REGIONAL – While attention will inevitably be focused in coming months on what appears to be a year of political chaos in the nation’s capital, 2025 is shaping up to be a busy and contentious year for North Shore residents.
Buckle up as the opposition to a proposed state mandate for multi-family housing hit a wall last week as 2024 ended, the deadline for approving new zoning districts. There will also be issues about the design and cost of new schools. Efforts are underway to clean up the Merrimack River. And on the Georgetown-Rowley border, the G. Mello Trash Disposal Corp. will begin constructing its 550-ton trash transfer station over the objection of residents nearby.
Some of these issues will likely emerge in votes at the annual Town Meetings and as voters select SelectBoard members in town elections.
The MBTA 3A mandate for municipalities served by the transit system will likely be the most contentious. Several towns, including Ipswich and Rowley, appear to be headed for a clash with the state and possible court time with the Attorney General as they refuse to create special zoning districts to encourage builders to design and construct multi-family housing.
The state is threatening to cut off some state funds to those municipalities, if they join other towns in eastern Massachusetts in refusing to approve the zoning mandates.
The mandate was created to help resolve the low inventory of housing, which is driving up prices of homes to astronomically heights. The low inventory is a nationwide problem. According to National Assn. of Realtors, the low housing inventory rebounded last fall to a supply of existing homes at 4.3 months, the highest since October 2020. But a balanced housing market is considered having a six-month supply of homes.
To increase housing here on the North Shore, Newburyport is planning to convert the old Brown School in the south end and replace the vacant Kmart store on Low Street into housing.
One empty house continues to get tremendous attention. The federal government is trying to tear down the Pink House on Plum Island Tnpk, because it sits on the edge of a federally protected marsh. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has already taken out windows and some of the roofing as it prepares to sell off or demolish the house.
The small, long abandoned house turns 100 this year, and supporters, who love to paint, photograph and just look at the lonely icon are planning a blow-out party to persuade federal and state officials that the house should be saved.
Expect the Merrimack to be cleaner as sewage treatment plants upriver separate storm water and sewage pipes. The reason raw sewage flows down the river after storms is that municipal plants upriver in Massachusetts and New Hampshire are overwhelmed when the combined rain water and sewage surpass the capacity of treatment plants, and untreated sewage is released into the river.
Thanks to the Merrimack Valley Watershed Council, new pollution-detecting sensors are helping give boaters early warning when the sewage is in the water.
A cleaner river will be good news when the yachters arrive in Amesbury, Newburyport and Salisbury. It will also be welcome news to the patrons and concert goers of the new Market Landing Park on the Newburyport waterfront.
The park, years in the making as competing interests duked it out, was finished last year. It added more green space and removed 100s of parking spaces on the waterfront. New sculptures, including a dramatic clipper ship by sculptor Aaron T Stephan, will be installed, giving Newburyport signature pieces that make the park unique.
An Indigenous People’s monument is being chosen for the waterfront the park by the city’s Public Art Committee.
Further downriver on Salisbury Beach, 30,000 tons of sand are being added to replace that which has been swept away by storms over the last few years. The sand project, which is being financed by $1.75 million from the state, will help fight future erosion. A Georgetown contractor, T Ford Co. is bringing the sand.
Salisbury Beach with the help of private developers and property owner associations continues to make a comeback with more beachfront housing, new attractions and other amenities.
In Georgetown, Mello will turn on the bulldozers after years of fighting in local government and state courts to construct a mammoth trash sorting plant that will accept construction and business trash from throughout the North Shore.
Watch for neighbors and other private Georgetown residents as they search for ways to continue to fight Mello, particularly over the intersection at Carleton Drive and Main Street, the only entrance to the new plant for large trucks.
Last year, the audacious plan for a new $400 million Whittier Regional Technical High School was defeated. Now the school proposed to join forces with the Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill to build the new school in conjunction with the community college.
The move is expected to tap into more state funds, which will reduce the financial burden on the North Shore cities and towns that support Whittier. And it will create an expanded secondary school/community college curriculum, which has caught the eye of Gov. Maura Healey and other state officials as an innovative model for the state.
Patient Triton Regional Schools and Ipswich Schools will also get their chance to work with the Massachusetts School Building Authority to design a new Triton middle and high school and a new Ipswich elementary school.
New parks and playgrounds are being built throughout the communities. Notably, Newburyport is planning a new multi-million-dollar youth recreation center where the old National Guard armory stands on Low Street.
Across Low Street on the campus of the Nock Middle School, the city and school district are building three new tennis courts to change Newburyport’s reputation as one of the worst for tennis facilities to one of the best.
When completed, there will be five courts together, enough for the tennis-rich girls’ and boys’ teams to host the state championships and possibly other amateur tennis tournaments.
If reading is your passion, the North Shore is a mecca for book lovers. The Newburyport Literary Festival will continue its two-decade tradition on the last weekend of April, bringing to town some of the world’s most interesting writers. While other towns have lost book stores, the North Shore continues to add them. In addition to the prized Jabberwocky Book Store in the Tannery, Illume Books on Market Square continues to add book clubs and events. And in a welcome announcement, Barnes & Noble Books, under new ownership, began reopening stores across the country, including a large store in Seabrook.
Stay turned each week as the staff of The Town Common brings you great stories that inform and entertain. Happy 2025! ♦
