By Michael Lafleur, mlafleur@lowellsun.com
LOWELL -- City officials yesterday reported steady progress on the new, $21.5 million parking garage being built on Middlesex Street, while a nearby residential construction project has gotten quickly under way.
"Work is progressing nicely," Assistant City Manager Matthew Coggins said of the 900-space garage, being built near the corner of Middlesex and Central streets. "We're on schedule."
City officials expect the first cars to be parking in the new garage by the end of December.
To date, city officials have approved one change-order in the project, spending about $53,000 from the project contingency account to cover cost increases for electrical materials, said Adam Baacke, deputy director of the city Division of Planning and Development. Baacke said a $730 change-order is now the only one pending.
"So far, we've gotten out of the ground without running into any major hits on the contingency account on the project," Baacke said. "Typically, you go through maybe 50 percent of your unexpected change-orders to a project ... before you get above grade."
Baacke added that by early summer the garage will appear largely complete from the outside as the giant crane now on site works in earnest to lower the structure's precast concrete columns, panels and other components into place.
The primary remaining question about the garage is what will fill the nearly 17,500 square feet of retail space being constructed on its ground level, facing Middlesex Street. The commercial block is expected to include about 7,000-square-foot restaurant space near the front corner of the building.
Coggins said city officials plan to send out a formal solicitation to potential anchor tenants for the garage sometime early this summer.
"Even if you had a prospective party interested in it, there's really nothing to visualize to get a concept," he said. "It's a little early for that."
Portsmouth, N.H.-based Margaritas Management Group, which operates 18 Mexican restaurants throughout New England, eyed the restaurant space last year but Coggins said the company ultimately decided not to sign a lease because the "owners felt the area wasn't quite ready for them."
Roy Krantz, of Boston-based Community Glue Inc., said the success of he and his partners' efforts to redevelop the nearby Marston and Workingman's Protective Union buildings are tied to the garage's retail component.
"We're hoping it goes well," he said. "We want to do more with the city. That neighborhood is very interesting. We're just going to keep our fingers crossed that there's enough commercial activity in that neighborhood generated by the parking facility to allow that area to come up."
Work is already under way at the Marston, at 155 Middlesex St., which is separated from the garage site only by Marston Street, and the Workingman's Protective Union, across the road at 160 Middlesex St.
City councilors approved the $279,000 sale of the buildings in September.
Krantz said the Marston's upper floors are being converted into artist live-work condominiums. There will be a first-floor commercial space in the building. He said the two-story Workingman's Protective Union, a wood-frame structure that dates to 1848, will be converted into about five apartments on the upper floor with two commercial units on street level. Krantz said the first units "should be on line by early fall or mid-fall in the latest."
He said the renovation of the Marston is likely to cost about $800,000 but he and his partners have yet to come up with a cost estimate for the Workingman's Protective Union.
Coggins yesterday said that officials with the Boston-based Architectural Heritage Foundation are expected to close on their purchase of the buildings that compose the former Hamilton Manufacturing Complex -- the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell headquarters and the Adden Furniture Co. building -- by the end of this month.
This story appeared in the Lowell Sun on Thursday, March 1, 2007