Posted on October 30, 2017
LUDLOW --- One month after celebrating the grand opening of 96 new apartments at a previously abandoned Fitchburg mill, WinnCompanies had to break out the ribbon and scissors again on Oct. 26, this time to open the Residences at Mill 10, a 75-unit mixed-income development for seniors.
Financed primarily with federal and state low-income housing tax credits awarded by the state Department of Housing and Community Development, the $19.3 million Residences at Mill 10 development features 51 apartments for households at or below 60 percent of area median income (AMI), 15 apartments at or below 30 percent of AMI and nine units that will be rented at market rate.
The project also received federal historic tax credits. Public financing came from DHCD subsidy programs and the Town of Ludlow.
Private financing was provided by Bank of America, the Boston Community Loan Fund and the Massachusetts Housing Partnership. MHP is using its bank-funded loan pool to provide a $500,000 long-term loan.
The adaptive reuse development preserves a four-story 99,440-square-foot brick building that was built in 1907 and is listed on the National Historic Register. The building is part of a larger mill complex that was home to the Ludlow Manufacturing and Sales Co., which employed up to 4,000 people and made cloth, rope and twine out of Indian-grown jute, flax and hemp from the 1868s through the 1970s.
Since then, the property has housed a variety of smaller businesses. In 2016, WinnCompanies announced plans to develop another mill building into 100 to 136 market-rate apartments. For the last eight years, the mill complex has been owned, managed and marketed by Westmass Area Development Corp.
A leader in the difficult job of transforming historic mills into mixed-income housing, Winn has now completed 36 adaptive reuse projects in five states and the District of Columbia, transforming historic properties into more than 3,600 units of mixed-income housing with a collective assessed value of more than $500 million. In Massachusetts, MHP has provided Winn with over $65 million in loans and commitments for the financing of over 1,400 apartments, including financing for mills in Lawrence, Fitchburg and now Ludlow.
For more information about this project and MHP’s financing options, contact David Rockwell at drockwell@mhp.net or Nancy McCafferty at nmccafferty@mhp.net.