Lowell Infill and Small Developments

Re: Lowell 2015 update

reverend_paco said:
Did some sleuthing and found a proposal on the Lowell city site (kinda a PNF) for this project. I'll grab some screenshots later, but here is the PDF.

https://www.lowellma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2267
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Renderings from the architect's website:
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Re: Lowell 2015 update

Good project but those cornices are ridiculous. Get rid of them and the design is a decent bit of modernism. They are grossly over-sized and not at all necessary. That kind of traditionalist detail has no place here.
 
Re: Lowell 2015 update

Lrfox said:
^Agreed. And is the small surface lot REALLY necessary?
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I totally agree, but I wonder if they actually own the lot. The diagram shows there being a property line between the building and the parking lot.
 
Re: Lowell 2015 update

reverend_paco said:
I totally agree, but I wonder if they actually own the lot. The diagram shows there being a property line between the building and the parking lot.
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Yup. The lot parcel 1950-11 is owned by someone else:

z49xosX.png


The next two lots down (1950-1 and 1695-21) Davidson are owned by the developer but not the parking lot.
 
Re: Lowell 2015 update

Thanks for the update reverend, has the "One" project on Merrimack Street broken ground yet?
 
Re: Lowell 2015 update

Portlander said:
Thanks for the update reverend, has the "One" project on Merrimack Street broken ground yet?
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No, but there is a fence around the site. I'm not sure if that's related or if the fence has been there for a while, though.
 
Re: Lowell 2015 update

More of the Thorndike Exchange:
jSEmdpDh.jpg

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It looks like the basement for the office portion of the development:

KBbqI8Ah.jpg
 
Re: Lowell 2015 update

Mods: this thread needs to have a name without a year, and in harmony with the other "nearby municipality" threads (Quincy, Worcester, Providence, Malden + Melrose)
 
There is some progress on the Hamilton Canal District. The City parking garage for the District and the new Judicial Center is nearing completion as well as the infrastructure (roads, sidewalks, utilities) link Dutton Street to the new bridge next to Canal Street. This will be the sixth (!) City-owned parking garage in Downtown Lowell. Lowell's longtime approach to Downtown development/redevelopment is to allow developers to reserve parking at city garages, so they don't need to provide on-site parking.

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The construction in the foreground of the photo below is for two apartment buildings under construction on the other side of the canal --
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This aerial, not mine but from Shawmut Construction, orients you a bit better as to where the garage is located--
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These bonus shots are of the Appleton/Hamilton/Counting House Mills, located just south of the new garage where renovations were completed a couple years back. They were taken from the Early Parking Garage nearby. The last one is of the new Judicial Center, also located in the district--
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Smuttynose said:
There is some progress on the Hamilton Canal District. The City parking garage for the District and the new Judicial Center is nearing completion as well as the infrastructure (roads, sidewalks, utilities) link Dutton Street to the new bridge next to Canal Street. This will be the sixth (!) City-owned parking garage in Downtown Lowell. Lowell's longtime approach to Downtown development/redevelopment is to allow developers to reserve parking at city garages, so they don't need to provide on-site parking.

View attachment 7636
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The construction in the foreground of the photo below is for two apartment buildings under construction on the other side of the canal --
View attachment 7641

This aerial, not mine but from Shawmut Construction, orients you a bit better as to where the garage is located--
View attachment 7642

These bonus shots are of the Appleton/Hamilton/Counting House Mills, located just south of the new garage where renovations were completed a couple years back. They were taken from the Early Parking Garage nearby. The last one is of the new Judicial Center, also located in the district--
View attachment 7643
View attachment 7644
View attachment 7645
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The judicial center (or the “justice“ center) has three floors of holding cells. It was supposed to accommodate civil and probate but it’s really just a fancy way to fit criminals into one building.

Most of my friends live in the Appleton Mills complex. They initially supported the justice center. Now they loathe it. I don’t know what to tell them.

Meanwhile, the old courthouse slated for demo is going to be turned into a parking lot. Don’t ever change, Lowell.
 
They are far along in filling in the trenched highway (Thorndike St) that cut the MBTA station off from the rest of the city. Should have snapped a photo of the old overpasses, now buried up to their joists

Suddenly the train station looks walkable to the core, now that it fronts a boulevard (still very much a construction site)
 
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Arlington said:
They are far along in filling in the trenched highway (Thorndike St) that cut the MBTA station off from the rest of the city. Should have snapped a photo of the old overpasses, now buried up to their joists

Suddenly the train station looks walkable to the core, now that it fronts a boulevard (still very much a construction site)
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They filled in the trench pretty quickly. One week it was still the highway, the next it was filled. From what I've seen the past several times I've been through Lowell over the summer, its been going a little slow since then. It's unclear to the public, but it seems they veered from the original TMP and filled in the entire trench in one go, as opposed to original half-and-half plan which was less disruptive, potentially as a result of what they saw as decreased traffic flow due to COVID. It could also be that the half-and-half approach was just not possible/feasible. Regardless, I've heard traffic is an absolute nightmare on most weekdays, and they still have a little over 2 years left on the project. From my understanding, removing the overpasses is going to be quite a process wrt maintaining traffic through the site.
 
I can easily believe that they are improvising their way through filling the old Throndike St cut. It was the first time in a looong time that I've driven on the gravel of a road construction.

Seems like evidence that they changed the plan as they went along, since most "fully phased" plans these days have people driving on nothing less-finished than base layer tarmac. Driving on construction gravel was a throw-back, and intermixed with all kinds of confusing barrels.

Despite that mix, you could already see the outlines of what a great project it is--being the last link in a number of disconnected walkablity and city-street projects.
 
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