The Lowell City Council met on Tuesday night. As is often the case with the summer schedule of just two meetings per month, the council did not get through the meeting agenda before its 10 pm deadline. Although the council can waive the 10 pm rule, doing so requires a roll call vote and if only two councilors object, then the meeting must end immediately. That’s what happened Tuesday night when Councilors Wayne Jenness and Kim Scott both objected, so the meeting ended with unresolved items.

Often last summer, the council did not waive the 10 pm deadline so it should not have come as a surprise that it happened again. However, this time before that vote was taken, Mayor Dan Rourke pleaded with his colleagues to allow him to take up a couple of items he said were “time sensitive.” Notwithstanding that request, the council opted not to go beyond 10 pm. When that happened, Rourke wordlessly walked off the chair while one or more councilors futilely moved to adjourn. But with no one then chairing the meeting, no more votes could be taken and the meeting just faded out.

Last summer, agenda items that were not reached due to time constraints were simply appended to the start of the next regularly scheduled meeting. That created cascading delays through the summer since the next agenda would never be any shorter than the one that wasn’t completed.

That will not be the case this time. A special meeting of the council has been scheduled for this Monday, June 30, 2025, at 5:30 pm. The agenda for this special meeting is lengthy so it makes sense to wrap it up Monday rather than condemn the next meeting to spilling over. Of course, that assumes the council will complete the full special meeting agenda before 10 pm. With this council, one never knows.

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The early part of Tuesday’s meeting was dominated by a presentation on the increased cost of the Lowell High School project. Earlier this year, contractors discovered that much of the dirt underneath the cement slab that formed the floor of the 1922 building (the yellow brick structure along Kirk Street) had either settled or washed away leaving voids that had to be filled before renovations could continue. This came as a surprise and was not included in the existing budget. Back on April 13, 2025, I wrote about that presentation. You can find more details about the construction issues and the history of the various buildings in that newsletter if you want a refresher.

This week the contractors informed councilors that the added cost of this unforeseen work would be $40 million. A detailed PowerPoint presentation (available online) broke down the costs as follows: $2.4 million for Skanska (the city’s project manager); $2.1 million for Perkins Eastman (the architect); $13.2 million for Suffolk (the general contractor); $6.0 million for subcontractors; and $1.3 million for increased insurance bond, all totaling $20.5 million. Then there is an additional $14.8 million for “construction contingency” for a total additional cost of $39,850,848.

This was just an informational session for councilors so they could ask questions of the parties who all had representatives present. As is typically the case in televised meetings, councilors mostly used it as a chance to chastise the contractors for this disappointing news and, for a few of the councilors who had supported the Cawley Stadium site option back in 2017, to say “I told you so.”  Mayor Rourke was particularly pointed in his remarks, saying the city was relying on our state house delegation, especially “our State Senator” (Ed Kennedy), to get proportional state funding for these added costs “since he is the one primarily responsible for this” by which Rourke meant the high school staying downtown and all the costs that have flowed from that.

Here’s some context: Talk of a new high school in Lowell began in 2014. Over the next two years, studies of possible sites identified two: the city-owned land around Cawley Stadium in the Belvidere neighborhood and the site of the existing high school in downtown which could be fully renovated and supplemented with some new construction.

After a bitter and divisive campaign between advocates of the two sites, in June 2017, the city council chose the Cawley Stadium option by a 5 to 4 vote. Voting for Cawley were Councilors Rita Mercier (still on the council), Rodney Elliott (now a state representative), Dan Rourke (still on the council), Corey Belanger (still on the council), and Jim Leary (out of politics). Voting for downtown were Ed Kennedy (now a state senator), John Leahy (now working for the school department), Bill Samaras (out of politics), and Jim Milinazzo (out of politics).

Notably, 2017 was a city election year. Some incumbents and a few challengers who supported Cawley believed that however controversial the decision may have been, the June vote would be old news come November, and the election would turn on other issues. They were mistaken. Instead, the city election became a referendum on the high school location.

It was literally a referendum because the November ballot contained this question: “The City of Lowell is reviewing several options for its high school project. Do you support extensive renovation and rebuild at the existing Lowell High School location, at 50 Father Morissette Boulevard, Lowell, MA 01852?” The YES votes won by a 61 percent to 39 percent margin (7,254 voted YES and 4,629 voted NO).

More importantly, the field of 18 council candidates was evenly split with nine supporting Cawley and nine supporting downtown. City voters elected seven pro-downtown incumbents and challengers and just two pro-Cawley councilors (Rita Mercier and Rodney Elliott). The three other incumbent councilors who voted for Cawley all lost. They were Dan Rourke (who returned to the council in 2019), Corey Belanger (who returned to the council last year when he was appointed to fill a vacancy), and Jim Leary.

Here are the results for all 18 candidates in that race:

1. Vesna Nuon – 7518 – challenger – Downtown
2. Edward Kennedy – 6483 – incumbent – Downtown
3. John Leahy – 6114 – incumbent – Downtown
4. Bill Samaras – 6094 – incumbent – Downtown
5. Rita Mercier – 5730 – incumbent – Cawley
6. Jim Millinazzo – 5688 – incumbent – Downtown
7. Rodney Elliott – 5447 – incumbent – Cawley
8. Dave Conway – 4974 – challenger – Downtown
9. Karen Cirillo – 4973 – challenger – Downtown
10. Sokhary Chau – 4756 – challenger – Cawley
11. Dan Rourke – 4729 – incumbent -Cawley
12. Cory Belanger – 4722 – incumbent – Cawley
13. Jim Leary – 4666 – incumbent – Cawley
14. Joe Boyle – 4170 – challenger – Downtown
15. Martin Hogan – 4082 – challenger – Downtown
16. Matt LeLacheur – 4055– challenger – Cawley
17. Dan Finn – 3920 – challenger – Cawley
18. Robert Gignac – 3524 – challenger – Cawley

As soon as the new council – which contained seven Downtown supporters to just two Cawley supporters – took office in January 2018, it reversed the high school location decision and voted to proceed with the downtown option. As they say, the rest is history.

The outcome of the 2017 city election, both in the referendum and the vote for city councilors, chose the downtown option. When current councilors who supported Cawley say, “I told you so,” they are really telling the electorate, “Don’t complain, you are the ones who wanted this.”

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The council also authorized the city to take by eminent domain the land and building at 40 Market Street which is currently owned by Align Credit Union and used for office space. This is the large brick building across Market Street from Brew’d Awaking Coffeehaus.

The council also voted to authorize the borrowing of $4.2 million to pay for this building. In response to questions from Councilors as to why this was an eminent domain taking rather than an outright sale of the property, Manager Golden explained that the city and Align Credit Union have been in talks about the purchase of the building for many months. They both agree to the transfer but are not entirely in agreement on the price. They mutually agreed that the cleanest way to make the transfer in these circumstances is through a taking. I got the impression that Align is not inclined to judicially challenge the amount to be paid which is based on an independent appraisal. Golden deemed it “a friendly taking.”

Golden further explained that the city’s Department of Planning and Development will move from its current home in the JFK Civic Center and occupy two-thirds of this building and that other city departments with smaller footprints will occupy the rest. Since some of those departments are currently leasing privately-owned space, the city will no longer be paying rent for those facilities. Also, with DPD vacating the Civic Center, the police department will expand into that space which Golden said will be a lot cheaper than building a new police station.

Constructed in 1837 jointly by the city of Lowell and Middlesex County, this building was historically known as “the old market building” because its first floor was intended as a public market in which local grocers could sell meat, butter, cheese, eggs and vegetables. The upper floors were to be used for the county courts (Superior Court and Supreme Judicial Court when it sat in Lowell) and the Lowell Police Court (the predecessor to today’s Lowell District Court). The concept of a centralized farmer’s market proved unpopular, which undercut the purpose of the building. By 1870, the first floor was shared by the various businesses and by the Lowell Police Department which remained there until 1973 and the construction of its current home in the JFK Civic Center. The building remained vacant until 1980 when the city sold it. The new owners rehabilitated it and it has been used as office space ever since.

Of historic note, the rear of the building which faces the Pawtucket Canal was also a “public landing.” Before extensive railroad networks, rivers and canals were the primary routes for moving people and materials from place to place. In the 1830s, a “public landing” was a place where anyone could tie up and load or unload their boat and move cargo or people ashore. Today, there is an excellent walkway that runs along that bank of the canal from Central Street to the far end of the Market Street parking garage. I’m not sure if the public landing is noted or identified but it should be. I’m also not sure if the walkway is currently open due to security or maintenance concerns. Hopefully when the city takes ownership of the building, these omissions will be rectified.

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Another item that took up a substantial amount of time during the council meeting was a request by the Markley Group LLC to amend its fuel storage license to allow four additional 6000-gallon diesel fuel tanks to supply four emergency generators.

The Markely Group is a leading provider of data center services and cloud computing solutions. Essentially, they build, operate and maintain highly secure and reliable data centers where other businesses can house their critical IT infrastructure, servers, and data. As the world becomes increasingly digital and data-driven, the demand for sophisticated data center services continues to grow, making companies like Markley indispensable to the modern economy.

Lowell is lucky to have Markley Group located here. The company purchased the former Prince Spaghetti manufacturing plant off Moore Street in 2015 and opened its new data center in early 2016. A critical service Markley provides its customer is continuity of computer operations which requires, among other things, layers of redundancy, hence the need for generators with their own fuel supply in case of electrical outages.

Shortly after the Markley facility opened, I went on a tour of the interior and found it very impressive with security measures that reminded me of those found at Top Secret facilities I had encountered while in the US Army. Although I wasn’t there to assess the external noise level, nothing stood out as excessively loud. Still, I don’t live next door to the place so don’t have first-hand knowledge of current noise levels. Nevertheless, the use of the site for industrial purposes goes back many decades so I doubt many of the residents pre-date that type of use.

At the council meeting, neighbors spoke in opposition to Markley’s request, however, their entreaties were offset by dozens of Markley employees who are also Lowell residents (and voters) who urged the council to ratify the request.

In the end, the council voted by a 9 to 1 margin to approve the Markley measure. (Councilor Kim Scott, who represents the district in which the Markley facility is located, voted NO and Councilor Vesna Nuon was absent from the meeting).

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This week on richardhowe.com:

Leo Racicot shared his memories of local TV programs in the 1960s.

Louise Peloquin translated a 1925 article from L’Etoile that called on Lowell residents of French-Canadian descent to take pride in their ethnic heritage.