Last month MassINC released a major research report examining changes in public education in the 15 years following passage of the landmark 1993 Education Reform Act. The report’s findings and conclusions place Gateway Cities at the center of the debate about what to do next. While the report did not set out to examine the […]
Gateway Cities
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Jobs picture in Fall River going from bad to worse
The news that Silver Line Building Products is closing its Fall River plant is a body blow to a region already suffering from the worst employment picture in the state. The New Jersey-based company, which manufactures vinyl doors and windows, opened its Fall River facility to great fanfare in 2001.The company announced last week that the […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Galvin sitting on development tax credits
Secretary of State William Galvin is sitting on millions of dollars in tax credits designed to spur the economic development of historic buildings across the state. Despite the severe economic downturn and developers desperate for financial help, Galvin decided last year to hold on to 10 percent of his $50 million annual allotment of historical rehabilitation tax credits. […]
Posted inThe Download, Uncategorized
New Bedford heading south again?
Steve Urbon of the Standard-Times has a succinct but awfully bleak assessment of how New Bedford is doing in the current recession. Opening sentence: Unemployment has hung like a dark cloud over New Bedford almost from the city's beginning, baffling and confounding nearly everyone who has tried to understand it and eliminate it. Perhaps the […]
Posted inThe Download, Uncategorized
“ArchitectureBoston” covers Gateway Cities
ArchitectureBoston, the quarterly published by the Boston Society of Architects, devotes its Summer 2009 issue to one of MassINC's favorite topics, the 11 Gateway Cities of Massachusetts. As editor Elizabeth Padjen writes, "These are cities that are open to entrepreneurship and reinvention: 'retooling' is not a metaphor in an industrial community; it's a way of […]
Posted inEducation, The Download
Data matters, and not just in math class
At Community Day Charter School in Lawrence, data rules. Founded in 1995, the K-8 school boasts that it has closed the achievement gap between Hispanic students and white students — and, indeed, its numbers are impressive. In 2008, for example, 89 percent of the school’s Hispanic middle-schoolers scored proficient or advanced on the math and […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Haverhill City Council prefers to live at-large
Haverhill gets into the debate over at-large versus district city councilors, but change doesn't seem to be in the air. The Eagle-Tribune's Shawn Regan reports that most of the current nine at-large councilors — all of them white — aren't inclined to make room at the table for colleagues elected from specific neighborhoods: Several councilors including Michael […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Historic mill on the chopping block in New Bedford
New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang wants to tear down the 187,000-square-foot Fairhaven Mills building, but local preservationists aren't convinced. According to SouthCoastToday.com's Joe Cohen, a developer interested in the site says the building isn't worth renovating (and there aren't enough state historical tax credits available to change his mind). Lang says he would "rather honor […]
Posted inEnvironment, The Download
Green opportunities for Gateway Cities
Will vacant land end up saving the economies of Lawrence and New Bedford? Catherine Tumber writes in the Boston Review that smaller cities that were once industrial centers (such as the Gateway Cities in Massachusetts) offer some unique advantages in a new green economy. In "Small, Green and Good," Tumber points out that many of these cities have large parcels […]
Posted inEducation, The Download
Rethinking the Gateway Cities: A talk and photo exhibit at Smith College
MassINC executive vice president John Schneider will be one of four panelists at "Rethinking Decline: New Perspectives on Massachusetts Gateway Cities," which begins at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, February 24, at Hillyer Hall, Smith College, Northampton. The talk is held in conjunction with "City of Champions," a photography exhibition by Mary Beth Meehan about her hometown […]