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Lynn Woods Land Swap - The swap
has been rejected!
We at Dieselbikes felt it was necessary
to provide the local New England mountain bike community with information
regarding the Lynn Woods land swap deal proposed by the City of Lynnfield. This topic has been discussed for the last 20 years and at some point in
time, it may eventually happen. If this proposal was approved, all the land
near the Naked Fish restaurant would have been developed (see map below). Shark's Tooth and Power line trails would be gone as well severing the
Beaver Trail and Seven Hills Area.
For now this proposal has been shot down
by the City of Lynn and this will buy the mountain biking community some
more time to enjoy the Route 1 area of Lynn Woods. We at Dieselbikes are
working with the City of Lynn to get the know trails like Shark's Tooth and
Beaver Trails on the Official Map approved by the City of Lynn. This way, in
the event such at land swap proposal occurs again (and it will), we the
mountain biking community will have some say in this matter.
Below is an official map and write-up of
the proposed land swap written by Lynn Woods Land Manager Dan Small.
In 2005 the citizens of Lynnfield
approved a proposal to "swap" land with Lynn in order to increase
Lynnfield's commercial tax base. Lynnfield would acquire a portion of the
park behind the Naked Fish Restaurant on Route 1 and sell it for commercial
development. In exchange Lynn would gain title to an equal sized parcel of
already protected Lynnfield conservation land. This "swap" would have
resulted in a significant net loss of irreplaceable open space. The
continuous woodlands many people think of as Lynn Woods are really a
collection of parcels owned by many different entities including Lynn,
Lynnfield, Saugus, New England Power and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Transferring or
"swapping" ownership of these protected parcels does nothing
to further protect our watershed, the environment or the future recreational
use of this resource. Not surprisingly this absurd proposal appears to have
no support in Lynn and was probably a dead issue the moment it was
conceived.
Opinion: By Dan Small
A few years ago a friend of mine told
me a very unsettling story. It seems his little sister was getting married
and my friend had decided to dig deep into his savings and give her enough
money for a down payment on a home as a wed-ding present. My friend was not
a rich man but this was gift he could give her that would last a lifetime. The home was never purchased; the money was spent on a motorcycle. It is a
troubling story but what does this have to do with the Lynn Woods? The Lynn
Woods became a municipal park as a result of the Park Act of 1882. This act
allowed municipalities in Massachusetts to create public parks within their
boundaries. The act required that a Park Commission be created to oversee
the park and included a series of guidelines that must be followed. It
allowed the Commission to accept donations of land and money and allowed for
bonds to be sold for the purchase of land. It also expressed that "All lands
taken or held under this act shall be forever kept open and maintained as a
public park or parks" (Park Act of 1882, Section 10). One of the first
properties to be donated to the Park Commission was the parcel known as the
Free Public Forest. This was land Cyrus Tracy and other forward thinking
citizens of Lynn had acquired beginning in 1881 to be held as a privately
owned park for free public use. They were concerned that the rapid growth of
Lynn would consume the woods for housing and industry. Before turning over
ownership, the Trustees of the Free Public Forest and the City of Lynn
entered into an agreement regarding the future use of this land. The
document was known as the Indenture of Trust. The Indenture of Trust was a
promise that the Lynn Woods would remain a free public forest forever. The
document didn't just refer to the land being donated by the Trustees but
specifically includes the forest "lying partly in said Lynn and partly in
the Townships of Saugus and Lynnfield respectively and bounded Northerly but
the Newburyport Turnpike" (Route 1). It is obvious that the intent of this
document was to protect all of what we now consider Lynn Woods. The
important thing to realize about this document is that it was signed while
most of the woods was still privately owned. The donations of land and
money, the issuing of bonds, the expenditures from the City treasury all
occurred after this promise had been made. All of this was approved by the
taxpayers of Lynn with the understanding that it would be "forever" as
stated in the Indenture of Trust and in Section 10 of the Park Act. Can the
Indenture of Trust be violated? Can pieces of the Lynn Woods be nibbled off
or "swapped?" Legally, I suspect it is not an airtight contract and a team
of skilled lawyers with sufficient financial backing could find loopholes to
exploit. But this isn't a legal issue, it is a moral one. The park wouldn't
exist without the promise that it would be forever. Who would have donated
anything to the project if the Indenture had been worded "the land will
remain a free public forest until we need it for something else." Obviously
none of this would have occurred, we wouldn't have a park, and no-body would
be able to discuss routing interstates through, expanding golf courses over,
or commercially developing pieces of our Reservation. One hundred years ago
the people of Lynn dug deep into their savings and gave us a gift that would
last forever. We can cherish that gift or sell it and buy everyone a
motorcycle.
If you would like to have your opinion
heard on a Lynn Woods issue please send your thoughts to our newsletter
editor Jane Kelley.
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