THIS YEAR, CommonWealth Beacon ramped up its coverage of Massachusetts’ former industrial cities by adding a new Gateway Cities reporter role in its newsroom. These 26 cities, which anchor regional economies around the state yet suffer from the long-term decline of manufacturing, have long faced a host of barriers to adequate schools, health care access, housing development, and more.

These are communities where targeted resources, policy solutions, and revitalization efforts have the potential to strengthen and revive once-flourishing parts of the state. But policymakers, researchers, and local leaders agree that there is more work to be done.

This year, our reporting shed light on major policy issues both new and old that have rattled Gateway Cities like Holyoke, Leominster, and Lynn. Some of the issues covered are longstanding, such as Holyoke’s struggle to convert vacant, blighted properties into much-needed housing. But other issues were new, like the Trump administration’s purge of federal funding aimed at helping communities prepare for future flooding, which directly impacted projects in Chelsea and Everett.

CommonWealth Beacon chronicled these storylines and selected its top five pieces from 2025. Here is your Gateway Cities recap.

Maternal health care access in Leominster and North-Central Massachusetts

Reports of women giving birth in cars, ambulances, emergency departments, or reaching a maternity unit just in time to deliver are a far cry from what is expected in a state that consistently ranks first in the country for its health care system. 

But in North-Central Massachusetts, pregnant women and families are living a reality that data, statistics, and health care rankings don’t always show. 

Two years after UMass Memorial Health Alliance-Clinton Hospital closed its maternity unit in Leominster, a CommonWealth Beacon deep-dive found that the region is struggling. The hospital was one of 11 in Massachusetts that have closed or filed to close their maternity unit services since 2014. The region has already faced multiple health care service closures in the last decade, and its emergency medical services have since been stretched thin. Women have had to travel longer distances to give birth.

The fallout of the maternity unit closure paints a complicated picture in a state that technically doesn’t have maternity care deserts. But experts and advocates say recent losses and impending cuts to Medicaid will make it harder to access maternal health care in Massachusetts. Other Gateway Cities are facing the same dilemma, CommonWealth Beacon recently reported.

Rehabbing vacant, blighted properties in Holyoke

Dozens of old, blighted industrial buildings sit boarded up along Holyoke’s canal system and have been mostly vacant for decades. Some are close to collapsing, while others are covered in graffiti. Scattered across the center of downtown, the battered brick buildings are an untapped opportunity and serve as a constant reminder to city leaders of what could be.

In recent decades, historic mills and old industrial buildings in Gateway Cities across the Commonwealth have been renovated and converted into much-needed housing. The projects are often a way for cities to preserve their historic charm while creating modern residential units in high demand. They also help to revitalize post-industrial era cities that suffered from the long-term decline of manufacturing.

But while Eastern Massachusetts cities like Lowell and Lawrence have had success – with almost no former industrial buildings left to restore – cities farther west with weaker housing markets, which don’t enjoy the luxury of being connected to Greater Boston via the commuter rail, still struggle with an array of blighted properties that have yet to be developed. In these communities – like Holyoke, Springfield, and Fitchburg – the housing market doesn’t support rents that attract developers for these projects. 

Federal flood prevention funding in Chelsea and Everett

When the axe fell on $882 million in federal funding aimed at helping communities prepare for future flooding, it came paired with a critique of the program’s very purpose. 

The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program “was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” a FEMA spokesperson said in April. In dramatically re-orienting the US federal agency responsible for coordinating the country’s disaster relief efforts, the Trump administration cancelled all BRIC applications from Fiscal Years 2020-2023, imperiling states from New England to the Gulf Coast.

Chelsea and Everett had money on the line – a $120 million flood resilience project for the Island End River, which generates dramatic flooding during serious coastal storms, that included a storm surge barrier, storm surge control facility, and wetland restoration set to begin construction in 2026. 

Massachusetts officials later estimated that some $90 million in funding and potential grants would be pulled, almost $50 million of which was dedicated to the Chelsea and Everett endeavor. Overnight, project managers overseeing resilient park and stormwater flooding projects, updating drinking water and watershed regulations, and preparing for the best ways to hold rising waters at bay rushed to triage. 

A tale of two middle schools in Holyoke

After an October report published by the MassINC Policy Center (which is a part of MassINC, the nonprofit that publishes CommonWealth Beacon) detailed an inequitable state reimbursement process that disadvantages Gateway Cities and urban districts when it comes to school building projects, reporter Hallie Claflin travelled to Holyoke to tell the tale of two middle schools.

As half of the school district’s middle school students filed into a newly built, state-of-the-art facility this year, the other half weren’t so lucky. Instead, those students filed into Clare P. Sullivan Middle School, a dated building constructed in 1961 that was originally built as an elementary school. 

In 2019, Holyoke set out to build two new middle schools to replace their dated facilities. After months of heated debate, a ballot measure to fund the project was voted down by the community, and the city was forced to continue with the construction of just one school – all they could afford. 

Some say the outcome is a testament to how limited fiscal capacity, an insufficient state funding formula, and local tax constraints work to prevent Gateway Cities like Holyoke from building equitable, modern school facilities. Many have also argued that racial bias has long prevented the city from investing in its public schools.

New development clashes with affordable housing advocates in Lynn

Thanks to the newly constructed Lynn Harbor Park, residents can now enjoy a view of Lynn Harbor that had been obstructed by garbage for decades.  

The waterfront is one of Lynn’s major attractions, and its development has been a key part of the North Shore city’s ongoing growth and economic revitalization plans. As the Harbor Park project neared completion this year, investors came flocking to the South Harbor. Several private housing projects are already underway.

But affordable housing advocates in Lynn have raised concerns about the kind of development the park has attracted, comparing it to the technology-driven redevelopment of Boston’s wealthy Seaport District, which has resulted in a mostly high-income, white neighborhood on a previously underutilized waterfront.