New Bedford – Imagine trying to renovate a more than 100-year-old textile factory into a modern, high-quality residential complex. It’s a challenging, but not an impossible task.
Now imagine that old building has been open to the elements, with broken windows and years of neglect that have made it so drafty that conditions rival the deck of a ship at sea. On top of it all, the ceiling is leaking and the integrity of much of the property is in question.
Then incorporate into everything that the end product is being held to tight energy-efficiency standards and will be LEED-certifiable. Oh, and while you’re performing all those energy upgrades and structural renovations, keep in mind that the property is or will be on the National Register of Historic Places. That means the windows must be historically accurate; you can’t knock down walls, and you have to retain the overall historical integrity of the entire building while completely changing the use.
Those and other adaptive reuse projects are the kinds of historic developments Winn Development has come to be known for around the state. The company has just started the soft demolition of a new project called Cliftex Lofts, named after the company that operated the New Bedford mill, once the largest polyester factory in the world, according to Winn officials.
To date, Winn has done or will do about 12 historic rehabs across the state. Those include Baker Square in Dorchester, the former Walter Baker & Company chocolate factory complex. And next door to the to-be Cliftex Lofts is the recently completed Whaler’s Place, another mill rehab. Others are located in Lowell, Lawrence, Fall River and Springfield.
Manomet Mills Reborn
When the almost $32 million Cliftex project near the corner of Riverside Avenue and Hathaway Street is finished, it will add approximately 150 units of affordable elderly and mixed-income apartments in two phases to the roughly 300,000-square-foot, two-building complex known as Manomet Mills. The first phase of renovating the 1903 complex should be completed in 14 to 16 months, and deliver about 76 units. Construction of the second phase will immediately follow, according to Winn.
The project is being funded with about $2.5 million in state subsidies and $4.4 million in state and federal low-income housing tax credits that will leverage private investments to fund the development, according to information from the state.
“We’ve always been focused on the turnaround and renovation of existing housing stock, and we always felt we were adding value in making such existing housing stock reach its full potential,” offered Gilbert Winn, managing principal for WinnCompanies. “It became a natural fit for us as we’re working in those communities that had old mill buildings, what’s known as ‘wasted building stock,’ to turn it into housing. This is a way to turn these historic structures into an asset for the community.”
Downtown Revitalization
But there’s more to New Bedford than just whaling museums and historic renovations. The city has undertaken a massive revitalization effort. The Economic Development Council, under executive director Matthew Morrissey, is in the midst of rehabbing the Upper Harbor District. The city recently received a $3.2 million grant to begin sidewalk widening and installing public art in the area of Acushnet and Belleville avenues to connect a new 17-acre retail development adjacent to nearby Riverside Park that is anchored by a Market Basket grocery store.
The next phase of that development will include a 20,000-square-foot restaurant building with a deck along the upper harbor. The city also has a $300,000 grant from the governor’s office to build a dock and a boathouse to attract more activity to that industrial/residential area of town.
“Today, after a badly down economy, our downtown retail vacancy stands at 7 or 8 percent,” Morrissey explained. “That’s down from 52 percent vacant in 2007.”
In the past, there wasn’t much effort at urban planning in the economically depressed former whaling-cum-textiles town. And owners had high expectations about the values of their former mill properties, Morrissey told Banker & Tradesman.
Then, in 2008, after years of planning work and creating public/private partnerships, the city embarked on a substantial marketing campaign. Developers and investors with access to capital realized prices had fallen in New Bedford, and it had become a more sophisticated city. Deals started getting done, such as Riverside Landing, which houses the Market Basket. Then came Regency Towers, a 17-story tower office tower by Trinity Financial that is now 92 percent leased. The same goes for the Lofts at Wamsutta Place, another mill rehab project by developer Acorn Management.
