WinnDevelopment transfoms Lawrence mill into rental housing
Posted on January 19, 2013
LAWRENCE, Jan. 19, 2013 --- In 2003, the MHP Board of Directors toured the City of Lawrence to look at affordable housing financed by MHP as well as possible future investments. One of their stops was Malden Mills, where WinnDevelopment's Larry Curtis gave a tour and talked about the potential of turning the hulking, dormant mill into housing.
Nine years later, Curtis held court at Malden Mills again, only this time he was speaking at the grand opening of Loft Five50, the first phase of WinnDevelopment's plan to turn the vacant Malden Mills into housing.
"There was a time when turning mills into housing seemed like a fantasy," said Curtis, president of WinnDevelopment, at the Nov. 20 grand opening. "The numbers just didn't work. But when the state historic tax credit program was created (in 2004), it made it possible for projects like this to move forward."
WinnDevelopment utilized state historic credits in combination with federal historic credits, federal low-income housing tax credits and state low-income housing tax credits to finance the $34 million adaptive reuse project on Broadway near the Methuen line. TD Bank North provided the construction financing while MHP has committed $1.45 million in permanent financing from its bank-funded loan pool.
Additional financing was provided by the state Department of Housing and Community Development, the state's Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the City of Lawrence. Loft Five50 features 75 rental apartments, 72 of them affordable to households at or below 60 percent of area median income. There are eighteen one-bedroom and 57 two-bedroom apartments.
"We're proud to have transformed a place where the workforce worked into a place where the workforce can now live," said Adam Stein, project manager for WinnDevelopment.
For MHP, Loft Five50 is the ninth development it has financed with WinnDevelopment across the state and the 11th development it has financed in the City of Lawrence. "This is a city that is on the move and it's a city we believe in," said Clark Ziegler, MHP's executive director.
WinnDevelopment is eying a second phase at the former Malden Mills site in which it would purchase and transform two more mill buildings into 55 units of housing. For more information about Loft Five50, go to the Loft Five50 web site. For more information about MHP's financing programs for affordable rental housing, contact Senior Loan Officer Megan Mulcahy at 617-330-9944 x269 or mmulcahy@mhp.net.