With the discussion surrounding a potential extension of Tom Golden’s contract as Lowell City Manager heading to the council floor Tuesday night, an interested observer is taking exception to characterizations that the city has nothing to do with the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC).

UMass President, and former UMass Lowell Chancellor, Marty Meehan says “any dialogue regarding the LINC project being solely the university’s doing is patently false.”

Meehan, in town for a wake, reached out to us early Monday evening after indicating he’d been approached by people over recent chatter on InsideLowell podcasts and elsewhere. The call came hours after a Daily Pulse podcast where former City Councilor Marty Lorrey termed the LINC project as the university’s, not the city’s.

Shortly thereafter, District 2 Representative Corey Robinson released a Facebook statement (which we also published here) echoing similar sentiments.

“I don’t buy into some of the speaking points being blasted out of the same old bullhorns,” Robinson wrote. “The University’s LINC Project is just that, the University’s. Timing is everything, and UML has really come through, based on what we are told.”

Meehan, who also represented Lowell in Congress from 1993-2007 before assuming the Chancellor’s job at UMass Lowell, disagrees with that line of thinking.

“While I prefer to not get involved in the political debate, I want to stress that Tom Golden has been an integral component of LINC,” Meehan stated. “To say he and the city had nothing to do with the project isn’t accurate. Tom has been an active part of discussions with developers, investors, Chancellor Chen, Governor Healey, Congresswoman Trahan and the elected officials collaborating on the transformative project. I’ve had the opportunity to work with a number of City Managers throughout my career, some who are personal friends, and there hasn’t been a Manager more supportive of the University and its economic development efforts than Tom Golden. You have to go back to Paul Sheehy in 1975 to find this level of support.”