The main event at Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was a presentation by Skanska, the city’s project manager, on a new setback in the Lowell High School building project. When workers cut through the cement slab at the bottom of the 1922 building, they discovered that the soil underneath the cement had somehow receded, leaving a two-foot gap between the bottom of the cement floor and the soil beneath it. The condition is widespread, not isolated, and must be rectified to continue the project. This will involve removing the entire basement cement slab, excavating two feet of the existing soil, and replacing the excavated soil and the void with new fill, then pouring a new floor. None of this work was included in prior cost estimates. Although councilors pressed for a “ballpark” figure for the additional costs, Skanska explained that will be determined through a bidding process and promised that a firm cost estimate will be available on June 24, 2025. Whatever that cost, it will require new funding since the contingency fund built into the project budget and any savings that can be realized by scaling back portions of the project have already been expended. The new work will also push back the completion dates of the remaining phases of the project by six months.

Here’s a refresher on this project: Prior to its start, Lowell High consisted of five buildings. The oldest was built in 1892. This is called Coburn Hall and is on Kirk Street, closest to St. Anne’s Church and Merrimack Street.

During World War One, a major addition was constructed. It extended from the side of the original building to French Street and fit between Kirk Street and the Merrimack Canal. Architects did a masterful job in matching the exterior yellow brick of this new building with that of the original structure so from the outside, it appears to be one very big building. This addition opened in 1922 and carries that year as its name. It is this building’s cement slab that must now be replaced.

In the 1970s, a third building was constructed on the other side of the Merrimack Canal. This housed many classrooms, a large cafeteria, and was joined to the early buildings by a pedestrian bridge over the Merrimack Canal. This building opened in 1980 and carries that year as its name. At about the same time, a large fieldhouse containing a gymnasium and a pool were constructed at the corner of Father Morissette Boulevard and Arcand Drive. This building was called the Riddick Field House.

A significant renovation occurred in the late 1990s. This added several classrooms to the French Street side of the 1922 building and a media center and library to the opposite end of the 1980 building. At about this time, the former Lowell Trade School, which was a half block down French Street from the 1922 building and had been serving as two K-8 magnet schools, was repurposed as Lowell High’s Freshmen Academy.

That’s where things stood until the mid-2010s when a window opened for state funding for school construction. My recollection is that the major need at that time was for more middle school seats, however, that would require multiple projects and since the state would only fund one, city decision makers opted to go big and redo Lowell High School.

Two options emerged. One would add to and renovate the existing school in its downtown location; the other would build an entirely new school at the Cawley Stadium complex in the Belvidere neighborhood. Which to choose became the bitterest political fight that I’ve witnessed in my 60 years of following Lowell politics. In the summer of 2017, a divided city council voted for the Cawley option but before that could proceed, Lowell voters ousted three of the incumbents who had voted for Cawley and replaced them with three supporters of the downtown option. When the new council took office in January 2018, its first action was to reverse the decision from Cawley to downtown.

Because the downtown option required a large high school and a construction project to co-exist, the work was divided into multiple phases. The first required the acquisition by eminent domain of an adjacent parcel of land on Arcand Drive. The existing building on this parcel was demolished and replaced with a new gymnasium. Once the new gym was ready for use, the next phase commenced. This involved the demolition of the Riddick Field House and a portion of the 1980 building. Next, a new five-story classroom building was constructed at the corner of Arcand Drive and Father Morissette Building. This contained 60 classrooms and eventually would be the new Freshmen Academy, however, during the rest of construction this would serve as “swing space” which housed students in the upper grades while other parts of the project proceeded. Also in this phase, a new addition to the 1980 building was constructed.

The next phase – the one we are in now – is renovating the remainder of the 1980 building and the French Street half of the 1922 building. This is where the void under the floor was discovered. The final phase includes renovating the rest of the 1922 building and all of Coburn Hall, although since the floor problem exists through the 1922 building, the entire thing will be rectified in this unexpected and unbudgeted detour of the project.

The renovation of the first half of the 1922 building was supposed to be done by August 2025 but will now extend to December 2025. The next phase, the renovation of the rest of the 1922 building and of Coburn Hall, was supposed to commence in June 2025 but will now start in January 2026 with the entire project to be completed in the spring of 2027. Consequently, the “new” school in its entirety will be fully open and operational at the start of the 2027-28 school year in late August 2027.

On Tuesday, those councilors who spoke were understandably upset by this new revelation. There were some unhelpful “We should sue the contractors right now” and “I told you so” speeches, but the most rational responses came from Mayor Dan Rourke and Councilor Erik Gitschier who emphasized the need for the contractors to get their assessment and estimate right this time and, once the new cost is known, for the city and its legislators to petition the state’s school building authority to contribute to the cost overrun in the same percentage as it has the rest of the project. As frustrating and disappointing as this news is, they said, it is still the city’s building, and the condition must be rectified.

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Councilors also received the annual report of the Northern Middlesex Council of Governments (NMCOG) of which Lowell is a part. Executive Director Jenny Raitt made the presentation to councilors.

In the early 1960s, the Massachusetts State Legislature established regional planning agencies due to a combination of factors. Federal legislation such as the Housing Act of 1954 and other measures recognized that urban and suburban challenges extended beyond individual city and town boundaries and provided funding and incentives for a coordinated regional approach. At the same time, the post-World War Two suburbanization of the United States made communities increasingly interconnected on things like traffic congestion, infrastructure needs, and environmental concerns.

NMCOG was created in 1963. It consists of nine member communities (Billerica, Chelmsford, Dracut, Dunstable, Lowell, Pepperell, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough and Westford) and is governed by an 18-member board with two representatives from each community. The current Lowell representatives are City Councilor Wayne Jenness and Planning Board Vice Chair Gerard Frechette.

Here are some of the ways the NMCOG has assisted the city:

• MBTA Communities Act Compliance – Assisting the city in meeting new state zoning requirements.
• Downtown Open Streets Plan – Supporting pedestrian-friendly planning.
• Saint Louis Sponge Park – Assisted in preparing a grant application for a stormwater and green infrastructure project.
• Lowell Regional Transit Authority (LRTA) – Providing capital and operational planning support.
• Lowell Homes & Housing Plan – Contributed to a comprehensive housing strategy, pending council adoption.
• Transportation Projects – Helped with the planning process for the Rourke Bridge, VFW Highway, and Lowell Connector.
• Traffic Data Collection – Provided regional traffic counts.
• Innovation Network Corridor – Supporting development and infrastructure in key economic zones.
• Homelessness and Sustainable Housing Task Force – Participates in city task force efforts.

NMCOG has also assisted with or participated in the following projects:

• Stormwater Collaborative
• Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (2025–2030)
• Regional Housing Strategy and Coordinator
• Homelessness Summit
• Vision Zero Plan for safer transportation
• Digital Equity Plan
• Weights & Measures services (until Sept 2024)
• LRTA Bus Stop Inventory

Finally, there are several future city initiatives such as the new Master Plan that NMCOG will continue to support.

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Congratulations to UMass Lowell professor Bob Forrant, student Chandaranee Khoeun, and UMass Boston researcher Chrisna Khuon on their new article, “The History Matters: Fighting for Equal Education in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1970-1990” which tells the story of the school desegregation fight in Lowell during these years. The article was recently published by the UMass Boston Institute for Asian American Studies and is available online and is an important addition to the historiography of Lowell.

Here is the abstract of the article:

This is a story about Southeast Asian and Latino parents in Lowell, MA who confronted the Lowell School Committee in the late 1970s and 1980s, demanding that schools be desegregated and that their children have equal educational opportunities. While the school struggle unfolded, acts of anti-Asian and anti-Latino violence were perpetrated in Greater Boston and around the country, including the tragic death of Vandy Phorng, a 13-year-old Cambodian American in 1987. Following his death, the federal lawsuit that Southeast Asian and Latino parents had filed moved through the federal court for two years before the city settled. However, further racism was exhibited when opponents of desegregation placed a nonbinding question to make English the official language of Lowell on the ballot and it passed easily. Though it may not seem like it at first, this is a story of possibilities, of how a coalition of parents stood up to bigotry and entrenched political power and won. At great personal risk, they improved their children’s schools and, by extension, all schools in the city.

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This week on richardhowe.com:

Rich Grady writes about his long-awaited driving trip through the American southwest.

Paul Marion reposted a 2011 essay about walking through Lowell with the late Tom Sexton.

I wrote about the upcoming screening of “Le P’Tit Canada” a 1979 documentary that explores the cultural heritage sustained in the French Canadian neighborhoods of Lowell. (The free screening is Tuesday, April 22, 2025, from 4pm to 6pm at UMass Lowell’s O’Leary Library Room 222.)

Louise Peloquin translated the coverage of the 1924 Lowell City Council meeting featuring a gift to the city by Freeman Shedd (of Shedd Park fame) as covered by L’Etoile, the city’s French-language newspaper.

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On Thursday, April 17, 2025, from 5:30pm to 7pm at JFK Plaza in Lowell, there will be a remembrance vigil to observe the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cambodian Genocide.

On Saturday, April 19, 2025, from noon to 5pm will be the annual Khmer New Year Celebration at Lowell’s Clemente Park at 803 Middlesex Street.