Within Lawrence's tight boundaries, natural beauty abounds, but much of it is hidden from view.
By Beth Quimby
Eagle-Tribune Writer   2/21/00
Giovani Paolini sometimes gets caught up in the view from the window of his fourth-floor office. "There are fish in the water, and boats going downstream and fishermen. It is beautiful," he said.
 Mr. Paolini, who grew up on the Adriatic Sea in Italy, is not describing some exotic, far-off locale. His office looks out over the Merrimack River in Lawrence. The vice president of design at Southwick Clothing, Mr. Paolini turns to his river view for inspiration. But surprising numbers of others in Lawrence don't.
For a long time, Lawrence had reason to turn its back on the river; the city began life by turning the Merrimack into a sluice- way that delivered power and removed industrial waste. Even today, access to the river is often hidden or obstructed.
But, like the underused brick mill buildings that line it, the Merrimack and the two smaller rivers that run through the city may hold some of the answers to Lawrence's future.
Other cities up and down the river have managed to use their stretch of the Merrimack to help revive their sagging economies by creating places that attract visitors and tourists.
In Lawrence, the only spots that consistently attract people are the docks of the Greater Lawrence Community Boating Program and the adjacent stateowned Riverfront Park, both on the south side of the river.
Other opportunities for recreation and tourism up and down the river and along its canals, so far, have been largely ignored.
The section of the river below the Great Stone Dam is mostly unused, except for the few weeks in the spring when fishermen line its banks to catch migrating shad and herring and the striped bass that chase them.
It's hard to find a place to view the Great Stone Dam itself.
Lawrence's Great Stone Dam is encased in thick ice as it glows in the morning sun.One of the gratest engineering feats of the 19th century, the dam is along a stretch of the Merrimack River, where the natural beauty goes unrecognized. Photo by Judy Emmert

A fish-counting station at the dam, where people might see migrating Atlantic salmon, herring, shad and other fish, is inaccessible to the public.
A visitors center at the Lawrence Hydroelectric Associates facility that tells the story of water power in Lawrence is by appointment only in the spring.
Pemberton Park, built along river's edge on the West Island, is deserted most of the time, partly because of safety fears.
Much of the riverfront is publicly owned — ideal for a system of walkways along the river. Instead, vacant stretches of the riverbank lie under a tangle of impenetrable underbrush and trash.

Greened up, cleaned up'
"Lawrence is so well positioned with its three rivers, the highways. If it just greened up an cleaned up itself, it could be great city. That is why the watershed council wanted to be in Lawrence, because of all the potential," said Ralph Goodno, head of the Merrimack River Watershed Council.

The private river protection group moved its offices several years ago from the bucolic West Newbury banks of the river to a restored mill building on Island Street in Lawrence.

The city officials and economic planners responsible for developing the city say they are finally beginning to focus on the river and how to make it a focal point that serves both residents and the commercial interests that line it.

"We have a kind of understanding that we are behind in terms of Haverhill and other cities," acknowledged William E. Luster, director of Lawrence's Office of Planning and Development.

River:Has Potential to Power Revival
Lawrence's two smaller rivers — the Shawsheen in South Lawrence and the Spicket in North Lawrence — are also examples of missed opportunities.

Four years ago industries along the Spicket, such as Malden Mills and Century Box, were rushing to embrace the Spicket. Committees were formed and volunteers were eager to clean the debris-filled, flood prone river.

But the volunteer effort fell apart, in part because of the city's inability to move ahead with a federal project to solve flooding problems on the river. After serious floods in 1996, the city was given $2 million to buy property along the Spicket and turn it into playgrounds. But negotiations with the land owners stalled, and the deadline for spending the federal money runs out in September.

Two years ago, the city lost $230,000 it was given by the federal government to create a trail system along the Shawsheen River, from Ballardvale in Andover along the Shawsheen River through North
Andover to its confluence with the Merrimack River. The city failed to meet grant deadlines, so the project never materialized.


River as resource
The Merrimack River crashes down from its headwaters at the convergence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers in New Hampshire, a deep, fast-moving river that caught the eye of early New England industrialists. They built mill cities along its banks in the first half of the 19th century, using the power of the river to spin and weave cotton and wool.
As th Merrimack River passes through Lawrence, it flows under four bridges and forms a canal along one side of "the Island" (left center), home to several mills once powered by the river's water.Most buildings along the Merrimack face away from the river, which once was an open sewer.But now that the river is cleaner, other cities are making it a focal point for development.This view is looking east with the interstate 495 bridge in the distance. Photo by Mark Lorenz

The river also was a transportation route and was renowned for its salmon and giant river sturgeon when Lawrence was assembled from parts of the surrounding towns of Methuen, Andover and North Andover by Boston mercantile industrialist Abbot Lawrence and his investors in the Essex Company in the 1840s.

But after the dams were built and the factories rose, the fish and other wildlife disappeared and the cities and industries along it looked to the river as a convenient place to dump sewage and waste. Federal clean water laws stopped the pollution in the 1960s and 1970s. By the mid 1980s the water was clean enough to bring back the boaters and the wildlife, and developers started eyeing it as a prime spot for new homes and condominium projects.

Some of the old mill cities saw the river's potential and made it the focus of reviving economies left stagnant by the flight of the mIls to cheaper regions. Lowell won millions of state and federal tax dollars to highlight its riverfront heritage. Today its system of parks and paths and restored mills draws tourists from around the world and is the envy of the region.

Newburyport has made its waterfront a focus of all development in its downtown, which has become a thriving tourist destination. To protect its resource and investment, zoning laws limit all waterfront development to water-dependent uses.

Haverhill has seen downtown restaurants open decks overlooking the river, where several marinas thrive, and the city is working to create a river boardwalk.

Marianne Paley, head of Groundworks Trust Lawrence, found out during an arts festival on the river last summer just how little Lawrence residents are oriented toward the Merrimack. "There were kids who came from the North Common area who had never been down to the river," said Ms. Paley.
Her group, an offshoot of the watershed council, aims to open the city's waterfront and awaken the city to its potential.

Groundworks is working with private landowners and the city to develop the West Island — the west end of the island between the North Canal and the river — and the north side of the riverfront. It hopes to create a continuous public pathway from the Great Stone Dam at the west end of the island to the Spicket River at the east end. Three acres at the east end that includes a white sand beach is being donated by the family that owns it, but Groundworks must come up with the money to clean and landscape the site.

Mr. Luster, the city planning director, said the city, under Mayor Patricia A. Dowling, has begun to make the waterfront a priority.

"When the mayor and I were going over Casey Bridge, we noticed the green wind shades were still up, and this was May or June. She realized those had to come down.This is a very small example," he said.
The wind shades screen pedestrians and cars from icy blasts of west wind coming down the Merrimack. But they also block a spectacular view of the river.

The city's Merrimack Corridor Enhancement Project includes plans to open access to Pemberton Park so people can easily walk there from the new Fenton Judicial Center and the Canal Street area. City officials are working with Groundworks and West Island property owners to improve traffic flow across the island.

Mr. Luster said consultants and a 20- person committee comprised of various Lawrence constituencies will draft a new master plan for the city that will focus on ways to highlight the waterfront and identify opportunities for development. The plan will take about a year to develop, he said.

He said the city is also hiring a consultant to look at development potential along the north bank of the river along Water Street above the Great Stone Dam. The consultant has not yet been hired.

"This master planning process will identify opportunities," said Mr. Luster. "I wish we did it 10 years ago."

Feat of 19th Century Engineering is Still a Spectacular Sight

Lawrence's Great Stone Dam was the longest dam in the world when it was built in the mid 1800s, and one of the most massive Structures of any kind in the young United States.
It is still a spectacular sight.
The river roars over the top in spring, sending up clouds of mist, before it runs in torrents over the rocky river bottom. In winter, it trickles over the top and freezes, turning the dam into a frozen Niagara.
But the city does little or nothing to encourage sightseers, and it can be hard to find a good vantage point to see the dam.

One of the best spots is from the tip of West Island on the north side of the river. There is no sign to mark it, but a path covered with litter and shards of glass leads along a concrete wall almost to the base of the dam, where a visitor can practically feel the dam holding back the Merrimack River.
Built of huge granite blocks, the dam is 900 feet wide, not including wings that extend inland on either side and bring its total length to 1,629 feet. It is 35 feet thick at its base and rises 36 feet above the river bed.
One of the engineering feats of its day, the dam created a pond of water to power textile mills below the dam as the water fell back to its natural level through a system of canals and hydraulic works.
Construction of the dam, which claimed two lives, began in 1845 and was completed in three years.
More than 150 years later, the dam still supplies power through the hydroelectric plant on the south side of the river.