Affordable housing becomes draw for Lawrence

LAWRENCE -- Linda Ford waited her turn along with scores of other prospective buyers to put down a deposit on a condominium loft in an old mill being renovated along the Merrimack River. This is the same city where, 20 years ago, vandals yanked out her car battery before rolling her red Plymouth down a hill, and where robbers ransacked her apartment.

Ford and fellow buyers reserved 80 of the initial 200 lofts near downtown in what was once the country's largest worsted-wool mill. Lawrence was ''scary" in the 1980s, she said, but the loft's price appeals to her today: $179,900 for an 868-square-foot studio with sunlight streaming in through 13-foot-high windows.

Next door in North Andover, ''I can't get anything under $200,000 -- there's no way, no how," said Ford, 40, who runs group homes for disabled adults. She has rented for years in North Andover.

Massachusetts home prices have doubled in seven years. Despite a recent slowdown in the real estate market, the median price of a home in Massachusetts is the third highest in the country, according to US Census figures, after California and Hawaii.

Homes are so expensive that buyers priced out of traditionally more-desirable communities have been willing to consider alternatives. Home prices rose more than 10 percent annually from 2002 to 2004 in Lawrence, as some buyers decided to look beyond the city's stubbornly high unemployment, poverty, and struggling school system.

When he purchased the mill for $4.4 million in 2003, ''The big question was whether the middle class would be willing to buy a home and live in Lawrence," said developer Robert Ansin. ''That question was answered. They will."

Construction doesn't begin until July. Yet all but one of the 15 penthouse units that overlook the river have already sold, said Ansin, whose father, Ronald Ansin, owned the former Anwelt Shoe factory in Fitchburg. Buyers paid $419,900 to $449,900 for the three-story lofts, with 2,000 square feet of living space and sweeping views of the river from the roof decks.

On average, the condos cost $200 per square foot. That compares with the ''high $300s" in North Andover, said Dennis McCarthy, a Boston developer who restores brownstones. On Marlborough Street in Boston, his firm recently sold a 344-square-foot, basement studio for $317,000, or more than $900 per square foot -- ''crazy money," he said.

''For 40 percent less you get almost three times the size" in Lawrence, he said. ''You're living near [Interstates] 495 and 93 and can get to Boston, the mountains, the beaches -- talk about location."

While two-thirds of Lawrence's population is Latino, only a handful were among last weekend's prospective buyers in the project, Monarch on the Merrimack. Most were white and working-class or middle-class people from surrounding towns or from New Hampshire and Maine: a child-care worker, a third-grade teacher, and an owner of a Lawrence interior decorative-paint firm. Some work in Boston. Most were in their 20s, 30s, or 40s but some baby boomers bought lofts for second homes or to downsize in retirement.

First to arrive Saturday morning was Kathy Timmons, who dashed in to drop off her check before attending a funeral. The North Andover resident bought a unit for her son, who will commute to graduate school at Simmons College and a job in Boston.

Lawrence residents have high hopes that Monarch -- the city's largest condo project ever -- can change Lawrence's destiny. '

'This is where generations of immigrant families have come to own their homes, raise kids, and get a leg up. Then they go to Andover and North Andover," said former city councilor Richard Consoli. Monarch's success is ''affirmation of people's confidence in the city, despite all the bad news."

Lawrence's economic woes are captured in the statistics: an 11 percent jobless rate and per capita annual income of $13,360, half the state level. Employment peaked in the mid-1980s and the city never replaced the textile- and apparel-making jobs in plants that moved overseas or closed.

Lawrence's Latino community is a growing part of the city's economy. Lawrence had 1,246 Latino-owned firms in 2002, according to the US Census Bureau -- half as many as Boston, a city with more than eight times the population. But in the last five years, the city of 72,000 lost 2,100 jobs, said Andrew Sum, a Northeastern University economics professor. Many residents do not own cars, making it difficult to get to work in the wealthier communities surrounding them.

''What's going to replace manufacturing as the source of your income from the outside world?" Sum asked. Creating good-paying jobs for residents ''is a major economic challenge facing Lawrence," he said.

The city's social problems are symbolized by a decade of turmoil in the school system.

Two consecutive superintendents were fired for allegedly misusing funds and current superintendent Wilfredo T. Laboy and School Committee member Amy C. McGovern recently dropped their twin charges of assault, filed after a shoving match. The city is building a new high school, but one in three students drops out.

The city has been depressed for so long it defines itself by what it is not: There have been no murders in 20 months. Arson, rampant in the early 1990s is, a city official said, ''pretty much nonexistent now." And Lawrence cannot be confused with nearby Lowell, where decades of revitalization efforts have led to $1 million downtown condos for baby boomers.

Lawrence has a sprinkling of new developments next door to the condos, including a commuter rail station. New Hampshire pizza-chain owner Salvatore Lupoli in September opened a pizzeria on the Merrimack River. Since acquiring the property in 2003, Lupoli has brought in businesses as tenants in buildings on the property, generating 900 new jobs, his company said. The state pledged $350,000 to revive plans for a riverwalk starting at Sal's and running past the Monarch lofts to the New Balance Factory Store.

But economists and city leaders agree that the condominium project alone will not change the fortunes of Lawrence.

''The condos don't create jobs other than the construction jobs while it's being built," said Robert Forrant, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Forrant is concerned the mill-condo project will be ''an enclave" for commuters who ''hop on the train and go to Boston" but don't participate in the life of the community.

Scott Pascucci, who lives in Malibu, Calif., purchased a penthouse in the renovated mill for a place to stay when visiting his mother in Andover.

But his goal is partly investment, and he concedes that he's taking a chance on Lawrence's revival. ''It's an intelligent risk," he said.

Michael Sweeney, Lawrence's new director of planning, would agree. He said Ansin's condo project will draw not only residents but also their friends, relatives, and professional contacts and create something upon which to build.

''People have to remember," he said, ''where Lawrence has been."

Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.