plan tasks is to find simple and effective ways to better inform new residents about what is available in downtown Lowell. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

The Lowell Center City Committee, Inc. is composed of members of all the identified stakeholder groups in the downtown and formally meets regularly on the last Tuesday of the month at the Middlesex Community College Morse Federal Building at 8:30 AM. The Committee also meets informally every Tuesday at 8:30 AM at Olive That & More on Market Street. The informal meetings are free-wheeling discussions about what is going on in the downtown and focus on events, traffic, parking, retail development, urban beautification (or not), and other quality of life issues.

Since our members come from all the areas of interest – Retailers, restaurants, other businesses, cultural organizations, residents, government, social services, education, tourists, transportation, planning, and public safety – there is usually a lot to discuss. The discussion is captured as best as we can and issued as minutes that are distributed to the members and posted on our website at www.lowellcentercity.org. The informal meetings serve as a networking vehicle and a think tank of sorts where ideas are tossed on the table to see if they have any cachet.

Good ideas usually get picked up and often a small committee is formed to work on them and possibly expand the group to others in the community who would have an interest.

The formal meetings operate somewhat differently. There, the Committee may vote to take a position on a topic of concern, or listen to a guest talk about official plans in progress or ways to improve the downtown. The Stakeholders also adopt a workplan for the year to concentrate on specific items, form goal-oriented subcommittees and receive reports from them. At our annual meeting in March, we recognize outstanding contributions to downtown life with an award or two.

It is our intent to use this blog to expand our discussions beyond the weekly meetings and to generate interest and feedback in the ideas to make downtown an even better place to live, work and play. We encourage comments and suggestions, new ideas and ways to make positive change in the downtown.

From today’s SUN
LOWELL — Thanks to Jack Kerouac, Robert Frost and other notable scribes
from the Merrimack Valley, Lowell has been picked to host the first
poetry festival in the state. The Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Oct.
10-12, will feature three days of readings, workshops and panels. And it
will have star power, including a roster of authors like Robert Pinsky,
the former poet laureate of the United States who created the Favorite
Poem Project.
A roster of 13 city and state organizations are sponsoring the event,
including the Cultural Organization of Lowell and UMass Lowell.
“This is Lowell, where the creative economy is happening. So why not
here?” said LZ Nunn, director of the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs
and Special Events.
The festival, co-founded by the Massachusetts Poetry Outreach Project,
strives to strengthen the literary talent in the Commonwealth. For more
info, go to www.masspoetry.com/festival.

Someone sent me this story from the Andover Townsmen which prominently features former LDNA Vice-President Paul Materazzo.

Town enjoying Green spring: Celtics fans enjoy renewal By Judy WakefieldStaff Writer

If the Boston Celtics join the elite 21st Century championship group, Materazzo said one thing will surely happen. “The fans will blow the roof off,” he said.

For anyone who has wondered who, what, where, how… is the Lowell Center City Committee all about, you will have an opportunity to ask the question directly.

Since LDNA and CCC were both considering creating blogs for “chatter” about Downtown Lowell, we decided to consolidate the effort.

Bill Lipchitz, President, Center City Committee, will be posting for CCC, you can check out the CCC web site and hopefully Bill will give us a little blurb about what the group is currently working on.

I hope that LDNA members will contribute regularly.

I am away for a few days… try not to get in too much trouble while I am gone… Bill will be keeping on eye on things.

Cheers!
Kathleen