ALONG WITH many other large companies that have a local footprint in the city — like Rockland Trust Bank, Market Basket and Winn Companies — Markley Group LLC is stepping up its giving game.

In addition to its Downtown Crossing location in Boston, Markley’s Lowell colocation data center in the Sacred Heart neighborhood provides the digital infrastructure for Massachusetts’ essential services.

Markley Lowell hosted a community sendoff celebration at its Lowell data center on Wednesday for the Lowell 12-under Cal Ripken All-Stars baseball team.

The 12 players on the team will travel to the World Series championship in Missouri with their coaches and families thanks to a $40,000 donation by Markley Group LLC.

President Jeff Markley is a former Division 1 college baseball player with the University of Georgia, and considers the sport a game “of life.”

In addition to that largess, the company also donated $30,000 in combined donations to two community institutions, the Lowell Folk Festival and the Lowell Spinners.

It covered free admission to the July 23 game. The amateur baseball team returned to the city for its first season back in Lowell.

“Thanks to The Markley Lowell Group, we celebrated our second sellout of the season,” Lowell Spinners principal owners Marc Deschenes and John Croteau said. “Their generosity in providing free tickets to Spinners Nation made for an unforgettable night at LeLacheur Park.”

For the second consecutive year, Markley also supported the Lowell Folk Festival, one of the largest and longest-running folk festivals in the nation.

“Lowell Folk Festival is a cornerstone of this community, and we’re proud to help keep it thriving for another year,” Jeff Markley said.

Speaking of, mark your calendars — only 355 days until the 40th Lowell Folk Festival that will open Friday, July 23 and run through Sunday, July 25, 2027.

— Melanie Gilbert

AFTER 29 years of dedicated service to the Lowell Housing Authority, Management and Facilities Director Dennis Mercier will retire, leaving behind a legacy of commitment to public housing and the residents of Lowell.

LHA Board Chair William Samaras called it a “tremendous loss” for the organization.

“I have only been here for a relatively short time, but it did not take long for me to realize just how valuable you have been to the Housing Authority and to everyone who works with you,” he said during the June 10 meeting. “Your knowledge, professionalism, and dedication have made a lasting impact.”

Although retiring from the LHA, Mercier has no plans to slow down. He will remain active in the community through his service on several local boards, including as chair of the Lowell Cemetery Board, a member of the Lowell License Commission, the Pawtucketville Citizens Council, the Megan House Foundation Board of Directors and the Kazanjian Foundation Board of Directors.

— Melanie Gilbert

GIVEN ALL the incidents taking place in Downtown Lowell in bars that front as restaurants, the next License Commission meeting should be interesting.

Thanks to a quirk in the Lowell’s liquor ordinance, establishments that serve food are classified as restaurants where age limits do not apply. Except some of these establishments, like the Smokehouse Tavern, don’t serve food, but qualify as a restaurant as long as they have a working kitchen on site.

The drinking age in Massachusetts is 21 and providing alcohol to underage patrons is a criminal offense and a violation of established state laws. But in Lowell, underage patrons can frequent these establishments, as long as they aren’t served alcohol.

But a majority of the incidents, lately, have involved this underage demographic attending events that in any other city would be classified as a bar to which they would denied entry.

The most recent being a 20-year-old Chelmsford man who knocked out a Lowell Police officer following an event at Tescobar on Middlesex Street in the early hours of July 26 that featured “bottle service.”

Bottle service describes a boutique benefit at a club or bar where patrons can have entire bottles of liquor delivered directly to their table, bypassing the line at the bar — and perhaps ID checks for age compliance. The VIP service often includes mixers and a personal server.

The police reports noted that the size and intoxicated status of the crowd jeopardized police efforts to control and disperse the scene, as well as impeded the officers’ ability to make additional arrests.

It’s one in a string of alarming incidents where other police or patrons have been injured.

On the July 23 agenda, the commission moved approval for a request for a public hearing regarding revising Lowell’s alcoholic beverage regulations.

“The Lowell License Commission will hold a public hearing to address revising Alcohol Beverages Regulations for Licenses Issued by the Lowell License Commission on August 13, 2026,” the notice published in The Sun July 25 said.

At the hearing, the License Commission will be discussing several options that may modify regulations for current licenses issued by the License Commission and options that may expand the types of alcohol licenses available in the city, such as defining a restaurant as distinct from a bar where age limits would apply.

Licensees and the general public are invited to participate in the hearing in person.

— Melanie Gilbert

TOWNSEND IS preparing for a special election to fill two shiny new seats on the Select Board after the town expanded the number of seats from three to five, and two candidates so far have thrown their names in the mix.

The candidates who have submitted nomination papers for the two seats are former Town Clerk Kathleen Spofford and former Select Board member Cindy King. Neither has returned their nomination papers with signatures as of Friday. The deadline to pull nomination papers in Townsend is Aug. 14, and the deadline to return signatures is Aug. 18. The special election is set for Oct. 6.

Spofford currently serves on Townsend’s Finance Committee. She previously served as the town clerk until departing from the role with a year left in her term in 2025, creating an opening for current Town Clerk Harrison Mayotte to take the role in a special election, followed by the full term he won earlier this year.

King last served on the Select Board in 2019 in what could be considered a rather tumultuous time for the board. In 2017 there was a recall campaign against her and then-board member Gordon Clark for alleged overreach by the board, but that never made it to a ballot because it was blocked in court days before the election was to take place.

While the courts saved her then, they would not do so two years later. At that time, King found herself personally in hot water when she was charged with domestic assault and witness intimidation stemming from a February 2019 incident where police said she threw a plate of food at her then-wife and then tried to use her position on the board to intimidate officers into not arresting her.

King was convicted on those charges in 2021 and sentenced to one year of probation, but in 2019 after her arrest she did not run for reelection.

In the meantime it seems King has remained involved in town to a certain degree, primarily through her YouTube channel, Reel Deal Around Town, which she on at least one occasion used to advocate for the change to a five-member Select Board she now hopes to return to.

— Peter Currier

LONG POND and Lake Mascuppic are two bodies of water shared by Dracut and Tyngsboro. To be accurate, Long Pond is also shared by Pelham, N.H. But the Granite State community is not part of the current problems.

In recent summers, Lake Mascuppic has generated news thanks to reckless operators of personal watercraft (aka jet skis). Long Pond was relatively quiet — or so it seemed.

Now, after more than four years, Long Pond is once again demanding attention from local officials. And once more that’s due to activities at 39 Elm (Avenue in Dracut, Street in Tyngsboro), now operating as the Sandbar Beach Club.

The club’s premises are located in Dracut and Tyngsboro. Though the town line runs through the property, Dracut is the liquor licensing authority under a deal the towns reached in 1968.

Longtime residents of the area will likely remember the property as the Club Fleur de Lis, which was sold in 2019 and became the Shoreline Beach Club. The new owners promised to improve relations with neighbors and prohibit loud music and raucous customer behavior.

Both establishments operated as private, nonprofit members-and-guests-only clubs. The Shoreline had annual memberships, but also offered $2 day memberships with the fee added to a day member’s bill.

Three years later the club once more changed owners and became the Sandbar Beach Club. The new owners, Richard and Zachary Debay, met a storm of protest when they applied for the transfer of Shoreline’s liquor and related licenses.

The Debays, a father and son team, quickly learned that their neighbors felt that promises made by the Shoreline’s owners had been broken. Meetings in both towns drew large numbers of Long Pond residents to complain about those broken promises and to seek assurances that the Debays would be better neighbors.

A series of meetings involving Long Pond residents, the Debays and lawyers for each side resulted in Dracut agreeing to the license transfer in April 2022 with conditions that covered parking, occupancy, boat and traffic safety, and noise. The Debays also agreed to operate the Sandbar as a private club with annual and day memberships.

In recent weeks, the Tyngsboro Town Manager’s Office has been fielding complaints from club neighbors, and Assistant Town Manager Sean Walsh met with some of them to discuss the challenges of living near a private alcohol-serving club.

That meeting confirmed the immediate need to renegotiate Tyngsboro’s agreement with Dracut to ensure better enforcement of requirements and documentation of potential issues. Town Manager Colin Loiselle said he drafted an amendment to the agreement which he shared with Dracut Town Manager Kate Hodges. He expects to meet with her in the coming days after her return from vacation on Aug. 3.

“I’ll be meeting with her … to iron out a first draft that can be presented to this (Tyngsboro Select) Board and the Dracut [Board of Selectmen]. Additionally, once the new agreement is reached I intend to convene a meeting with Dracut and the license holder to make sure that everyone is on the same page about expectations and how we move forward,” Loiselle said.

Sharing Long Pond and Lake Mascuppic can be complicated for residents of both towns. And, use of the pond is further complicated by the shared ownership with Pelham. For someone wanting to fish there, licenses from both states are valid, but fishers must follow Granite State rules.

— Prudence Brighton