Close look at courthouse developer

LOWELL — When Trinity Financial took control of a dilapidated former textile mill sandwiched between two historic canals, little remained inside the brick shell but rubble, some metal columns, old spindles and wooden foot-shaped forms once used by shoemakers.

The roof over the four- and five-story structure leaked. Wood rotted.

“There were areas where one floor had collapsed and fallen onto the next floor below,” said Lawrence J. Sparrow, the construction project manager for the renovation. “A couple areas, you could stay on the first or second floor and see the sky.”

Trinity Financial gutted everything. Then it started over.

By the time the $64 million redevelopment of Appleton Mills opened in 2011, the 209,623-square-foot building had been carved into 130 apartments priced below market rates for artists and low-income renters. Now, every unit is filled or reserved. Artists live and work in 54 apartments, and art is everywhere.

“I find it convenient to work at home,” said painter Tom Gill, a five-year resident who is preparing for a summer exhibit at a restaurant in Lowell. “I wake up. My art’s here. I paint until I go to bed.”

Trinity, a Boston developer that specializes in urban projects, faces a different challenge in Worcester, where it is making over the former Worcester County Courthouse on Main Street into 117 apartments at a cost of about $60 million. The Worcester renovation project began this spring and is expected to be completed by the summer of 2020.

But once again, the company is tackling a historic building with an aim of attracting a mix of renters while also carving out exhibit space — in this case a historical exhibit devoted to the late professional bicyclist Marshall “Major” Taylor.

The courthouse project marks the first in Worcester for Trinity, which undertakes financially complicated projects that rely on public funds and tax credits. Over its 30-year history, the company has created more than 9,000 units of housing, according to Trinity Principal and co-founder Patrick Lee, who spoke in Worcester in March.

“We see great growth happening in this community,” Mr. Lee told members of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce. “We think it’s a good place to make an investment, that we will achieve the goals that we want with respect to that investment.”

In Worcester, Trinity is making over a dilapidated courthouse that sprawls across about 250,000 square feet of space near Lincoln Square. It’s a high-profile site at the northern end of Worcester’s downtown corridor, which has long struggled to attract businesses and developers.

The building itself emptied out when the state opened a new courthouse complex on Main Street in 2008. Attempts to interest developers in the old Greek Revival building went nowhere, and the state sold the property to the city of Worcester in 2014 for $1.

Trinity Financial paid a little more than $1 million in 2017 to purchase the historic building. Fifty units will be reserved for low-income residents, while 67 will be reserved for residents paying the market rate for housing and residents whose income falls between 60 percent and 110 percent of the area’s median income. In addition to apartments, the project will include a resident club room, a fitness center, an artist gallery and programming space.

Mr. Lee recently said the organization expects to receive about $6 million from a recent state housing financing bond plus about $2.5 million in low-income tax credits to help fund the courthouse renovation.

In Lowell, where historic buildings are thick and part of the downtown constitutes the 142-acre Lowell National Historical Park, Trinity helped create a master plan for a 13-acre area known as the Hamilton Canal District.

It also redeveloped two buildings — Appleton Mills and 110 Canal Street, a nearby office building that dates to 1920 and cost $14 million rehab. Tenants now include the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

But it is Appleton Mills that bears the most resemblance to what Trinity faces in Worcester — a long-empty building and awkward spaces.

Mr. Sparrow, who managed construction at Appleton Mills, calls it the most structurally challenging rehabilitation of a historic building he ever handled.

“We had to basically gut this whole entire building and just leave the exterior wall standing,” said Mr. Sparrow, who is now managing construction of a Trinity site in Lawrence.

Crews also had to fill in three channels under the building, industrial remnants that once carried water from one canal through turbines and into a second canal.

“This building was built as a machine,” Mr. Sparrow said.

Trinity tapped the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, a quasi-public agency, for loans to renovate the Appleton Mills building, while also lining up state funds and state and federal tax credits. The result is a building with a soaring central atrium surrounded by apartments, a “green” roof partly covered with vegetation, a rooftop deck and a stone courtyard that looks out onto a watery canal.

Studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments feature high ceilings, exposed brick walls, large windows and new wood floors. Monthly rents range from about $900 for a studio to just over $1,300 a month for two-bedroom units.

A shared laundry center is on the first floor, as is a lounge with a kitchenette and large television. Elevators are big, to accommodate large works of art.

Each floor also includes utility rooms created with artists in mind, with industrial sinks that can handle paint and dyes.

Outside all apartments are small ledges where artists can leave business cards. Metal tracks on the walls outside all apartments also allow residents to hang paintings, drawings and photography.

Other art hangs in hallways, the lounge and the atrium. The work ranges from oversize paintings by Ismael Rosado to student drawings.

Emily M. Doyon, the property’s community and commercial manager, vets applicants for apartments. Artists get priority, she said, and an outside arts community representative helps evaluate the artists’ work and aspirations. Tattoo artists, an ice cream developer and a high-fashion photographer have all made the building home.

“We all sit with them, we talk, we see their portfolios,” Ms. Doyon said. “I’ve only denied two people. One man said his work was being the Easter bunny at the Rockingham Mall.”

J.J. Long, a writer and painter who founded a party painting business called JJJARTWORKS, has held a book signing at Appleton Mills and currently has numerous paintings hanging in hallways.

“I love having my work in the public area of Appleton Mills,” Mr. Long said in an email. “It's a beautiful atrium space where all the artists in the building can display their artwork. I like it because it gives me exposure to the other residents, as well as the general public that pops into the building, and it feels good to always have a space where I can display my work and potentially make a sale.”

Musician and composer Aaron Rosenberg teaches piano in his apartment. He spent a year-and-a-half on a waiting list to get in, then brought scores to his artist interview. He has now lived there three years.

“It’s a place I still feel I belong, especially as a musician,” said Mr. Rosenberg, who teaches at Middlesex Community College and UMass Lowell in addition to running his own business, Mill City Music Studio. “I can make noise within reasonable hours.”

Officials with Lowell’s city historic board and planning office, and the National Park Service, did not respond to messages seeking comment about Appleton Mills. But the Massachusetts Historical Commission and numerous architectural and contracting organizations have honored Trinity for its work on the old mill.

Of all the building rehabilitations he has overseen, Mr. Sparrow said, Appleton Mills might be his favorite.

“I keep coming back to this,” he said, standing in the building’s central atrium. “I really do.”