The SUN has been reporting with enthusiasm about Lowell’s growing prominence as a location for “major motion pictures,” as the term used to be. The hundreds of restored buildings and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on renovation and preservation are paying off with what we have to admit is an unintended consequence. Lowell’s authentic 19th-century built environment offers a setting that no production team can reproduce. Certain parts of Lowell have been made-over in one respect, but the city has not been made up. For all the improvements, the streets, neighborhoods, buildings, and people retain their original character. I suppose the closest anyone got to predicting this would be Dr. Patrick J. Mogan, if you take a “loose construction” of his often-repeated phrase that “the preserved buildings will be the props around which the story will be told.” He would say this when explaining why saving the buildings and protecting the architecture were so important — and also to make clear that telling the story was the ultimate goal.

For about ten years, I worked for the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission (LHPC), U.S. Department of the Interior, a federal agency (now dissolved) that worked hand-in-hand with the National Park Service to create Lowell National Historical Park. The LHPC’s mission was “To tell the human story of the Industrial Revolution in a 19th-century setting by encouraging cultural expression.” When Pat Mogan said “story,” he meant the story of Lowell’s people, or, more accurately, the stories of Lowell’s people.  The preservation work and even the Park as an organization were a means to an end — the documentation, celebration, and expression of those stories in whatever form they might take: visual art, music, literature, theater, history, journalism, photography, film, and other media.

What’s happening now is that artists from the film industry are choosing the Lowell setting to tell their stories, including an occasional Lowell tale like the boxing story that will be filmed here this summer. From a public policy standpoint, this is the creative economy in action. Laws were passed to encourage film production. I realize questions are being raised about the trade-off of tax credits vs. economic impact. However, Lowell and Massachusetts are capitalizing on natural resources (sustainable resources, in this case) to generate business activity. In our case, Lowell is leveraging investments made in the past 30 years to improve the physical character of the city. Not to be overlooked in this equation is the parallel effort in the past 30 years to produce and present excellent cultural activities in the city, which has established the city’s reputation as a cultural hub, an artistic center. These factors work together to add an intangible value, making Lowell a more interesting and attractive place.