There was no city council meeting this week due to Veterans Day falling on Tuesday, so I’ll do another dive into Lowell history.

In two recent city council meetings, City Manager Tom Golden has talked optimistically about redevelopment plans for the former Lowell District Court and its neighbor, the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. Today I’ll share some history of the ICC and what came before it.

Central to the site’s history is the Pawtucket Canal which was constructed as a transportation canal in the 1790s to allow cargo-carrying barges and rafts of timber to bypass the Pawtucket Falls where the Merrimack River drops 32 feet in less than a mile. Previously, all cargo heading downriver, including giant logs to be used for masts of sailing ships, had to be hauled out of the Merrimack above the falls, dragged along the bank to a point below the falls, then refloated to continue the water journey to Newburyport and the Atlantic Ocean.

Once dug, the Pawtucket Canal allowed river traffic to bypass the falls by using four lock chambers to handle the change in elevation of the river. The last of these lock chambers, known as Lower Locks, is located at the end of the canal where it flows into the Concord River. The Pawtucket Canal opened for business in 1797 and at first was quite successful, but the opening of the rival Middlesex Canal a few years later took away all the toll-paying traffic and the Pawtucket Canal ceased operations.

Although the Pawtucket Canal had fallen into disuse, in 1813, two local residents, Phineas Whiting and Josiah Fletcher, erected a cotton mill alongside the canal on a portion of the land now occupied by the ICC. In 1818, Whiting and Fletcher sold their mill to Thomas Hurd who converted it to a woolen mill which became one of the first in America to manufacture satinet, a fabric that used cotton for the lengthwise threads and wool for the crosswise threads. This yielded a smooth material with a satin-like finish which was extremely durable and water-resistant. Hurd’s operation was so successful that in 1820, he replaced the original wooden mill building with a larger one made of brick.

Hurd’s success was short-lived. An economic downturn in 1828 forced him into bankruptcy and the newly formed Middlesex Company purchased his mill in 1830. By then, Lowell was already the center of textile production in America with the Merrimack Manufacturing Company having opened in 1823; the Hamilton Mills in 1825; the Appleton Mills in 1828; and the Lowell Mills in 1828. However, the Middlesex was the only major Lowell mill to manufacture wool cloth, and it quickly became the largest establishment making woolen fabric in America. (Among those bringing their wool to Lowell to sell to the Middlesex was an upstate New York sheep farmer named John Brown who later became famous for his abolitionist activities – there’s always a Lowell connection.)

Although the Middlesex Manufacturing Company thrived during the Civil War when there was great demand for woolen cloth for army uniforms and for a few decades after, it struggled as the 1800s came to an end and ceased operations entirely in 1914. Ownership of the large physical plant was divided and sold off to smaller companies that used the mill buildings sporadically, however, by 1939 almost all industrial activity on the site had ceased.

In 1955, the city of Lowell took the combined Middlesex Manufacturing site by eminent domain for use as a municipal parking lot. Tragedy struck in 1956 when the chimney of one of the mill buildings being demolished by the city’s contractor collapsed, killing one of the workers, 23-year-old Walter B. Smith. The following year the city named the new parking lot for Smith.

The parcel remained a city-owned surface parking lot until April 11, 1984, when the city conveyed most of the site to Lowell Inn Associates, a corporation led by hotel-developer Arthur S. Robbins of Providence, Rhode Island. Although Robbins was initially skeptical of the viability of a large hotel in downtown Lowell, the city, led by US Senator Paul Tsongas, sold him on the concept with the aid of substantial incentives from all levels of government and from other area businesses.

Among the incentives that drew the hotel here was the city’s promise to construct an $8.5 million, 1000-space parking garage at Lower Locks with 320 of its parking spaces dedicated to hotel use, and a footbridge across the Pawtucket Canal connecting the hotel site to that of the proposed $12 million corporate training center to be constructed by Lowell computer giant Wang Laboratories.

Perhaps the most important incentive came from Wang. This new building, which is now the home of Middlesex Community College’s city campus, was built to be Wang’s corporate education center which would provide training for Wang’s customers, management, and marketing personnel. Wang executed an agreement with Robbins guaranteeing that Wang personnel and customers would occupy at least 60 percent of the rooms in the hotel year-round. With that cushion, Robbins commenced construction of the $22 million hotel.

An advertisement in the March 26, 1985, Boston Globe said much about the new hotel which opened soon after May:

THE NEW LOWELL HILTON: A magnificent new hotel set in the heart of Lowell National Historical and Heritage State Park

Why settle for an ordinary hotel?

• 251 superb guest rooms
• 18 suites
• Concierge Level with private lounge, honor bar and luxurious accommodations
• Banquet and meeting space for 10 to 800
• ASHLEY’S, an unforgettable gourmet dining experience
• VIBRATIONS, a magnificently appointed lounge offering top live entertainment nightly. Dedicated to Dancing, Drinking and Conversation
• ARTHUR’S, a sophisticated “quiet” lounge. Relaxing Atmosphere, subdued piano and your favorite cocktails or wine by the glass
• Indoor/outdoor pool
• Health Club with Whirlpool and Saunas
• Game Room
• Gift Shop
• Tourist and National Park information desk
• Laundry facilities and Valet service

Initially, the hotel did well, hosting events such as a three-day conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers in the summer of 1986. Many similar events came to the hotel.

But the good times for the Lowell Hilton ended soon. The biggest wound came from the collapse of Wang which lost its high-tech dominance to companies like Microsoft and Apple. Soon Wang abandoned the training center and occupancy of the hotel plummeted, never reaching the levels needed to support the place.

In February 1990, the struggling Hilton asked the Lowell city council to forgive a $2.7 million second mortgage held by the city (on behalf of the Lowell Development and Finance Corporation) so the hotel could renegotiate its first mortgage and continue operations. The council rejected this effort by a 5 to 4 vote (it needed six votes to pass). As a result of that vote, on June 21, 1990, Coast Saving, which held the first mortgage on the hotel, foreclosed and bought the property at auction for $16 million.

Two years later, Coast sold the property to SAI Hotels Inc. for $1.8 million. This outfit operated the hotel under the Sheraton brand, but they couldn’t make it work. In 1997, SAI sold the property to another hospitality outfit, LHG LLC, which tried to make the Doubletree brand work, without success. Since running a traditional hotel seemed unfeasible on the site, there was often discussion about converting the building into a long-term care facility.

Finally, UMass Lowell stepped up and purchased the Doubletree Hotel from its private owners for $15 million with the deed being recorded on July 31, 2009. The University saw the acquisition of the building as a great opportunity to expand the school’s presence in downtown Lowell. Renaming the building the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center, the school made it a dormitory for students in its Honors Program and a conference center that hosted public events like the school’s Lunchtime Lecture Series and an Irish American History Conference. The ICC also set aside some rooms for paying guests in a traditional hotel setting.

The ICC was an integral part of downtown life and the hub of civic and social activities, especially those related to the creative economy. But that changed in August 2023 when UMass Lowell announced that in the face of budget cuts, declining enrollment, and a surplus of dormitory rooms, it would close the ICC immediately and relocate the students who had been assigned there for housing to dormitories elsewhere on the school’s campus.

Concurrently, Governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency due to rapidly rising numbers of migrant families arriving in Massachusetts, mostly from Haiti and Venezuela, who needed shelter and services. That is how the ICC was utilized until this spring when it was converted to a short-term emergency shelter for families. According to City Manager Golden, that use is supposed to come to an end next summer, or perhaps as early as the end of next month. What will happen to the building after that is unclear but will be a topic of debate in the coming months.

Back in 2013, I participated in a TEDx event here in Lowell. The title of my talk was “Failure as opportunity: The founding of Lowell, Massachusetts.” My premise was that throughout Lowell’s history, whenever a plan or project didn’t work out as intended, rather than give up, the people of the city tried something else, and that this perpetual persistence is what elevated Lowell above so many other struggling mid-sized cities in Post Industrial America.

My talk, which was 14 minutes long, is still available on YouTube.