At the symbolic groundbreaking for the Hamilton Canal District-Appleton Mills redevelopment project on Thursday, there was deja vu in the air for some of those in attendance. Niki Tsongas, George Duncan, Jim Milinazzo, Fred Faust, Germaine Vigeant, Jim Cook, Brian Martin, Marie Sweeney, Armand Mercier, Martha Mayo, and a few more people in the large crowd were probably recalling the 1982 ribbon-cutting for Market Mills (former Lowell Manufacturing Co.), standing a few hundred yards from the white tent set up on the open lot near the brick remnants of the Appleton Mill.

Nathan Appleton (1779-1861), textiles entrepreneur, congressman, & state representative. His daughter Fanny married poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Looks like a typical long-haired radical, doesn’t he?

Market Mills, with its National (and then-State) Park Visitor Center, Brush Art Gallery & Studios, then-Melting Pot food court, and apartments on upper stories, was a show-piece of “adaptive reuse” and preservation of a 19th-century mill. Until the Mogan Cultural Center and Boott Cotton Mills Museum opened around 1990, Market Mills was “the National Park” for many residents and visitors. When Charles, Prince of Wales, toured Lowell in 1986 his car pulled up in front of the archway at Market Mills.

Cranes criss-crossed the sky over the architectural remains whose reconstruction was underway as Governor Patrick, Mayor Caulfield, Manager Lynch, Congresswoman Tsongas, Senator Panagiotakos, and other state and local officials, representatives from master site developer Trinity Financial, investors, and labor leaders praised the ambitious effort to remake one of the few pieces of Lowell’s historic downtown yet to be revitalized. On the invitation to the groundbreaking the lists for the Development Team, Project Funding Provided By and Development Assistance and Support Provided By were a combined Exhibit A of the case for the modern “Lowell System.” No fewer than 51 people, companies, and agencies are acknowledged for their contributions.

The old “Lowell System” was the successful formula for mass production of textiles—integrated manufacturing, bale-to-bolt.  The modern “Lowell System” is an approach to urban revitalization based on partnership between public and private sectors. Very little has been accomplished in the past 30 to 40 years outside of the partnership model. That’s where Lowell gets the ”mojo” that curious and envious outsiders discover when they come to Lowell to ask how Lowell did “it,” meaning “recycled the city,” turning its liabilities into assets and old dim prospects into hope and aspiration. At its best, it’s about confidence through cooperation, strength in numbers, a chain whose links reinforce each other.

Whether it was Market Mills or the apartments along the Northern Canal renewed by the Coalition for a Better Acre and its financial and development partners or Middlesex Community College transforming Wang Laboratories’ investment in a training center at Lower Locks or the Lowell Plan, Inc., incubating the city’s cultural affairs office or UMass Lowell, City Hall, the Commonwealth, and National Park Service funding and building the arena and ballpark—almost every venture required a team to be realized. This week’s ceremony in the vacant lot demonstrated that the modern “Lowell System” still works.

“The restoration of the Appleton Mills into 130 units of affordable artist housing will be an exciting step forward for Lowell’s growing creative economy sector.  Even more importantly however, the restoration of this mill complex will dramatically improve the gateway into Downtown Lowell and unlock the full potential of the Hamilton Canal District to attract $600-800 million in private investment and create over 1000 new permanent jobs in a transit-oriented site in the heart of a gateway city,” said City Manager Bernard Lynch. “The City of Lowell is sincerely grateful for the state assistance with both funding and permitting without which this project would not be proceeding today.” (excerpt from a news release from the Office of the Governor)