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Tag: downtown lowell

  • Afghan man living in Lowell speaks about ICE detention

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    LOWELL — When Ihsanullah Garay was delivering food on Sept. 14, he found himself struggling to find the Starbucks he was being sent to pick up from in Methuen.

    He asked the first people he saw for directions, a man and a woman sitting in a car. The man pointed Garay in the right direction, he told The Sun Monday morning, and Garay thanked him and started walking away. Then, the two people started asking Garay questions about his nationality, and where he was born. Garay is from Afghanistan, arriving in the U.S. in the spring of 2021 on a student visa to get a doctorate in finance.

    “I said, ‘Brother, this is not related to you. You helped me, I said thank you, that’s it,’” Garay said.

    Garay then tried to walk away, but he said the man shouted at him, and continued questioning Garay’s nationality, while Garay maintained that he was in the country legally.

    After more back and forth, Garay said the man finally identified himself as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, and ask him to produce identification, which Garay had in his car, along with an ID badge from a former job.

    Garay was soon placed in handcuffs, beginning a more than monthlong ordeal in ICE custody that brought him to three different ICE facilities in three states before he was released on bond last month. After he arrived back in Lowell, where he has been living with his cousin, Abdul Ahad Storay, Garay took some time to settle and work to get back on track with his ongoing treatment for brain cancer.

    On Monday, he sat down with The Sun in Storay’s computer store in Downtown Lowell to give his firsthand account of his experience.

    Garay said that when he was placed in handcuffs, he tried to explain his situation to the ICE agents, to no avail.

    “I said, ‘What are you doing? I have brain cancer. I have a work permit, I have Social Security, I have everything. What are you doing?’ He said nothing,” said Garay.

    Garay’s first stop was the ICE field office in Burlington, where many of those detained by the agency in Greater Lowell are being brought. Since the spring, allegations of extremely poor conditions inside the building have been made by detainees and their attorneys, as it is designed primarily as an office building, not a long-term detention facility.

    Garay could not speak much to the conditions inside, as he said he was only at the facility for roughly an hour before he was transferred to another facility in Rhode Island. In that short time, though, Garay said he was asked by ICE officials for proof that he has brain cancer, which he was able to show them through his MyChart app when they brought him his phone, which they had confiscated along with his ID and other belongings. When the ICE officials saw the medical documents, Garay said they seemed shocked he was telling the truth.

    While still in Burlington, Garay said he suffered a couple medical episodes which lasted about two minutes, though he was unsure whether these were seizures or something else stemming from his brain cancer.

    Garay spent about 28 days in the facility in Rhode Island, and at one point he said similar medical episodes would occur on a near nightly basis, bringing him to the point of needing a wheelchair to move around, but the medical care available at the facility was not sufficient, he said. After he was moved to Georgia, where he was given the Oct. 21 court hearing that resulted in his release, Garay said he experienced more of the same.

    “They have no neurosurgeon, they have no oncologist, they have no neurologist, nothing,” said Garay.

    Through all of this, Garay was missing key appointments in the course of his cancer treatment. He was supposed to start a new medication at a Sept. 24 appointment at Boston Medical Center, but he missed it while in custody and was not able to start the medication on time. Even after reaching out to his doctors, Garay said the medicine did not arrive before he was moved to Georgia. In the meantime, he said he was prescribed Keppra, an anti-seizure medication he was supposed to take in the morning and evening, but it was only ever brought to him for the night dose while he was in Rhode Island.

    In Georgia, Garay said he saw a slight improvement to that end, as they gave him both daily doses of the anti-seizure medication, though at that facility he still lacked the medical care he needed.

    After he was released on bond, the police brought Garay to the airport, where he was denied boarding because his identification had been taken by ICE in Massachusetts, despite reassurance from the police and ICE he would be allowed on the plane.

    After Storay called local police to help his cousin, Garay was brought to Jacksonville, Florida, where he got on a bus for the multi-day journey back north to Lowell.

    Now home, Garay is doing much better. He is able to walk around without the need for a wheelchair, and his cancer treatment is moving back on track after he met with his doctors at the end of October. His next appointment is an MRI at Boston Medical Center later this month, and he has multiple other appointments scheduled with his doctors before the end of the year.

    Still, his ICE ordeal continues with a court hearing on Dec. 11 in Georgia, but Garay and his attorneys are working on getting it moved up to Massachusetts. He hopes to remain in the U.S., not only because of his ongoing medical treatment, but also because both he and Storay, himself a U.S. citizen, would not be safe returning to Afghanistan, which fell back to Taliban control in 2021, months after Garay left the country.

    As his home country fell, and the U.S. completed the withdrawal of its military forces, Garay applied for asylum that August on top of his student visa, fearing what would happen to him if he were to return.

    “If the U.S. will give me nationality, I will accept it. If not, I will go somewhere else,” said Garay. “When the Taliban suddenly came, I had no choice but to apply for asylum.”

    Garay’s asylum case has been pending ever since. So when Temporary Protected Status was offered to Afghan citizens living in the U.S. the following spring after the Taliban retook control, Garay did not apply for TPS due to his open asylum case. TPS for Afghanistan was terminated in July this year.

    “They (ICE) told me my visa expired in September 2021. I asked them how this was possible when I came in April,” said Garay.

    Even without the Taliban, Garay said he could not return because Afghanistan lacks the medical infrastructure he needs to treat his cancer.

    Now that he is back in Lowell, Garay is looking for other work that is not food delivery.

    In addition to delivering food, Garay said he had been working at Lahey Hospital as a receptionist, but he left that job just a couple weeks before his arrest after they could not give him enough hours.

    Friends of Garay also left Afghanistan after he did, but some went to Canada, he said, and once there they asked him to join them.

    “I said no … I don’t want to be in some country illegally, so that is why I am here,” said Garay.

    Garay credited Storay for getting him back to Lowell.

    “He knows my situation. Nobody can even imagine my situation … He also knows what he has been spending on me. Only he knows,” said Garay.

    An ICE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Friday. When previously asked about Garay’s case in October, ICE Boston spokesperson James Covington said in a statement Garay is “an illegal alien from Afghanistan,” and claimed he lawfully entered the U.S. in April 2021 with permission to remain until Sept. 7, 2021.

    “However, he violated the terms of his lawful admission when he refused to leave the country. Garay will remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of his removal proceedings,” Covington said in the Oct. 11 statement.

    In addition to Garay’s current work permit, Storay was also able to show The Sun Garay’s original student visa, which was issued in April 2021 and expired one year later, seven months after Covington claimed it did.

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    Peter Currier

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  • A Lowell barber, a bullet, and a wedding turned tragic

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    LOWELL — From the sidewalk outside Majestic Barber Shop on Middlesex Street on Friday, owner George Voutselas traced a finger toward the bullet hole in the window frame at the front of the shop that he’s run for five and a half decades. The now-cracked glass that bears the shop’s name stands strong despite this clash with a bullet, which Voutselas points out is still lodged in the wooden frame.

    The shooting that caused the damage must have happened in the early hours of Wednesday. The shop is closed that day, but Voutselas had stopped by in the late afternoon to grab something when he noticed the spiderweb cracks stretching across the exterior of the double-pane window.

    “I said, ‘What the hell,’” Voutselas recalled.

    At first, he didn’t realize a bullet grazing the edge of the glass had caused the cracks. It wasn’t until he called the Lowell Police and they came to investigate that he learned the truth.

    “The officer said, ‘That looks like a bullet in there,’ and I said, ‘What?!’” Voutselas said.

    Who fired the bullet — or why — is a mystery. At least for now.

    It was reported in an emergency radio broadcast on Wednesday afternoon that a spent shell casing was recovered nearby around the intersection of Middlesex Street and Moulton Avenue. The Lowell Police Department was unavailable to comment about the shot that struck Voutselas’ shop.

    The window will need to be replaced, and when it is, Voutselas said he’s been tasked with calling police so a detective can come by to dig the round out of the wood.

    Voutselas, who turns 84 in December, spent nearly his entire life in Lowell before moving a few years ago to a 55-and-older community in Dracut. His father, Arthur, started the shop in 1921 after immigrating from Greece in 1914. Voutselas bought it in the early 1960s, and he’s been cutting hair on Middlesex Street ever since.

    For 55 years, he’s been a fixture in the neighborhood — first just across the street, in a space that’s now a parking garage, and since 2001 at the current location at 50 Middlesex St.

    “It’s a long legacy,” Voutselas said. “They even gave me a key to the city when we turned 100 years here.”

    The framed key hangs next to the mirror in front of the barber chair.

    “I’ve been here a long time. I’ve never gotten hit by a bullet though,” he said with a chuckle.

    The cracked window wasn’t the first shock Voutselas faced in recent weeks — and it doesn’t come close to what he experienced last month.

    On Sept. 21, he and his family were caught in the chaos of a shooting at Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashua, New Hampshire, that led to the death of one man.

    “We met face to face with the shooter, actually,” Voutselas said, recalling the traumatic episode while seated in his desk chair situated next to his shop’s fractured front window.

    Voutselas was at the country club for the wedding of his great-niece. The outdoor ceremony took place that afternoon with about 120 guests in attendance. Later, everyone moved inside for the reception.

    While the celebration was underway that night, gunfire erupted at Prime, the club’s restaurant. Authorities say Hunter Nadeau, 23, of Nashua, a former employee of the restaurant, walked in and opened fire.

    Voutselas would later learn that Robert DeCesare Jr., 59, also of Nashua, stood up to protect his family from the shooter and was gunned down.

    “Killed him,” Voutselas said, “right in front of his wife and daughter.”

    As reported in multiple outlets from witness accounts, a guest is alleged to have struck Nadeau in the face with a chair, knocking the gun from his hands.

    “Thank God for that guy,” Voutselas said. “He saved a lot of lives, probably.”

    As this was going on inside Prime, Voutselas and members of his family, including his wife, daughter, and 12-year-old grandson, and the other wedding guests heard the gunfire and were urged by staff to escape through the kitchen. Voutselas recalled his daughter gripping his hand so tightly as they fled.

    Amid the chaos, he noticed a man running with them — his face bloodied and unfamiliar.

    “This guy is running with us,” he said. “We thought he had just fallen and banged his head. They opened up the door to go out back, and he ran ahead of us.”

    Voutselas said he was standing just a few feet away when they became aware of who this man was: the alleged gunman.

    “He looked at all of us, and said, ‘Free the children of Palestine, free the children of Palestine,’ and ‘I’m the shooter,’ and he’s going like this,” Voutselas said, mimicking the motion of a gun with his hand. “He was making believe he was shooting at us.”

    Voutselas noted that, at the time, none of them realized the gunman had been disarmed. There was fear he might pull out another weapon and start shooting. The group retreated back inside. The suspect fled.

    Following a massive police response, Nadeau was tracked down nearby. He has since been charged with second-degree murder and multiple other offenses related to the incident. While a motive has not been publicly confirmed, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella has said they do not believe the shooting was a “hate-based act,” despite Nadeau’s alleged comments regarding Palestine.

    Authorities have also said there is no known connection between Nadeau and DeCesare.

    Though the shooter had fled by the time they went back inside the club, Voutselas recalled how police on scene warned there may be a second gunman — information that was later ruled out. Law enforcement instructed guests to run down a hill to get away from the scene. Women who had been dancing moments earlier left their shoes behind in the rush. The group was taken to the Spit Brook Road Fire Station, where the news of the shooting was already playing on TV.

    “It was like a movie,” Voutselas said. “I’m watching the drones, the helicopters, the SWAT teams.”

    From there, they were bussed to the Sheraton Hotel on Tara Boulevard, where news crews and a heavy police presence gathered. Voutselas noted that the bride and her bridesmaids had escaped out another door at the club during the chaos, knocking on the door of a nearby residence. They stayed there until they reunited with family at the hotel.

    “They fell to the ground and cried,” Voutselas said. “What a scene that was.”

    “Now every year they are going to have to relive that whole thing,” he added, referencing the future wedding anniversaries.

    Voutselas also reflected on the death of DeCesare. It was later revealed by DeCesare’s mother, Evie O’Rourke, that her son had been dining with family that night. His daughter’s wedding was scheduled just six weeks after the shooting. Voutselas said he heard the family still plans to hold the wedding on the original date, while adding, “But she won’t have a father to walk her down the aisle.”

    “The whole world has gone crazy,” Voutselas said. “Now you just go out and shoot people. In the old days, you’d go to the park and duke it out.

    “And to do that?” he added. “People are flipping out, but you can’t tell who is going to flip out at the time. They say take guns away from people. Listen, take away the machine guns and all that. No one is going to go hunting with a machine gun.”

    While sitting in his shop on Friday, Voutselas recalled seeing photos of Nadeau on the news the day after the shooting. He immediately recognized him as the man they had encountered outside the venue.

    Voutselas described the alleged gunman as a bizarre character — “out there,” he said, based on that brief but unsettling exchange.

    “His demeanor and the way he talked and the way his eyes were,” he said. “For a while there, I was seeing his face. I was seeing his eyes.”

    Voutselas added simply that his family is doing well, despite the tragic and horrific encounter. In the meantime, Voutselas is still trimming hair at his shop, behind the cracked front window with a bullet embedded in the frame, waiting to be recovered.

    It’s been an unusual few weeks, and he hopes nothing worse is waiting around the corner.

    “It’s crazy,” he chuckled. “It seems like they’re trying to get me. God is pissed off at me about something.”

    Follow Aaron Curtis on X @aselahcurtis, or on Bluesky @aaronscurtis.bsky.social. 

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    Aaron Curtis

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  • Jack Kerouac’s old hangout gets a historic makeover

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    LOWELL — By next October, fans of Beat writer Jack Kerouac will be able to add the building located at 484 Merrimack St. to their homage itinerary during the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac 2026 Fall Festival.

    In his youth, Kerouac spent afternoons at the old Royal Theater that was attached to the rear of the rooming house that fronted Merrimack Street in the Acre neighborhood.

    The Lowell-born Kerouac memorialized those days in his semiautobiographical novel “Dr. Sax,” in which the main character, Jackie Duluoz, describes afternoons at the theater waiting for “Tim McCoy to jump on screen, or Hoot Gibson, or Mix, Tom Mix” and looking up at the cherubs in the “pink and gilt and crystal-crazy ceiling.”

    The theater was demolished 30 years ago, but the four-story brick boarding house Kerouac undoubtedly walked past on his way to the box office is being gut renovated and restored by Lowell-born Patrick Tighe, a Los Angeles-based architect.

    In August, Tighe’s project, New Royal LLC, received $1.3 million in Housing Development Incentive Program tax credits for 24 market-rate housing units during an awards ceremony in Revere.

    “We are thrilled to have received the tax credits,” Tighe said by email.

    HDIP is a tool for the state’s Gateway Cities to create more market-rate housing championed by the Healey-Driscoll administration to support economic development, expand diversity of housing stock and create more vibrant neighborhoods.

    The building dates to 1915 and was built in the Colonial Revival style. Tighe said the massive granite foundation walls and first-floor brick walls of the theater still remain and will be incorporated into a sunken garden for the first-floor commercial development.

    Tighe’s building is listed on the national and state registry of historic places through its inclusion in the Lowell National Historical Park and Preservation District and the Downtown Lowell Historic District. The building has been vacant for years and was condemned by the city. Tighe bought it in 2016.

    Tighe said the abandoned and derelict 7,000-square-foot building stood the test of time thanks to a robust steel frame with wood construction and a masonry exterior. He said the design will restore many of the unique period features and bring the building back to its “original splendor.”

    “The façade at the street is a tan glazed brick in decorative patterns, with red brick at the sides,” Tighe said. “Distinct to the building are two three-story oriel windows clad with sheet metal. The bay windows create a rhythmic streetscape pattern continued at the adjacent building. The oriels and the original oak door are details which give the building its Colonial Revival spirit.”

    The building originally housed a market on the street level and Tighe said he was working closely with Sophia’s Greek Pantry (a shop that is currently on an adjacent site on Market Street) to occupy the 2,600-square-foot space.

    The historic project joins housing developments underway throughout the city that were granted HDIP funds in an April round of funding. Lowell received $7.5 million to build 132 units including $5 million to the Mullins Company’s Mass Mills IV development for a total of 95 units; and $2.5 million to Heritage Properties to build 37 units at The Emery, on a vacant lot at Pearl and Middlesex Streets.

    In July 2024, Lowell received $4.5 million for two downtown housing developments, again, the largest share of the $27 million distributed to 14 projects from the HDIP program, to create 547 total new units in 11 Gateway Cities across the state.

    The Hildreth Building, built in 1884 on Merrimack Street, received $2.5 million in HDIP funding. The historic building is being redeveloped to create 50 units on the upper floors and a retail space on the first floor, a part of which will be occupied by businesses displaced by the closure of Mill No. 5.The other Mill City HDIP project, the 26-unit Isobel Lofts on Middlesex Street, was awarded $2 million.

    “When Kerouac fans come to visit they can stand in the sunken garden surrounded by the massive granite walls of the Royal Theater and imagine what it was once like,” Tighe said.

    The Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Fall Festival runs from Thursday, Oct. 9 through Monday, Oct. 13. A variety of public events are scheduled in Lowell and the surrounding area, including music, poetry and tours. The festival features a mix of free, donation- and fee-based events. For more information, visit lowellcelebrateskerouac.org.

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    Melanie Gilbert

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  • Get your machines ready! Lowell Kinetic Sculpture Race returns for the 8th year

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    LOWELL — The 10K Lowell Kinetic Sculpture Race returns to the Mill City Saturday for the eighth year as teams combine engineering, art and a little determination to get a human-powered machine across the finish line.

    There will be 15 teams from across New England competing in the race, all with their own mechanical creations designed to be driven across the bumpy cobblestones of downtown Lowell, a mud pit and the Merrimack River.

    The race has been taking place in Lowell since 2016, and it is inspired by a similar event that takes place in California each year, which UMass Lowell art and design professor and Race Director Michael Roundy was able to see for himself.

    “I saw seven of them out there,” said Roundy in a video call Wednesday morning. “There is a culture that goes around the Kinetic Sculpture Races, and the people that were involved were my kind of people… When I came back to the East Coast and was working here in Lowell, it seemed like Lowell had that same kind of spirit.”

    The rules of the race are, mostly, straightforward. Many concern safety, like the requirement that the sculpture has to be easy to get out of, and cannot be harmful to the pilots or the environment around it as it moves. All kinetic sculptures must be able to move with no electric or gas propulsion allowed, only by the power of wind, gravity, or the humans controlling the sculpture. They must conform to Massachusetts vehicle size restrictions, while also having capacity for a single stuffed animal that must be carried by the team throughout the course.

    The full list of rules and safety requirements, and the course map, can be read at Lowellkinetic.com.

    While there is naturally a little bit of a competitive spirit to the race, Roundy said the teams are competing against themselves just as much as they are racing against each other.

    “Teams come into this with the idea of just making it through the race. It really is a battle against yourself more than a battle against everyone else,” said Roundy.

    As such, sculptures breaking down throughout the race is to be expected, and prompts teams to tinker with their machines and bring them back the following year.

    Still, a breakdown isn’t necessarily the end of the race for the team, said Kinetic Sculpture Race Producer Bianca Mauro.

    “Knowing that really tough challenges are a part of this course riddled with obstacles, we get to come up with the coolest volunteers ever to get these teams out of trouble,” said Mauro.

    Those volunteers, Mauro said, are called “The Wrecking Crew,” and they drive around the race course with tools in the back of their vehicle, ready to lend a hand or make a quick repair to a sculpture that finds itself stuck, or even transport them to the next obstacle.

    “We do what we can to bring in this wide range of people beyond the team who love to fix this stuff,” said Mauro.

    Festivities begin at 9 a.m. Saturday with “Meet the Machines,” where the participating kinetic sculptures will be on display for spectators to get a closer look and meet the pilots.

    The opening ceremony and race itself will begin at 11:30 a.m. on Market Street between Dutton and Palmer streets. The course goes toward Central Street before the sculptures turn toward Middle Street, which serves as the first obstacle of the course known as “Bone Shaker Alley,” thanks to the very uneven and bumpy old cobblestones that make up the street.

    The course then moves back to Market Street in the other direction to Cabot Street, then to Father Morissette Boulevard and into “The Maddening Mud Pit” across from the Tsongas Center. The sculptures then make their way across the University Avenue bridge and up the river toward the Sampas Pavilion on the Merrimack River along Pawtucket Boulevard. There, the sculptures have to get into the river and travel the water route before getting back onto the street and going back the way they came, eventually ending on Market Street where the race began.

    Among those designing a sculpture for this year is Brendan Falvey for his team “Stampede.” Falvey has a broad engineering background and works for Thermo Fisher Scientific in Tewksbury, where he tries to see the overall picture of a product and bridge the gaps between the needs of electrical, mechanical and software engineering.

    This year is Falvey’s first time participating, which he was inspired to do after watching the race for the first time last year. His sculpture consists of five tricycles welded together to work in tandem “serpentine” style with five pilots, with larger wheels ready to install before the mud pit and water obstacle to help the sculpture float. Every team must also have a theme and decorative piece to their sculpture, so Falvey and his four teammates will be dressed up in cow colors, and their flotation wheels will be painted as such as well, hence the name Stampede.

    Falvey’s goal, he said, is to “ace” the race, which means to finish without needing any outside assistance, even if a team has to fix a problem themselves.

    Falvey has been working on the design for the last 10 months, he said.

    “I joined Lowell Makes to learn new skills, and took a welding class. I have a wood shop at home, but I don’t have a metal shop, so I use the one there quite a bit,” said Falvey.

    One team will consist of members of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell, where members and volunteers have been modifying a kinetic sculpture donated by Make It Labs in Nashua, N.H. The club has participated in the Kinetic Sculpture Race in the past, but not since the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Their sculpture will be outfitted with sails and everything they need to make it look like a pirate ship. It consists of four bicycle seats on top of a mixed material platform, from which the four pilots steer and peddle the four large wheels lined with bicycle tire rubber.

    Among the Boys & Girls Club team will be Damaris Gomes-Nova, 17, who is participating in the race for her first time.

    “We had the opportunity to do something new we have never tried, so who knows, it could be fun,” said Gomes-Nova at the club Sept. 11.

    Gomes-Nova is one of six club members working on their sculpture with staff members, including UMass Lowell sophomore Aleah Colon.

    “I thought it was pretty cool to work on something that was a sculpture, but also was … hands on, and also engaging in the community and getting the Boys & Girls Club out there,” said Colon.

    Colon said they still have to take the machine for a test drive, but it is known to have worked in the past as it was featured in the race last year while being driven by a group of teachers from Lowell. Gomes-Nova felt confident in the team being able to get to the finish line.

    “I’ll make sure we win,” Gomes-Nova said with confidence in her team.

    In a statement, Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell Executive Director Joseph Hungler said club leadership is “incredibly proud of our members for taking part in the Kinetic Sculpture Race.”

    “This unique, creative event is a perfect reflection of the innovation, teamwork, and problem solving skills we foster and encourage every day at the club,” said Hungler. “Seeing our club kids bring their ideas to life and engage with the community in such a fun way truly showcases the power of experiential learning.”

    At the Lowell Makes workshop Sept. 6, Rudy Dominguez was doing some work on his own sculpture, The Aluminum Falcon, which will be featured for the third time this year. The sculpture is themed after the iconic Millennium Falcon from “Star Wars,” and is powered by two sets of bicycle seats with a model of the ship placed over the top. Dominguez said the sculpture failed two obstacles into their last two attempts, but they are bringing it back for a third try, with some modifications.

    “This entire front end is completely new and built from scratch,” said Dominguez, pointing toward where he made the changes.

    The race course covers a large area, but Mauro said there would be shuttles available to bring spectators to each of the obstacles throughout the day.

    Outside the race itself, Mauro said organizers are working to find more sponsors this year amid general cuts to arts funding by the state and federal governments.

    “Finding funding for arts and culture is becoming more and more challenging. We are going to great lengths to go to companies willing to invest in STEM and arts events. With that investment we do have plans to expand the course, make obstacles more challenging and making things more engaging for the teams and spectators,” said Mauro.

    She noted the KSR organizers have “been advised to proactively look for alternate funding for 2026.”

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    Peter Currier

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  • UTEC reunion celebrates 25 years of transforming lives and unity

    UTEC reunion celebrates 25 years of transforming lives and unity

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    LOWELL — Standing at the entrance of UTEC on Warren Street on Friday evening, CEO Gregg Croteau reflects on the nonprofit’s 25th anniversary. What began in 1999 as a space for teens at St. Anne’s Church on Kirk Street, envisioned by a few young adults seeking refuge from gang violence, has now become a cornerstone of Lowell’s identity, transforming countless young lives.

    Croteau, who was hired by the original young adults in early 2000, smiles as he recalls their humble beginnings with just a $40,000 city grant. Today, UTEC boasts an $18 million budget, a testament to the organization’s profound impact and growth.

    “Twenty-five years is a huge milestone for us,” Croteau said. Before he can continue, his thoughts are momentarily interrupted as he affectionately greets a familiar face walking through the door.

    “How are you?” Croteau asks, beaming. “You look the same.”

    “Living my best life,” the individual responds.

    Croteau continues to greet several more familiar faces, all arriving on this Friday evening to celebrate UTEC’s 25-year milestone with a reunion of former young adults who became part of the nonprofit. A press release highlights the organization’s dedication to developing life skills, emphasizing that the event is a celebration of growth, community, and the powerful journey that began at UTEC over the past quarter-century.

    Croteau said he expected about 150 people to attend Friday’s celebration.

    “This reunion is not just about celebrating where we’ve been, but also recognizing where we’re going,” Croteau said.

    The event, filled with music from UTEC alumnus DJ Money, plenty of food and laughs, showcased the attendees as one big family.

    Among those in the crowd was Jocelyn Rosado, who was 14 years old in 2004 and a student at Lowell High School when she began attending UTEC. She recalled facing challenges at home, having been placed with her grandparents after her mother went away. It was a life-changing event.

    “I was so close to my mom,” Rosado said. “I was a really quiet individual, really shy, so being separated from my mom changed my whole world. I felt so alone.”

    This feeling of isolation sparked a desire to become more social. She found solace at UTEC, where she met people who she discovered could relate to her situation.

    “I kinda felt like I was the only one until I was with young adults from UTEC,” she said. “We all related to each other, we all understood each other, we mirrored each other.”

    Rosado now serves as a transitional coach for UTEC, a role dedicated to helping young people access essential resources. Rosado points out, “I’m giving them what I found here.”

    Melinda Tejeda, who also joined UTEC at the age of 14 during its inaugural year, found the same sense of unity she had been searching for at UTEC.

    Tejeda was just 11 years old when her mother passed away. Placed with a family member who she said was more interested in the financial benefits of raising her, Tejeda felt anger toward the world, often lashing out and getting into trouble at school.

    “I think coming here gave me that sense of unity, the sense of family I was looking for,” Tejeda said. “It was a pivotal moment in my life where I could have taken the wrong path.”

    UTEC also opened doors to experiences Rosado might not have pursued otherwise. She recalled a memorable visit to Lowell City Hall, where she helped advocate for a grant and delivered her first public speech. UTEC additionally introduced her to creative writing and what she said was the Young Women’s Group Project, which helped her forge connections with other females.

    Now at 40 years old, Tejeda states, “I have a good life.” She has been a general manager for a storage company for the past eight years, a testament to the positive impact UTEC had on her life, said Tejada, a mother of a 19-year-old daughter.

    Among the original young adults who set the wheels in motion in creating UTEC all those years ago, JuanCarlos Rivera, now the vice president of the organization’s Board of Directors, stands with a sense of pride 25 years later. When asked if he expected the organization to achieve such growth, he said, “I always hoped it would.”

    “The idea for us is to ensure that after I’m gone and Gregg is gone, there’s always a place for young people to go,” Rivera added. “It’s important to remember that every decade, young people have continued to make this happen.”

    Next on UTEC’s agenda is the 25th Anniversary Gala, set to take place on Nov. 20 at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. For more details about the event, visit utecinc.org/25thgala.

    Follow Aaron Curtis on X, formerly known as Twitter, @aselahcurtis

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    Aaron Curtis

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  • Lowell Folk Festival takes a bow

    Lowell Folk Festival takes a bow

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    LOWELL — The stage lights of the 37th annual Lowell Folk Festival were turned off after the last acts finished their sets Sunday evening, but the glow of the three-day music, food and arts celebration lingered.

    It was a high that Director Lee Viliesis was still savoring.

    “I think the festival went really well this year,” she said by text on Wednesday. “The weather was perfect and both audiences and artists were having a great time. That’s all I could ever ask for in an event.”

    The free festival is the longest-running in the United States and the 2024 lineup featured 20 performers on four stages, more than a dozen food vendors, numerous exhibits, dance tents and a variety of distinctive cultural experiences.

    It also featured more than 200 bucket brigade volunteers, including Milo McFadden, who canvassed the almost 20-block footprint of the festival collecting donations for the extravaganza.

    Milo is the 6-year-old son of Danielle McFadden, the president and CEO of the Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce. The organization provides online and general fundraising support, marketing and public relations for the festival.

    But the Chamber’s primary role during the festival is to coordinate the bucket brigade, in which teams of volunteers fan out across the festival’s venues and grounds to solicit donations in exchange for a string of colored beads and the feeling that comes with helping to support a storied cultural tradition.

    McFadden said volunteering for the bucket brigade was her family’s favorite part, which she called a “summertime tradition.” Besides in-kind donations, sponsors and merchandise sales, the festival relies on the generosity of its visitors to help keep the $1.5 million public gathering free and financially healthy.

    “We don’t have a specific number of what was raised, but I can say firsthand how generous and enthusiastic festival-goers were – many donating multiple times throughout the weekend!” she said by email on Wednesday.

    Local business also enjoyed a festival bounce. Lala Books opened its doors on Market Street in July 2021, a year the festival was canceled due to the COVID pandemic, but owner Laura Lamarre Anderson said the excitement builds even before the festival opens with visitors exploring Downtown Lowell in what she called “full festival mode.”

    “We had well over 500 people in the store over the weekend,” she said. “We talked to folks about local authors, popular books, and summer reading requirements, but mostly about how much fun they were having. It was great to see that there were so many people from outside the city who were learning about what downtown has to offer.”

    Anderson said Market Street was packed with people on Saturday and Sunday — she even gave a Market Street stage shoutout for Milo’s bucket brigade collection efforts.

    “Folk Festival is our favorite weekend of the year,” Anderson said. “Our staff worked long hours and we were all exhausted by Sunday night, but it was totally worth it.”

    One of the biggest draws of the festival each year is the food from various local organizations presenting an international flavor. Walking through the JFK Plaza, Boarding House Park and Market Street sections of the festival can make it difficult to decide what to eat when the sights and smells of a hugely diverse menu of food all compete for attention.

    Among the most popular food vendors of the festival was Iskwelahang Pilipino, which has had a tent in the Boarding House Park section to serve Filipino food every year since it started in 1987. In the immediate aftermath of the festival, IP’s Elsa Janairo said it is too early to say how much money was raised to support the Filipino cultural school while they do a count. But as far as the amount of food that was served, Janairo said they very well may have set a record, selling well over 1,000 pounds of meat in three days.

    “We realized Saturday night that we were on the brink of running out of meat to grill, which has never happened to us before,” said Janairo.

    IP ended up needing to purchase more meat for the final day of the festival Sunday. Through the entire weekend, Janairo said the group sold approximately 640 pounds of grilled pork and 865 pounds of grilled chicken by the weight of the raw meat.

    Janairo said she received feedback from the teenaged volunteers that did most of the interacting with customers. She said the volunteers told her the customers this year seemed happier than they had sometimes appeared in past years, calling it a kind of “pervasive joy.”

    Janairo also loved the palpable camaraderie between food vendors, from lending cooking equipment to purchasing food from other tents to bring back to their own to eat.

    “It was great to support each other and be a part of this giant community-building effort, and to be able to establish connections with new customers on top of the ones that come back every year,” said Janairo.

    Like IP, most of the festival food vendors use the occasion as the opportunity to fundraise for their various causes. In JFK Plaza was Acha’s Foundation, which Delphine Acha founded to benefit children and prisoners in her native Cameroon, where the food they cooked originates from.

    Friday and Saturday were as busy as any Lowell Folk Festival weekend, Acha said, but she noted Sunday appeared to be one of the slowest days of the festival she can remember.

    While she is still doing a full accounting, Acha said customers spent an estimated $13,000 on food from her tent over the course of the three days, approximately $8,000 of which will go to the foundation after festival expenses are accounted for. That money will be used to fund scholarships for students in Cameroon, as well as for outreach to a Cameroonian prison.

    “That started from a request where prisoners didn’t have money for bail … about $20 in American dollars,” said Acha. “Our aim is to go to the prison and speak with the prison warden to see exactly what the prisoners need, and how we can assist them.”

    Some of this assistance will involve doing exactly what Acha did over the weekend: cooking a lot of food. Acha said her foundation is working with a Cameroonian prison to try to provide food to a portion of its 4,000 inmates, though the logistics are still being worked out, as they will not have enough food to cook for all of them.

    Acha, like many of the vendors, use the festival as their primary, and sometimes only fundraising source each year. While the festival only ended a few days ago, some could be eyeing the countdown clock that has already been reset on the festival website. Only 357 days to go.

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    Melanie Gilbert, Peter Currier

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  • Asphalt becomes artwork outside Lowell City Hall

    Asphalt becomes artwork outside Lowell City Hall

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    From left, artists Matthew Wolterding, of My Beautiful Mind, and Xavier Robbins, both of Lowell, work on a street mural, titled “Grow,” on Merrimack Street, outside Lowell City Hall on July 8, 2024. The street mural project, set up by the Traffic and Transportation Department, is intended to calm the flow of vehicle and pedestrian traffic, while beautifying the area. (Aaron Curtis/Lowell Sun)

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    Aaron Curtis

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  • Transformer fire causes power outages in Downtown Lowell

    Transformer fire causes power outages in Downtown Lowell

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    LOWELL — Thick black smoke filled the sky over Downtown Lowell on Monday afternoon after a transformer box along Warren Street burst into flames.

    At about 3 p.m., National Grid reported there were more than 100 customers without electricity due to the blaze.

    Deputy Fire Chief Frank Kelly said at the scene that there was some sort of a fault in the electrical system in the area, causing the transformer to short out and catch fire. National Grid is investigating the cause.

    No one was injured due to the incident, which drew a large crowd of spectators on Central Street. At the fire’s height, heavy flames could be seen rising from the now decimated transformer box.

    Firefighters attempted to use dry chemical extinguishers to battle the blaze, but there was too much oil inside the box, according to Kelly. National Grid shut down the power supply to the transformer.

    Impacted by the power outage was the Inn & Conference Center, which is serving as a shelter for migrants and the homeless. UTEC, located right across the street from the fire, was also left without power.

    UTEC CEO Gregg Croteau said an explosion was heard, followed by the blaze. Out of caution, UTEC was evacuated.

    Croteau said they were told National Grid would be working on the problem “throughout the night.”

    Croteau praised the Lowell Fire Department, describing them as quick to respond and extremely helpful.

    “We had our child care center across the street, and our staff were super helpful,” he said. “We had members of our team escorting kids out, and the fire department was great to work with.”

    The Lowell Police Department closed down Warren Street, as well as Central Street, between Hurd and Market streets, while firefighters addressed the problem.

    The majority of firefighters started leaving the scene at approximately 3:40 p.m.

    Follow Aaron Curtis on X, formerly known as Twitter, @aselahcurtis

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  • UTEC teams up with Lowell artist for Women’s History Month

    UTEC teams up with Lowell artist for Women’s History Month

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    LOWELL — Nearly 30 young women in UTEC programming recently came together to celebrate Women’s History Month. The day opened with a peace circle focused on community building, finding your voice, and empowerment. The group also worked with local artist John Pierre Smith Sr. to create a special mural at FlipFlop Vintage in Downtown Lowell.

    UTEC helps young adults overcome the challenges of poverty, gang involvement, and unemployment. Building positive relationships is an essential part of UTEC’s model to reduce community violence. Recognizing Women’s History month not only gives young women an opportunity to celebrate the contributions of the women in their lives, but also helps them form a supportive community of peers.

    “Our Women’s History event allowed the group to come together as a community, build relationships, and learn from one another,” said UTEC Director of Clinical Services Elena Ansara. “It’s important to pause every now and then to get to know each other in a different capacity and strengthen the connections we have.”

    At FlipFlip Vintage, the group expressed themselves creatively by building a collage with images representing what being a woman means to them.

    “I felt a lot of power in the room. It was delightful to watch their willingness to get their hands dirty without complaint and work as a team,” said Smith, owner of FlipFlop Vintage. “I think everybody that day learned how to wear their crown correctly and I witnessed young women learning to be strong and impactful adult women.”

    UTEC was founded in 1999 and now serves young adults in Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill. To learn more about UTEC and its 25th anniversary, visit utecinc.org.

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