By David Perry, dperry@lowellsun.com
Larry Sparrow, project manager for Trinity Financial, checks on progress being made at the Appleton Mills project on Jackson Street in Lowell, where vacant mills are being converted into 130 units of artists' live/work space. SUN PHOTOS/DAVID H. BROW
LOWELL -- The steel beams reinforcing the five-story walls will be gone soon enough, but for now, they make the place look like a facade in a Hollywood movie set.
The old brick-and-mortar walls of the Appleton Mills building, at the heart of the Appleton Mills redevelopment project on Jackson Street, loom over the greenish water of the Hamilton Canal, which flows past below. They are fortified by the beams from the inside.
Several months in from the November groundbreaking, on a rainy afternoon, Larry Sparrow, the construction project manager for Trinity Financial, walks a visitor around the muddy grounds. A plumbing inspector has shown up. Heavy equipment still lumbers slowly around the grounds, guided by men in hard hats and muddy boots.
A crew member works inside a unit. SUN/DAVID H. BROW
The project is due for completion in a year, Sparrow says, yielding 130 one- and two-bedroom affordable units of artists' live/work space. The $60 million project is also designed to use 15 acres of vacant and underutilized land as a bridge between the downtown and the Gallagher Terminal transportation center on the other side of the Lord Overpass.
At the far end of the 15-acre site, a few of the residences are beginning to come together. The metal framing is up, angles to the plank flooring. A layer of hard rubber, to stifle sound bleeding, will cover the floor before the hardwood flooring is put down.
Sparrow notes the "open feel" of the floor plan and the unit's oversized windows.
A reminder of the building's past, a rusty generator that once made electricity from the canal water, sits below the building in back.
"We're figuring a way to keep that," Sparrow says. After all, the walls are a reminder of what was once a thriving mill city, the new construction around them showcasing a new urban village.
One of two mobile tower cranes looms over the shell of an old mill building on Jackson Street in Lowell. SUN /DAVID H. BROW
Two immense mobile tower cranes loom over the entire project like some Erector Set creation gone wild, each with a single arm outstretched. A crane operator uses a remote control, akin to a video-game joystick, to slowly guide the crane while it delivers a steel beam to a worker below. The beams were original to the building, Sparrow says, but have been cleaned up for reuse.
The 80-foot mobile tower cranes, more commonly used in Europe than in the U.S., are "quieter," too, says Sparrow, a laid-back fellow. It is such a large project, he says, "we got two cranes, one to work at each end."
Working alongside the canal makes the Appleton Mills project "one of the more challenging" projects he has worked.
Framing must be secured from inside the building where the water flows along the outside.
It took five months to gut the old buildings and a couple more to brace and reinforce the old walls and masonry.
Along the way, falling bricks from an archway led to minor injuries for one worker and emergency personnel, and last month, the state announced a delay in building a $200 million federal courthouse, a key part of the district.
"You come back in June, a lot of this will be going strong," Sparrow says. "When we really get going, there'll be 150 people here.
This story appeared in the Lowel Sun on Monday, April 19, 2009