Forgive me if it is common knowledge that somehow I am not privy to, but humor me nonetheless.
Can someone tell me what is happening in this newly cleared space at the end of Whittemore Street in Gloucester?
My grandmother lived on Riverside Avenue for years and I can remember scurrying around that neck of the woods when I was little….nice memories.
Anyway, I noticed this while heading under the train bridge a couple of weekends ago and meant to ask.
Good Morning Gloucester 
Jay McNiff is building condominiums. What a spot! Imagine sitting on your porch on a summer afternoon, drink at hand, watching the boat traffic.
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And listening to the train horn as it crosses the new bridge.
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I love the sound of the train horn and that you can hear it from almost every corner of Gloucester, somedays louder than others depending on wind direction. It might be tough though if you lived near to the tracks, but hope they aren’t going to get rid of the horn entirely
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Hey Nicole – Anonymous got it right, we are building upto 10 attached homes at the site. The land as you may recall was the working Cape Ann Forge property. We have been working at finishing the permitting on and off for the past 4-5 years and have finally reached a permitted milestone. The timing is decent for residential building so we are hard at work installing infrastructure, sewer, water etc. all underground to accommodate the homes. Lots of new landscaping and part of the approval was predicated on collecting the now untreated stormwater and cleaning it before it goes into the River as it does now from both Riverside Ave. and Whittemore St. a huge environmental win for the River and surrounding marsh.
Paul got it half right. There is a rumored new bridge in the works some day but no horn. The horn sounded this summer because of the workers that were having to water the rails all summer because when the steel rails heat up in the sun they expand and can actually dislodge from their timber bedding. Purportedly the new design takes that into account.
We will be building a website to showcase the project soon. My best to Fred, we spent some fun times together growing up, I got the chance to catch up at hockey recently.
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I use to play down in this area too! There was a pond to ice skate across the railroad tracks. What a great area – many happy memories!
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Thanks for the information, Jay! Congratulations on what will undoubtedly be a fantastic final product. I look forward to watching the progress! Love the “win” for the river and marsh too…. can’t beat that!
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Nichole – who was your grandmother? We have lived on Riverside Ave. for 37 years. We bought our home when our children were young. It has been a great neighborhood and we look forward to the new development on the old forge property. I always enjoy your posts – thanks for sharing.
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My grandmother was Catherine Fialho. She lived towards the end of the street on the right in a little red bungalow. Or, at least what I would call a bungalow. I am now 43, but she lived there for all of my childhood and probably into the late 1980s…right before I went off to college. My other grandparents actually lived right across Washington Street on Rockland Street. So, we spent a lot of time at Friendly’s. I used to LOVE walking around the corner to the Garden Patch (where I bought more pipe cleaner bumblebees and small decorative birds than I can count) and playing up on the property behind the GD Times.
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Nichole – who was your grandmother? We have lived on Riverside Ave. for 37 years. We bought our home when our children were young. It has been a great neighborhood and we look forward to the new development on the forge site. I always enjoy your posts – Thanks for sharing.
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Nice post communications going on between folks asking a question! š Dave & Kim š
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