CENTER CITY COMMITTEE
MEETING MINUTES
February 12, 2002

Present: Jim Canavan, Robert Flynn, Nancy Kleniewski , Ken Lavallee, Bill Lipchitz, Joe Lipchitz

The Meeting of the Lowell Center City Committee, Inc. was held Tuesday February 12, 2002 at the Lowell Small Business Assistance Center, 169 Merrimack Street, Lowell.

Bill Lipchitz opened the meeting at 8:38 am noting the Lowell Sun press clipping of the annual meeting. He then announced that he had brought mugs and calendars for those members who had not been able to attend the annual meeting.

Jim Canavan announced that the new economic development coordinator for Community Teamwork will be Russell Smith. Mr. Smith has had a successful career as an entrepreneur and considerable experience with SCORE. Jim Canavan thought that Russell Smith would also be the likely director of the Small Business Assistance Center under the arrangement with the Partners of the Center that CTI provide its Economic Development Coordinator to run the Center.

Nancy Kleniewski announced that the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Tsongas Industrial History Center will be sponsoring an international conference on Dickens from April 4-6. Gerald Charles Dickens, an actor and the great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens will provide a world premiere performance of "The Republic of My Imagination".

Nancy announced that the American Textile History Museum is producing its event of Uniforms in Fact and Fantasy from January 26-May 27. She handed out their brochure with the upcoming spring events at the Museum as well.

Kathy Lantange was not able to attend the meeting, but did provide a copy of the City’s ordinance regarding the responsibility of snow and ice removal by building owners.

Bill also announced that on May 17 and 18 as part of National Preservation Week there will be a "Doors Open" event with tours of those parts of Lowell exhibiting adaptive reuse. Mills and canals, buildings reused for the arts and culture, government and institutional buildings, Churches, banks and other buildings and institutions that have and are participating in historic preservation will be featured.

Some discussion was given over to the issues and problems of such work with the old Firehouse on Palmer Street as a kind of case study. Jim Canavan offered considerable historic insight.

Jim Canavan brought up an issue of public safety caused by the assault and mugging of a CTI employee on Worthen Street recently. The police department is presenting safety meetings to CTI people as part of the response. Ken Lavallee noted that overall crime statistics for Lowell reached an historic low in 1999 and have gone up a bit since then. He noted that even so, Lowell is far safer than it was a decade ago. He has offered to bring the most recent crime statistics to our next meeting on February 26.

The meeting adjourned at 9:40 am.

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