Here's what a local developer is hoping the now-dilapidated Tremont Yards site in downtown Lowell looks like when he's through. The rendering was done by Gavin & Sullivan, a Lowell-based architectural firm.
By Michael Lafleur, mlafleur@lowellsun.com
Here's what a local developer is hoping the now-dilapidated Tremont Yards site in downtown Lowell looks like when he's through. The rendering was done by Gavin & Sullivan, a Lowell-based architectural firm.
LOWELL -- Development plans are nearing fruition for the first major office building to be erected in the Mill City in more than a decade.
The last local regulatory hurdle for developer Will Soucy's proposal to convert the crumbling ruins that were the former Tremont Mills Power House into a five-story commercial building is a site plan review before the Planning Board scheduled for next Monday at 6:30 p.m. in the council chamber at City Hall.
Soucy, president of Pelham-based Soucy Industries Inc., since 2006 has been in negotiations with the state Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM), the real estate arm of state government, over a 105-year lease for the state-owned site. Soucy said this week that he expects to formally sign that lease by early April.
Soucy is also in talks with a major office tenant that would occupy all of the upper stories in the 53,000-square-foot building. He declined to identify the prospective tenant, citing the ongoing talks. Soucy also hopes to land a restaurant tenant for the building's ground floor.
"It's going to be a great improvement to the area," said Lowell attorney James Flood, who is representing Soucy before the Planning Board.
The site, at 257 Father Morissette Blvd., contains the 11,000-square-foot ruins of the former Tremont Mills Power House, which dates to the 1840s, as well as the remains of a mill building constructed in 1862.
Under the terms of his deal with the state, Soucy must preserve the turbine pits that once housed the water wheels responsible for powering the Tremont and Suffolk mill complexes. The rest can be razed.
Last August, members of the Lowell Historic Board approved Soucy's building design, done by the Lowell firm Gavin & Sullivan Architects Inc. It blends the original brick of the old power house's crumbling walls on the first floor with a gleaming tower of green glass.
City officials have approved a deal in which Soucy will lease 75 parking spaces in Lot A for the city-owned Tsongas Arena, which is adjacent to the Tremont Yards site.
If all goes as planned, the building would be the first new commercial office complex constructed in Lowell since the Gateway II Plaza opened on Church Street in the mid-1990s.
This article appeared in the Lowell Sun on Wednesday, March 12, 2008