[MassHistPres] Towns that had Urban Renewal programs

[Dennis De Witt]

Interesting that Lynn — a city not a town — is not on that state list.  

I did hear about Millbury, a town, but its redevelopment authority was only initiated, rather late, apparently only to redevelop the site of its burned town hall. 

Dennis

> On Jan 27, 2026, at 5:24 AM, cvwtc at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Mayor Costin of Lynn, MA had an urban renewal program planned and it wiped out most of The Brickyard neighborhood including the house of my dad's family BUT the hoped for office parks and other development never materialized and when some of this land was later used to build the vocational school, the city actually lost taxable revenue.  I'm going to attach some images of a full-page newspaper ad from that time promoting this urban renewal plan.  Note the arrogant tone of this ad.
> 
> Matt Pujo 
> Beverly, MA
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   
> 
> On Saturday, January 24, 2026 at 04:05:31 PM EST, Dennis De Witt via MassHistPres <masshistpres at cs.umb.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> This is a matter of curiosity.
> 
> There is an interesting story (preservationist's urban myth?) in Plymouth that in the 1950s/60s when people from other towns were (proudly?) shown the loss of historic urban fabric in Plymouth due to its Federally funded urban renewal program most of those towns (not cities) shied away from taking Federal Urban Renewal funds.  A Plymouth architect tells me he first heard this story at that time, when he was an architecture student.
> 
> Googling finds a list of 36 Mass towns and cities, overwhelmingly cities, that had Urban Renewal.  I know it isn’t complete because Brookline is not listed but in the ‘50s and ‘60s there was a BRA (Brookline Renewal Authority). 
> 
> https://www.mass.gov/doc/urban-renewal-projects-0/download
> 
> It would be interesting to know if there were other Mass. towns, beyond those on the list, that had urban Renewal Programs.
> 
> Dennis De Witt
> Brookline — and Plymouth
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