CHANGE
Lower Broadway is about to experience a changing landscape for the first time in longer than a century. The casino and hotel came first. Everything to follow will remake the place so it is unrecognizable to old and young alike.
Lower Broadway is becoming a city within a city for Encore.
There is no end to what will be happening in this long lost quarter of the city once so polluted and hopeless a place that nothing but ugly and contaminating industrial sites could survive on both sides of the Broadway roadway.
THE EVERETT DOG BAR
There’s a new sheriff in town when it comes to having a drink and taking your pet along.
It’s called Park-9 Dog Bar.
This is a place where pet owners’ dreams come true.
“We knew people would be excited to be able to bring their dogs places, but we didn’t know just how excited they were,” said Emily Gusse, Co-Founder of Park-9 Dog Bar, among the comments she made recently to CBS Boston.
Park-9 serves up fine wines. You can bring your dog. Your dog will be placed in a special area where dogs can play and explore some freedom while you sip some fine wine.
Dogs must be up to date on their vaccines and they have to be registered online before entering Park-9 Dog Bar. For more information, visit their website.
$25,000 DONATION TO CITY
The city’s summer youth jobs program got a major boost with a stunningly larger than life $25,000 contribution made by Greystar.
Greystar is the international real estate giant who has recently built hundreds of apartment units here and along Revere Beach and Greater Boston.
This type of donation for the kids of the city to have summer jobs is big medicine, as we like to say here at the Leader Herald.
Congrats to Greystar for this huge contribution.
ERIK SWANSON
We had not seen much of City Engineer Erik Swanson in public until the other night when he appeared at a city council meeting to discuss the city’s ongoing reconstruction efforts on Elm Street and everywhere else.
What came across loudly and clearly is that Swanson knows what he speaks of and does it in an uncharacteristically clear and concise way. His presentation was brief but impressive.
All seems good about Mr. Swanson.
ATTORNEY GERRY D’AMBROSIO
Gerry D’Ambrosio grew up in Revere and became the got Revere lawyer who ultimately founded a major Boston law firm which he owns. D’Ambrosio, who we know well here at the Leader Herald, does legal work for Everett. This lawyer knows what he is doing. He is fair. He is smart. He is honest.
He has just been appointed to the state’s Judicial Nominating Commission – that is – to the group that nominates the judges who will be appointed in Massachusetts.
This is not only a great honor, but an added bit of insider type power for D’Ambrosio.
Good luck Gerry!
ANTOINE COLEMAN HONORED
Everett’s popular Director of Veterans Affairs Antoine Coleman was honored last week by the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus on Beacon Hill as part of the 2023 Black Excellence on the Hill Celebration.
He was joined in celebrating this honor by Everett Representative Joe McGonagle.
Everett has been blessed with hard working, proactive veterans representatives.
School Committeewoman Jeannie Cristiano was the city’s veterans rep for many years and did an outstanding job before morphing into her new position on the school committee – where she is doing a great job.
Coleman has brought new energy and a forward look to the position.
That’s why he received this honor. Nice work.
$5 MILLION FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Encore is making a contribution of $5 million to be put toward developing affordable housing in Everett.
This is a major contribution.
Regrettably, $5 million is a drop in a huge bucket dedicated to building affordable housing.
If a single unit costs, say, $250,000 to build, the $5 million will go towards creating about 20 units.
Five or ten more contributions like that being made by Encore would go a long way to generating new affordable housing.
In reality, Everett needs several hundred million dollars to make an abundant number of affordable housing units.
This isn’t going to happen any time soon.
The Encore contribution is a great mark on Encore’s commitment to the city.
EARTH DAY
It is said with a great deal of truth that a shovel placed into the earth anywhere in Everett produces a shovel full of polluted land.
That was then. This is now.
Hundreds of residents and community officials gathered together last week to celebrate Earth Day.
Earth Day was never celebrated by the Monsanto Company or by any of the larger industrial businesses who polluted Everett every day from week to week and year to year for a century.
That’s why last week’s Earth Day celebration brought hundreds together at Rivergreen Park along the Everett waterfront in that part of the city that has been transformed by major efforts to reclaim the earth and to regenerate life out of the space.
Volunteers have improved the wetland there, cleared trash and debris, removed certain plant species in an effort to make Rivergreen Park as pristine as it can possible be.
Again, great work which brings the kind of positive change to the city for the future.