Move In Date: Next Spring!
(Bumped - it’s tonight!)
The folks at Trinity Financial are hosting their first informational session for interested artists as they work to complete the 130 units of affordable artist live-work rental spaces at Appleton Mills. As someone who gets to regularly see the progress as I drive into work, I simple will say that I am really excited for this new chapter in the life of Lowell’s artist community. It is really coming together over there, and despite the construction chaos, you can almost see the finished product in the half-built structure.
The meeting will be held at the Brush Art Gallery on Tuesday, August 24th, 6:30 - 8 pm. Wine and cheese will be served. If you can’t attend, visit LiveAppletonMills.com or call 978-458-0588.
I’ve had the privilege of several tours of the building as it has been built (I’m going to attempt to make a documentary!). The process is absolutely mind boggling - literally taking the shell of a building and making something sturdy and lasting from it. That it will be an anchor point for expanding the artist community in Lowell is definitely something extra special.
August 17th, 2010 at 5:53 am
I see a couple of the buildings on Middlesex Street near the early Garage have some construction going on inside and out. anyone have any idea what’s happening in there?
August 18th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
I would love to see more pix when they post them. Do you think there will be an open house when completed?
August 18th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Oh most definitely. My guess is there will be a huge ribbon cutting, and the place will be able to accommodate that I think.
The drawings of the inside of the place are just…amazing. I think I will just go there to hang out!
August 18th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Oh and Peter - not really…
August 24th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Lynne
Does this mean you are moving into one of those places, for work or quarters?
Regards — Cliff
August 24th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
I posted yesterday or the day before on my blog that I hope they hold strict to the requirements for artists. They are practically giving luxury apartments away here otherwise, and for those of us over the income qualifications and paying a lot more for a lot fewer amenities, that’s more than a little unfair. Especially with how subsidized the construction was. Not that this project isn’t a huge improvement over what the place looked like before - just sayin’.
August 24th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Corey
If you were thinking of my comment, I think of Lynne as an artist and thus I did not see her as someone who would be exploiting the situation. Plus, it was in jest.
Regards — Cliff
August 25th, 2010 at 9:09 am
LOL Cliff, no! First, you have to income qualify, which we certainly don’t! Secondly, I am not ever going back to renting if I can help it! I love owning our house. I’m planted here for the long haul.
But my work studio is nearby the new Hamilton artist building, so I have a real vested interest in this thing taking off!
It was a great turnout last night and yes, there is a new “artist preference” law that applies (passed in the legislature) and you HAVE to income qualify. If they have a waiting list with enough artist preference qualified persons, they will get precedence. The whole affordable housing building is adhering to affordable housing rules however, and others who qualify can apply. If not enough artists apply, or the list ever runs out after the place is filled, then nonartist affordable housing-qualified folks can get in as well.
There’s a board that (made up of city appointees, persons from Trinity, and I think the management company?) to review artist preference certificates and you have to prove you really are an artist. There’s an interview process and a certificate is given out.
And for purposes of certification, “artist” is defined as anyone in the arts in general - visual art, musicians, poets and writers, dancers, whoever. As long as you are in the arts you will get certification. They are not judging the actual art itself, only the fact that you are an artist producing something in the arts.
By the way Trinity has NOT skimped on amenities in these spaces! Granite countertops, nice tile in the bathroom, hardwood floors. As explained to me, upgrading the finishes was a drop in the bucket of the cost of rehabbing this building, and they would do this to any affordable housing they work on. The interiors will be just beautiful, I think, and the common spaces (including a roof deck and workout room, common washer/dryer rooms, and an atrium gallery for the artists) I think will be amazing.
Open studios in 2011 will not be the same!! I am so excited to welcome our new neighbors in downtown!
August 25th, 2010 at 9:12 am
BTW Trinity *has* to adhere to HUD rules with regards to any empty spaces that they can’t find artists to fill - but they are working really hard to fill up that list. But we can all help with that - we need to spread the word about the housing to all artists in MA - and even outside of MA. If you have artists friends, particularly ones who work in the arts for a living (who likely will income qualify cuz no one makes that much in the arts), let them know. It has to be household income - so couples making in total more than the amount that qualifies cannot move in.
August 25th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Cliff - I wasn’t talking about Lynne, didn’t even make the connection because I knew she was over the income bar.
Lynne - thanks for bringing a cooler head to the whole thing. You’re probably right that the extra money spent on upgrades was not that much compared to re-building the building, and ultimately this should be great for the neighborhood.
I’m ok with Federal/State/Local money being spent to rebuild the building. The costs are staggering though: $60m of it as far as I can tell in the form of grants and tax credits, or $100k for every man, woman, and child in Lowell or $460k per unit, or 64 years full-building rent with no capital improvements or bills. I guess I have to be ok with the fact that a frycook with a guitar can now live in a place three times as nice as my market rate condo next door for a third as much. Eh, I’m too busy working to dig myself out of my underwater mortgage to be home anyhow, and certainly to take back up guitar
August 25th, 2010 at 10:50 am
Whoops - bad math there. Proofreading is key. 60m / 100,000 Lowellians is $600, not $100k.
August 25th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Well, the fact is, that if we wanted to save that building, whether market rate OR affordable housing OR commercial was going in there, that was the cost. (Though the affordable housing credits I think make it far more likely the cost of the rehab wouldn’t break the bank for Trinity.) The finishes really are just a tiny fraction. Also, I say, if you’re going to have affordable housing, why should it be substandard? If you treat people with dignity and respect, they will have dignity and respect for the help you give them. If you treat them as substandard, then guess what? They’ll act that way.
Of course, this is also here to attract a better quality of life for all Lowellians, and the region. It can only help to have a more permanent, affordable space for artists to live and work. They will bring with them all sorts of creative, fun, entertaining, economic oomph for the city. It might even be, that this time, we’ll get the “artist live-work” thing RIGHT for once. It’s failed in the past in the downtown, and I have reasons to say that it’s largely failed so far at Western Ave too. (It didn’t have to, but it did. It’s sad.) I think the combo of LIVE-work, affordable RENTAL space, coupled with a REAL management company to administer the building, will make this a huge success. I like the attitude of the Trinity people, and the management company (Winn) that they are bringing in.
We too are underwater on our mortgage (at least according to the zillow type sites) though some of that is the fact that BOTH of my neighbors sold their houses super cheap (older folks, one set looking to downgrade their huge two family, and the other side, sadly, a death). I also don’t have all nice countertops and such. But I OWN my house and will eventually have equity, we can afford to pay our mortgage, and we will have the means someday to upgrade the kitchen and anything else that comes along. We even bought new furniture three years into owning (after the new Ikea stuff just didn’t cut it). I’d MUCH rather be in our situation than someone who can qualify for affordable housing, truth be told. Underwater mortgage and everything!
August 25th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
What went wrong at Western Ave? During Doors Open this year, the developer for Appleton Mills was asked if they viewed them as competition. He said that it’s a different enough demographic that he did not. Western Ave looks like a great space, but being on the other side of Dutton, especially with how hard it is to get there by car due to the train tracks, is like a different country. Same thing with the 119 Gallery. I’ve considered it a good sign for Lowell’s economy that these “colonizing” buildings are spreading out from downtown, because it means that they’ve been priced out, which means values are going up, which is a good thing. There is plenty of room in Lowell for everyone.
I’m going to drop complaining about this space after this because a lot of it is just personal anger around the housing crisis. I am ultimately happy it got done and think it’ll (most likely) be good for the neighborhood. If given the choice between renovation and letting it continue to crumble, I’d take the former. But, if this building doesn’t function as a rising tide, it’ll be a classic case of the government choosing winners and losers, and I’m a big loser here.
I live in Canal Place III, which per http://www.lowellma.gov/depts/dpd/services/econdev/Comm%20Inv was renovated for $11 million and has 113 units. When you replace the rotted wood floors with plywood instead of Northwestern hardwoods and you box in the brickwork and rusted supports with plaster instead of cleaning them, you can save a huge amount of money. That $11m was supposed to be $13m per http://www.lowellcentercity.org/articles/emptymills.html when Winn was involved, but decided they wouldn’t break even without more market rate units. Well, the building ended up being market rate, so the full cost (or I’d imagine quite a bit of it, they must’ve gotten some subsidies) of those 113 units was passed on to the buyers, right at the top of the market. Had the building been renovated like the Taj Mahal next door, the units would’ve had to have been more expensive, and the market wouldn’t bear that. So, to have Winn come back to a project five times the cost but heavily subsidized, well…it makes you feel kind of stupid. If anything less than granite countertops and a fitness center is “substandard” for people who make less in a year than many people next door pay in taxes, then our building, which doesn’t even have landscaping, must be third-world.
Keep in mind that Trinity is thanking us for paying the taxes to get this thing built by putting a parking garage 30 feet from our windows.
I made a financially conservative decision and bought something really small with no frills, hoping to get out in about five years, maybe with a little money in my pocket. Then the market tanks in a basically unprecedented way and I lose all my equity. Now, I really need to think about getting something bigger and I’m trapped because any downpayment I’ve saved will be lost in digging out the loss on what I have now. I can’t rent it for nearly what the mortgage costs because it was overpriced (and cheaper and much better buildings like this one have come online), and I can’t get that large of a mortgage because I have this one hanging over my head. However, because I bought responsibly (well, at least in terms of monthly payments), I’m ineligible for any government help like those who got greedy and are risking foreclosure. I can’t refinance to a lower rate because I have negative equity. Grrr…
August 25th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Corey - it’s an internal thing there. I won’t bother to go into it. Suffice to say WAS goes out of its way to cut itself off from everything and everyone else. Which is its prerogative, but it’s not helping themselves or anyone else.
You know, it’s too bad we lambaste people for working but not making enough to have a decent place to live. It’s our fault. Art isn’t valued in our communities. The best artists in Lowell are barely making enough to live by, if they are lucky. And these are the best, most experienced and most well known.
So they have my sympathy, not my derision. I’d hate to be poor, and in order to be an artist in any serious way, you have to be poor as dirt. I have a lot of artist friends and they are good hardworking people who deserve a middle class income too. And will likely never get it (unless they have a spouse not in the arts, or get REALLY lucky).
It’s also not the poor’s fault that the market tanked, ya know? It tanked for them, too. Artists are really struggling to sell ANYthing right now…I have heard from many of them.
Also, I do think some past development has been ill considered, and I don’t think you’re off base in being a little resentful with some of the work done (though, Winn I do not think is the development company - they are only the management company so far as I can tell). But we’ve had some better luck more recently, what with closing the loopholes for some of the worst developments in the city, and really thinking ahead about what sort of city we want to be when we retool large areas of the city like the HCD. We can thank good city management (and city councilors) for that.
August 25th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
I know what you mean about art not being valued here. I was at a gallery in Northampton recently and was eying some prints that reminded me of those Bill Giavis does here. Except, instead of being $25, they were $250. Similar quality work, similar subject matter. Only difference: Northampton’s reputation. There is a lot of money to be spent on art in the Lowell area as well, although perhaps not in Lowell itself. If we are able to market ourselves as a hip new market, they’ll do better here. Take some of that market from the Concords of this region.
Art, like you said, is tough. I don’t resent artists (perhaps I do resent hipster wannabe artists
). The phrase “starving artist” exists for a reason. Art is a luxury product and we’re in a down market and most of the money that does get spent ends up in very few hands. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb said in Black Swan, the amount of money you make in the arts has no direct relation to the amount of work you put in, but largely by how lucky you are (plus talent, like any field).
So yeah, best of luck to this project - it really is exciting.
August 26th, 2010 at 10:35 am
With most subsidized housing the rent required is some percentage on income, I think about 30% max. That is probably how the schedule of rents is being set for Appleton Mills. If all the units are not rented, is there a possibility that higher income people could qualify at higher rents?
And I believe that subsidized housing typically works with the aid of annual public funding. Will this be the case with Appleton Mills, or has the non-recurring subsidies associated with the re-hab enough to make the finances work for Trinity that there is no need for further annual subsidy?
August 26th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
If I recall, waittil, there’s a 30% and a 60% of-median-income level, so people who are at 60% of median income for our area, can qualify, and get prorated (but slightly more expensive, since they have higher incomes) rents.
Two bedrooms units are reserved only for families of two or more. Singletons will only be able to get the one bedrooms.
My guess, and this is only a guess, is that whatever applies to standard subsidized housing will apply here. I can’t imagine that anyone would make any money on this project (even with the subsidies to rehab the building) otherwise. But I am not sure on that point so don’t quote me.
All the units are affordable units. Therefore, if there are not enough certified artists to fill the slots, then they are open to other families who qualify under the affordable housing rules. It definitely won’t go to market rate (and one can’t imagine that they won’t fill the units one way or other, as affordable housing is always at a premium, even in Lowell).