The Boston Marathon bombings changed the lives of countless people, not to mention took the lives of several others including eight-year old Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell and Lü Lingzi. A fourth victim, Wilmington native and MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, was killed while he was on duty…

As neighboring towns consider a half-dozen similar school building projects, Stoneham leaders recently sounded the alarm over budget-busting inflationary pressures that have plagued the public construction sector over the past year.

Public transit riders who reside in Burlington, Woburn, Stoneham, and Winchester will fare quite well under the latest version of the Mass. Bay Transit Authority’s (MBTA) ‘Better Bus’ initiative.

By RYAN LAROCHE

For those more intimately familiar with the byzantine bureaucracy involved with getting utility companies to remove the eyesores, it’s a crusade that just can’t be won.

Area environmentalists can’t wait to install a new fish ladder by Woburn’s Scalley Dam after a record number of herring splashed their way into Horn Pond and other bodies of water along the Mystic River watershed in 2022.

Town officials and citizens in Stoneham wasted no time in setting aside the needed by-right multi-family housing acreage to come into compliance with the state’s new “MBTA Communities” regulations.

The Middlesex East region’s unified opposition to recreational pot sales just blew up in a cloud of smoke.

While most cities and towns have four questions to answer during the general election on Nov. 8 including the so-called “millionaire’s tax,” changes to dental insurance, changes to liquor licenses, and whether or not to uphold a vote by the state legislature to allow undocumented immigrants …

It’s not every day business conglomerates file court paperwork arguing their industry is slowly dying and then wage a years-long battle to prove that contention.

A Stoneham Square landowner heaved a big sigh of relief last month after town officials realized an overlooked provision of a 2020 zoning reform bill had spared a proposed mixed-use redevelopment of an old catering business.

Thanks to advances in medicine, breast cancer is survivable. Just ask Winchester resident and Reading native Brienne Black.

For Reading’s green movement activists, a proposed styrofoam ban represents the next logical step in the battle against a potential public health and environmental doomsday.

Already visited by Congressman Seth Moulton earlier this summer, a quiet nature trail and bird watching spot by the Aberjona River and Austin Preparatory High School in Reading sure is catching a lot of attention these days.

Very rarely will residents support a 40B project in their neighborhood (unless the development team works closely with them to make sure the project fits with the neighborhood in style and size). Typically, when residents hear about a proposed 40B project they petition the town’s governing b…

During an era when citizens shared packed dirt roads with horse-and-buggies and a handful of first-generation cars, Stoneham citizens had plenty of space to roam about its historic downtown area.

Surrounded by small bedroom communities like Reading, Burlington Winchester, and Stoneham, the City of Woburn has long been envied by abutters for its booming industrial and commercial tax base.

In some respects, Winchester and Woburn are fierce rivals. Every Thanksgiving, the two football teams go head-to-head to see who is the king of the gridiron. Off the field, however, the two neighboring communities can work together, as evidenced by one Woburn family’s dedication to Wincheste…

Though a self-described empath and people person, there are times Reading native Lucky Belcamino gets a little uncomfortable when asked to approach someone for a quick meet-and-greet.

While most hunkered down in their homes and dared not even let groceries into their domiciles without first drowning the sundries in disinfectant, they patrolled Reading’s streets and rushed the community’s first COVID-19 patients to area hospitals.

The passing of legendary Celtics player Bill Russell brought up memories of a time when the Boston Celtics dominated the NBA, with Russell’s Celtics winning 11 of 13 championships (and Russell himself never losing in a game 7 - or any elimination game for that matter). 

After watching other cities and towns for years now rake in the financial benefits from retail cannabis sales, Woburn Mayor Scott Galvin is ready to make his community the first in the Middlesex East region to open a recreational pot shop.

For those residing and working in Stoneham and Woburn, the Mass. Bay Transit Authority’s (MBTA) proposed overhaul of bus routes across the state has generated predictable but disparate reactions.

In her first message on her first day as chancellor, Julie Chen credited the teamwork of the UMass Lowell community – students, faculty, staff, alumni and supporters – for creating a culture that turns aspirations into achievements.

The proposed redevelopment of a landmark restaurant site in Stoneham could prove the catalyst that catapults the community into compliance with new multi-family housing regulations imposed last year by state legislators.

With Reading’s elderly population growing and town officials years ago declaring the town’s senior center facilities as woefully inadequate, the problem is known and well-defined.

The Professional Center for Child Development (PCCD) announced that Anderson School special educator Rhonda Boudreau has been awarded the Massachusetts Association of Approved Special Education Schools (MAAPS) highest honor for excellence in teaching.

With the Montvale Avenue area site slated to become one of the largest life sciences campuses outside of Boston proper, motorists heading down I-93 southbound can’t help but notice the dramatic transformation taking place at Woburn’s old Atlantic Gelatin plant.

MIDDLESEX EAST -  Stoneham officials and state highway planners a quarter century ago first began eyeing a potential makeover of the southern gateway into Stoneham via Route 28 by the Hall Memorial Pool complex.

By RYAN LAROCHE

Few would ever make the connection

Visitors to Reading Center would be well advised to carefully read all the new parking signs.

Five years ago, Winchester made the decision to send two building projects, the Lynch Elementary School and the Muraco Elementary School, to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for help with funding. While the town knew the chances were slim the MSBA would agreed to fund both project…

Offered a chance to treat its downtown area like a blank canvas, Woburn is all but assured a $16.7 million check to completely redesign its downtown center.

Nearly a year after Stoneham drastically tightened the community’s stormwater design standards, a Framingham-based developer recently pledged to invest at least $1 million to improve drainage system capabilities around the town’s solitary flood plain.

This year, as most people focus on the mid-term elections for governor, senators (US and state) and representatives (US and state), there are other important races that will appear on the September and November ballots. One is the race for state auditor.

MIDDLESEX - Though likely a small comfort to families who lost loved ones to the prescription and synthetic drug epidemic, area communities will recuperate nearly $4.3 million expended in the now decades-long battle against opioids, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey revealed last week.

As Woburn officials threaten to ignore the new mandate entirely, municipal leaders in Reading, Burlington and Stoneham also recently denounced a new state law that will result in the construction of thousands of new apartments across the region.

By RYAN LAROCHE

Woburn resident Eugene Styller hadn’t touched a brush for some 65 years when in 2019, his grandchildren asked for his help while working on a landscape painting.

School officials in Reading sure are glad they didn’t decide to tackle a projected school space shortage all on their own.

Reading native Tyler Walsh, currently a senior studying Broadcast Journalism at the University of Miami (or “The U” as students commonly refer to it), just received some exciting news: he, along with his team, was nominated by the Television Academy Foundation’s prestigious 41st College Tele…

Left with just weeks to respond to the inevitable loss of the emergency pandemic measure, town officials in Stoneham recently bemoaned the quiet removal of an outdoor dining extension that had been tucked inside a $101 million COVID-19 response bill.

MIDDLESEX - Moving swiftly after failing to meet new state testing standards in recent months, leaders in Burlington and neighboring Woburn will spend roughly $33 million to eliminate traces of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from their local drinking water supplies.

A Tewksbury teacher was thrown out of a recent School Committee meeting as he asked to speak to them, and he was escorted out with a smile and a fist bump to the officer that accompanied him.

Long regarded for their industrious and seemingly inexhaustible work ethics, Stoneham TV Executive Director Amy Brough Palmerino and her dedicated second-in-command, studio operations manager George Manfra, go by many titles.

MIDDLESEX - Once the financial can that everybody just loved to just kick down the road, it’s a massive liability that Woburn Mayor Scott Galvin several years ago described as the “800-pound gorilla in the room” that could no longer be ignored.

2021 marked the 100-year anniversary of the closing of Penikese Island in Buzzard’s Bay, off the coast of Massachusetts. From November 1905 to March 1921, the State of Massachusetts administered a hospital for people with Hansen’s Disease (formerly known as leprosy) on the barren 74-acre isl…

MIDDLESEX - Ever since the busy Boston Regional Medical Center (BRMC) complex across from Spot Pond closed its doors for good nearly 20 years ago now, Stoneham officials eagerly facilitated nearly every effort by Burlington’s Gutierrez Company to redevelop the sprawling commercial site.

MIDDLESEX - Officials in Woburn and Wilmington long insisted that the reconstruction of the New Boston Street bridge will spark a new wave of redevelopment by Anderson Regional Transportation Center.