The Revitalization of Lowell, Mass.

When Kathleen Plath and her husband opened their restaurant in 1994, Lowell, Mass., was far from the obvious choice.

“Everybody told us we were crazy to open in Lowell and that nobody would go out in Lowell,” Plath says, recalling the vacant storefronts and condemned buildings downtown.

Lowell was originally founded as a textile town in the 1800s, and fell into decline after the mills began closing in the 1910s and 1920s. After a brief economic boost during World War II, the city’s economy fell further. By the 1960s, Lowell had a reputation as a "rough place to live," and it’s been hard to shake that image, says Gary Destramp, who grew up in the city and now has an art studio in one of its former mill buildings.

“Lowell’s always got a bad rap in the past. … The mills were empty, they were dingy. [There were] drugs and prostitution,” Destramp recalls. But the city has been changing: “It’s hard to lose that tag, but they’ve slowly turned it around somewhat. … If you’re looking for trouble you’ll find it, but if you’re minding your business and doing your thing, it’s great.”

Over the years, Lowell has made several big pushes to revitalize, bringing in a major computer company in the 1980s and turning old mill buildings into new mixed-use spaces. City leaders say new changes are helping drive its “third wave” of economic recovery.

Today, the city is the fifth-most populous in Massachusetts, with an hour’s drive between its City Hall and Boston’s. It’s a diverse city, with a strong history of immigration that ranges from Irish in the 19th century to Cambodians toward the end of the 20th. It has a multicultural restaurant scene, with several spots featured on Hulu’s Taste the Nation. It’s also home to University of Massachusetts Lowell, a major research university whose presence, many residents note, means it’s possible to go from kindergarten to Ph.D. all in the local public education system.

Lowell is bringing in a wave of new development, and working to spur business.

“We are in the process right now of going through the next boom cycle,” says City Manager Tom Golden, ticking off the different development projects throughout the city. “There’s a lot of activity with market-rate housing, affordable housing, R&D, office space … .”

Housing stock is in high demand statewide, and several development projects in Lowell are slated to bring more market-rate and affordable units. That includes 500 units as part of its anticipated Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC) project and more. The city is also in negotiations over developing 15 acres of vacant and underutilized land along the Hamilton Canal and anticipating bringing in high-tech workers as well as office and research space with the LINC project.

Plus, Golden says, more vacant storefronts are being put to active use.

“We're really starting to build even more housing in our downtown,” says Ali Carter, the city’s director of Economic Development. “We're doing a whole bunch to support small businesses in the city, and we're building a lot of housing elsewhere in the city — not just downtown — and we really have been very inviting to businesses here.” The city drew a vote of confidence from Moody’s, which upgraded its issuer rating and its rating on the city’s general obligation limited tax bonds.

As for Plath’s restaurant? Thirty-one years later, it’s thriving: “Growing up, downtown Lowell at certain periods of time could be a scary place,” Plath says. “But it's so vibrant now, and there's so much going on.”

Third Wave

The city has mounted a few big economic development efforts over the decades. The first came in the late 1970s and 1980s, when Lowell preserved its old mill buildings rather than tear them down, creating a national historic park that drew visitors. The city also attracted the headquarters of computer company Wang Laboratories in 1976, providing a much-needed infusion of local jobs during a time of high unemployment. But the company went bankrupt in 1992.

By then, many old mill buildings had been put to commercial use. The city’s second wave of economic development in the 1990s and early 2000s featured new zoning to encourage converting more mills into housing and mixed use. That helped put vacant properties to use and promote more day- and nighttime activities in the downtown core, says Allison Lamey, executive director of the Lowell Plan, a local nonprofit economic development organization.

Today’s third wave sees the city ramping up efforts to build housing, support small businesses and foster an inviting business environment, Carter says.

The city and public university are collaborating for LINC, which aims to develop a 1 million-square-foot area into commercial offices, labs, workforce housing, retail and entertainment venues. It is expected to attract companies in sectors like biotech, robotics, climate tech and cybersecurity, and it already includes Draper Labs’ microelectronics division as an anchor tenant. The project is also expected to entice companies that work in adjacent fields — such as those supplying parts used by the LINC companies — to enter other parts of the city.

The corridor’s location right next to the downtown district could boost patronage at local businesses, too, an attractive proposition given that nearly 80 percent of downtown businesses reported fewer in-person customers in 2021 than 2020.

From Vacant to Vibrant

Lowell is also taking aim at vacant properties. A city ordinance cracks down on owners of large buildings who deliberately keep them empty and devaluing for years to get tax write-offs, Carter says. Lowell requires owners to pay an annual vacant property registration fee — but if they want to avoid that cost, they can sell or the city will help find tenants, restoration grants or other resources for getting the property active again.

In another effort to fill vacant properties and drive the economy, the city has been co-running a program that lets prospective entrepreneurs set up pop-up shops in two formerly vacant downtown storefronts. Participants pay low rent and get to spend a few months testing the market before taking on the financial risks of opening their own store. The program runs from November 2023 through 2026, and so far at least two participants have gone on to open their own spaces, while others went back to the drawing board.

Retail, restaurant and small-scale manufacturing businesses can apply for up to $30,000 of forgivable loans from the city to help get started, via a program launched in 2023. So far, 17 businesses have taken advantage of it. The Downtown Lowell Vacant Storefront Program has also given $50,000 of state tax credits to five businesses that opened in locations that had been vacant for at least a year.

“If you want your community to have independent shops and not just chains, we think it's worth giving people the first step up in that ladder to getting [themselves] up and running,” Carter says.

Preserving Lowell’s uniqueness is part of its power, residents say. Independent restaurants and stores give residents a reason to spend locally, rather than turn to e-commerce, and the historic character helps draw visitors.

A Place to Stay

While Lowell is more affordable than nearby cities like Boston, rising housing costs are a problem across Massachusetts. More than half of Lowell renters, and more than a third of its homeowners, spend over a third of their income on housing costs. A fifth of residents spend over half their income on housing.

Lowell’s May 2024 master plan warned of a stagnating population, with people slowly moving out of the city. Lamey — from nonprofit Lowell Plan — noted that the city needs jobs and affordable-enough rents to retain students after they graduate.

Housing in general, followed by lack of affordable housing in particular, topped residents’ lists of concerns in a 2023 community needs assessment conducted by Lowell-based nonprofit Community Teamwork, which works to support low-income people.

“[Housing] is not affordable in a lot of locations, including Lowell. …Rents have increased just exorbitantly,” says Plath, who also serves as Community Teamwork’s director of marketing and communications. Her daughter is among those who moved away in part for cheaper living costs.

But the city has to strike a delicate balance. It needs more deeply affordable housing, but also more market-rate units, to bring in residents with the spending power to sustain local businesses. Still, too much market-rate housing would drive up rents to the point of displacing current residents.

The city is trying to ramp up housing stock, in part by zoning to enable more multifamily and mixed-use housing. It’s also trying to make it easy for developers to build in the city by providing them with a single point of contact who will track down answers to all their questions, rather than leave developers to contact each different city department, says Golden. And with limited land for building outwards, the city is encouraging building up, with taller developments.

Working to revitalize also means hammering the basics: making the city feel safe and clean, Golden says. That includes having an effective police department and tackling quality-of-life issues, like removing graffiti from streetlights and emptying overflowing trash bins. To further drive this, the city just launched a new 311 system with an app and online portal to let people report issues like potholes and track the city’s response. It also helps the city measure how quickly it’s resolving problems. As Lowell makes city improvements, “taxes go up, but they [residents] are starting to see what it goes up for,” Golden says, noting the city is spending on things like new fire trucks and school building improvements.

Overall: “[Lowell] is where I’ve lived for the past 54 years, and I'm really starting to see this transformation that I've always hoped would happen,” Golden says.

While Lowell has had its bouts of hard times, it’s also a city with a history of reinvigoration, Plath says. “One thing I can say about Lowell — it knows how to revitalize itself over and over and over again.”