By MICHAEL LAFLEUR, Sun Staff
LOWELL -- The wheels of the ambitious Hamilton Canal Project are slowly moving ahead, as city officials await word on whether the district, on the fringe of downtown, will be selected as the site for two major state projects.
At issue are plans for a new $100-million judicial center and an $80 million University of Massachusetts Lowell center for nanotechnology-manufacturing research.
Officials with both projects are considering the Hamilton Canal District as a potential location.
Together, the projects would need five to six acres in the 15-acre district. They also would be exempt from local property taxes, a fact that has some city officials wondering if it makes sense to put both in the district.
In the meantime, a review committee appointed by City Manager Bernie Lynch is considering who to recommend as the district's master developer, which would purchase all the land at an estimated price of $10 million -- assuming an as-yet uncompleted environmental assessment comes up clean -- and oversee development of the entire area following an extensive public planning process. The panel's choice would be subject to City Council approval.
Three development teams were selected in October as finalists and their proposals are due Jan. 30.
Lynch said he expects the recommendation of a single firm to buy all the land in the district and undertake the project in late February or early March.
Officials with the state Division of Capital Asset Management and the University of Massachusetts Building Authority are busy with their own considerations, the biggest of which is whether they will pick the Hamilton Canal District as the site for the court and nanotechnology centers.
Today, the district is a blighted patchwork of mostly empty buildings and vacant lots. Its largest components are a tumbledown, 7-acre swath of the Appleton Mills complex and the 6-acre former Freudenberg Nonwovens Group plant site. The area lies roughly between the Lord Overpass and the Lowell National Historical Park visitor parking lot. It is bisected by the Lower Pawtucket and Hamilton canals and encompasses a small portion of the Merrimack Canal, at Swamp Locks.
City officials have acquired all the properties either through negotiated sale or by eminent domain. They predict a spring 2008 construction start with a five- to 10-year buildout, depending upon market conditions.
DCAM spokesman Kevin Flanigan said DCAM is in the "final stages" of site evaluation for the court center -- for which the Legislature has approved spending $100 million -- and a decision is expected "within the next few weeks."
According to preliminary DCAM estimates, the courthouse would require a 260,000-square-foot building on approximately two acres, though Flanigan said that could change "depending on surrounding uses and the shape of the site."
DCAM officials are considering three sites for the judicial center: Hamilton Canal District, the Davidson lot off East Merrimack Street, and the Central Plaza on Church Street.
Flanigan said, in the best-case scenario, construction would start on the judicial center by early 2009 and be complete by late 2010.
Diana Prideaux-Brune, UMass Lowell's vice chancellor for facilities, said the UMass Building Authority is in the process of choosing a firm that will handle site selection and preliminary design for the nanotechnology manufacturing center. She said she is pushing to have the building on schedule to open by fall 2010. For that to happen, a site would have to be selected by April, she said.
The nanotech center will require about three acres of land, enough to house a roughly 80,000-square-foot center plus room to add other buildings around it, she said.
"We think we'll completely fill the building the day it's open and we'll be ready to expand from then," Prideaux-Brune said.
UMass officials are considering three sites for the nanotech center in addition to the canal district:
* A location near the Lawrence Mills complex. The official spot lies within the Lawrence Mills complex, at the corner of Perkins and Aiken streets, but a knowledgeable state source said there now is talk about locating the facility nearby at the current site of the Albert H. Notini & Sons Inc. distribution company. That location would require either a negotiated purchase agreement or eminent domain taking.
* On the Riverside parking lot on UMass Lowell's north campus.
* At the former UMass Lowell west campus, located just over the Lowell line in Chelmsford.
On the question of property taxes, a finished nano-manufacturing center will clearly be tax exempt.
The judicial center will be constructed under a process in which a private contractor will erect the building and then be repaid and compensated through a 30-year, state-paid lease. The center will revert to state ownership at the conclusion of the lease term.
Assistant City Manager Matthew Coggins, director of the city Division of Planning and Development, said state officials have told him such an arrangement would make the judicial center property tax-exempt.
City officials have said that if the judicial center is built by a different private builder than the master development firm it could be "viewed negatively" by master developer finalists. However, they also said the project could be a catalyst for additional office space development while renovating the Appleton Mills, the most rundown portion of the district area. They said the nanotech center could act as a catalyst for other commercial development as well.
State Sen. Steven Panagiotakos, a key backer of the canal district project, said he believes both state projects could work in the district together.
"I don't think it's either-or," he said. "There's potential for both."
He said the court center would help fill the $21.5-million, 900-space parking garage the city is building nearby on Middlesex Street while the nano center would be "a very significant building for the city in a very visible area."
City Councilor Jim Milinazzo, chairman of the council's economic development subcommittee, said he believes two tax-exempt uses taking up a third or more of the district is just too much.
"It would just eat up too much taxable property," he said.
If he had to choose, Milinazzo said he would lean toward the nano-center because of its job-creation potential.
The city is in negotiations with the following development teams for the Hamilton Canal District job:
* Leyland Alliance LLC, of Tuxedo, N.Y., and Cornish Associates LP, of Providence, R.I.
* Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc., of Baltimore.
* Trinity Financial Inc., of Boston, which is led by James Keefe, brother of Boston developer Frank Keefe, who was a finalist for the Lowell city manager's post in July.
Coggins said city officials would have to negotiate with the selected master developer over the inclusion of the state projects if the area is selected for them.
"Right now, all three of them are remaining open to either use," Coggins said. "No one has said, 'if these things are coming, we're not interested,' but everything's speculative right now, too."
Michael Lafleur's e-mail address is mlafleur@lowellsun.com.
This story appeared in the Lowell Sun on Sunday, December 24, 2006