The Lowell City Council met last Tuesday night. I’ll get to that shortly, but first I want to revisit the pre-Thanksgiving news that the retail establishments in Mill No. 5 will close early in 2025, and that the space they occupy will be transferred to the Lowell Community Charter Public School. I wrote about this at length in my newsletters of December 1, 2024, and December 8, 2024. As a result of the interest I’ve shown in this news, earlier this week I found myself on a Zoom call with Jim Lichoulas Jr., the trustee of the trust which owns the Mill No. 5 space, and Robert Gignac, the Chief Operating Officer of the charter school.

During this conversation, I gained some insight into how this all came about, but first, let’s quickly review the properties involved. There are two large mill buildings, formerly of the Appleton Manufacturing Company, on Jackson Street with their backs facing Middlesex Street. The building closest to Central Street is known as Mill No. 6; the building closer to Thorndike Street is Mill No. 5. Because they are separated by a party wall, from the outside it looks like one big brick building.

The Lichoulas family has owned these buildings and other lots in the vicinity since the 1980s. In 2000, the brand-new Lowell Community Charter Public School moved into first two floors of Mill No. 6, leasing the space for the first five years, and continuing to lease it when, in 2004, Lichoulas condominiumized Mill No. 6 into three large condominium units: Floors 1 and 2 are the school unit; floors 3 and 4 are another unit that contains a separate residential condominium complex; and floors 5 and 6 are a third unit that contains still another separate residential condominium complex. (Having a condominium complex within a larger condominium unit is understandably confusing.)

Then in 2015, several things happened. Lichoulas sold the Mill No. 6 school condominium to the charter school which went from a rent-paying tenant to the owner of the condominium. Lichoulas also declared a condominium in Mill No. 5, only in this instance he created just two units: a “school unit” of the first two floors; and a “commercial unit” of the third, fourth, and fifth floors (as well as portions of the first two floors). Lichoulas sold the “school unit” to the expanding charter school and retained ownership of the commercial unit. At the same time, Lichoulas also sold several vacant parcels on the other side of Middlesex Street to the charter school.

Thus ends the review. Everyone with me so far? Here’s what I learned this week:

The charter school had purchased the vacant lots on Middlesex Street with the intent of building a new structure there. Back in 2015, I recall hearing that the new building would be a gymnasium with parking for staff underneath it, however, I think the plans evolved to be mostly more classrooms and other common areas such as a performance space. Whatever was to be built across Middlesex Street, the students would get to it via an elevated pedestrian walkway over Middlesex Street that would connect the Mill No. 5 & 6 complex and the new structure (just as the two main buildings of Lowell High School are connected by a pedestrian bridge over the Merrimack Canal). Detailed architectural plans for the charter school’s new building and the pedestrian bridge were completed I think in early 2024, and the cost of the project was re-estimated.

However, when the new cost estimates came back, the cost of construction had exploded beyond earlier estimates. For anyone who has followed the saga of the Lowell High addition, or the delay in the Lupoli project in the Hamilton Canal District, this drastic rise in construction costs is a familiar occurrence. The new price tag exceeded the budget, so the charter school was stuck.

At about the same time, the revenue being generated by the retail portion of Mill No. 5 was proving inadequate to keep the place running. Five or so years ago when the Mill No. 5 space first opened, that wasn’t a problem because business there was booming. But then the Covid-19 pandemic struck and everything shut down. However, even after businesses reopened, the volume of customers from before did not return. Cost-saving measures were implemented but they proved inadequate to achieve solvency in the operating cost of the space. Finally, Jim Lichoulas made the difficult decision to shut down the businesses and do something else with the space.

It was only then that the charter school and Lichoulas each learned of the other party’s dilemma. My sense is that there is more than a business relationship between the two. Back in 2000 the charter school almost failed before it started due to difficulty finding a space for the school until the Lichoulas family stepped up and offered Mill No. 6. For the intervening 24 years, there seems to have been an excellent, on-going relationship between Lichoulas and the school. Consequently, when each learned of the other’s predicament, this new deal came together very quickly.

The school will take ownership of the rest of Mill No. 5 and expand into it instead of in new construction on the other side of Middlesex Street, and Lichoulas will convey the Mill No. 5 retail space to an entity with which he’s had a long and positive relationship. The deal is a complicated one and will not become completely clear until later in January when the closing occurs. Let’s just say that like any real estate transfer of this scale, it’s complicated with many details that won’t be known until title passes.

One detail I did learn is that the charter school intends to retain the storefronts that now line the main corridor of the fourth floor of Mill No. 5, except instead of a record store or a cheese shop behind the unique facades, there will be classrooms. And Luna Theater will be retained and used as a theater and performance space. There may even be a public use component to it.

As for the Mill No. 5 businesses that need new homes, I understand that the city is working with them all. Hopefully they will remain clustered together wherever they end up. The massing of complementary businesses together was likely one of the keys to the early success of Mill No. 5. If you disperse the same businesses one per block throughout the downtown, it’s not the same. A cluster of retail establishments together will draw more people and each business will build on the success of the others. But that’s a topic for another day.

****

On Tuesday, the city council unanimously passed Mayor Dan Rourke’s motion to work with Congresswoman Trahan’s office on getting the Lowell City of Learning Community recognized by UNESCO as a designated “city of learning.” Retired UMass Lowell political science professor John Wooding, who I identified in last week’s newsletter as one of the founders of the Lowell City of Learning initiative, spoke on the motion and shared some of the history of the effort and the obstacles that have been faced.

Although the United States was once part of UNESCO (which stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the country withdrew from the organization during the first Trump presidential term. Although President Biden returned the US to the organization, the State Department never created the advisory board required by UNESCO to be in place before a US community could be designated a “city of learning.” While there was no overt opposition within the US government to doing this, it sounds like it just slipped through the cracks and didn’t get done. Although Wooding did not expressly address it, I assume the second Trump Administration will treat UNESCO the same as it was treated during the first so that official City of Learning designation for Lowell could remain elusive, at least for the next four years. But that’s no reason to stop the local Learning City events. After all, continuing this effort would be completely consistent with the vision that Pat Mogan had for the city.

****

Merry Christmas to all. Thanks for reading the newsletter. Be sure to catch next week’s edition which will cover the top Lowell political events of 2024.