(Courtesy photo)

MassHousing closed this week on a total of $17.1 million in financing to an affiliate of Trinity Financial Inc., for the creation of a new, 102-unit, affordable housing community in Lawrence. Trinity Financial will transform the former Van Brodie Mill into new mixed-income housing within a smart growth district off Broadway, near the border of Methuen.

The adaptive reuse project will preserve a historic former mill while remediating a brownfield site. Van Brodie Mill is Trinity Financial’s first project in Lawrence.

“Van Brodie Mill will be an important new housing resource for working families in Lawrence,” MassHousing Acting Executive Director Tom Lyons said in a statement. “This transformational project will put a former brownfield back into productive use, while advancing regional economic development, and enabling families to live affordably and prosper in Greater Lawrence.”

Constructed in 1919 by the Arlington Mills company, the Van Brodie Mill originally manufactured yarn for wool and flannel. By the 1950s, the Arlington Mills company had closed and the Van Brodie Mill was operated by a company that shifted production to food products, including packaged breakfast cereals and rations for the military.

The new apartments will serve residents with a broad range of incomes. Of the 102 units, 16 will be for households earning at or below 30 percent of the area median income (AMI), 67 will be for households earning at or below 60 percent of the AMI, and 19 will be dedicated for workforce housing for households earning between 61 and 80 percent of the AMI. The AMI for Lawrence and the surrounding area is $87,600 for a family of four.

The completed project will contain eight studio apartments, 25 one-bedroom apartments, 56 two-bedroom apartments and 13 three-bedroom apartments.

The redevelopment of Van Brodie Mill advances the Baker-Polito Administration’s goal of creating up to 1,000 new workforce housing units affordable to middle-income households through MassHousing’s $100 million Workforce Housing Initiative. Since the inception of the initiative in 2016, MassHousing has committed or closed workforce housing financing totaling $49.7 million, to 23 projects, located in 13 cities and towns. To date, the Workforce Housing Initiative has advanced the development of 2,111 housing units across a range of incomes, including 538 workforce housing units.

Van Brodie Mill will be built on four adjacent land parcels within the city’s 34-acre Arlington Mills Smart Growth Overlay District, containing two interconnected mill buildings with 100 units, a small, former incinerator building with two units, a water pump house and a parking lot.