Once again, Lowell is reinventing itself while preserving its heritage and honoring its history.
Having just completed a set of community-building workshops, and after about a decade of preparation, the city is gearing up to start construction on the Hamilton Canal District, an ambitious $800 million, 15-acre development project that will double the size of downtown when all is said and done, Lowell officials said.
Leading up to this point, one of the key cogs in the process was extensive community involvement, said Adam Baacke, the city’s assistant city manager and Department of Planning and Development director.
“There are a series of neighborhoods that immediately abut this project and we wanted something of this scale to have a beneficial effect in these neighborhoods,’’ Baacke said. “A lot of the concerns came down to the question of connections not just for vehicles, but for pedestrians for the large part. A lot of the Hamilton Canal work is actually offsite because it’s dealing with 14 intersections that are not in the district that are slated for improvement because of the project.’’
The city’s portion of expenditures in the project is a little more than $10 million, most of which was associated with the initial costs of acquiring the properties to assemble the district. Half of that cost has been paid for through state and federal grants, and the rest was borrowed, Baacke said. However, the project developer’s payment to the city “will more than pay for the city’s local investment in the project,’’ he said, adding that the city is very close to repaying all its debt and still has $8 million worth of federal grant applications pending decision.
When completed in 10 to 15 years, the Hamilton Canal District will have about 2 million square feet of mixed-use development, said Aaron Clausen, the city’s associate planner. Using current tax figures, the finished project is estimated to net Lowell $4 million in annual tax revenue, Baacke said.
Anchoring the district will be the redevelopment of Appleton Mills, which served as a textile manufacturing site from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Baacke said. Between the 1920s and 1990s, the mill building went through a number of uses, but was also neglected, with parts of it demolished.
“It’s right in the gateway of the city,’’ Baacke said. “It is the most physically challenging property in downtown Lowell.’’
In 2006, six years after the City Council and the state approved an urban-renewal plan for the area and three years after the Hamilton Canal District vision was defined, the city purchased the building for $1 million from private owners.
“It’s a severely deteriorated property, barely standing, and it will require an enormous amount of work and effort to restore it,’’ Baacke said. “In the absence of all other considerations, it would probably have been easier to demolish it, but in the larger picture, it’s an integral part of the heart of the city.’’
City officials sold the property to Boston developers Trinity Financial, which was selected as the district’s master developer. Due to the project’s size and designation as an urban-renewal and transit-oriented development, the city departed from land-use zoning restrictions and adopted form-based zoning that relied on resident input, Baacke said. Unlike most private developments that invite public input after plans are all but finalized, the Hamilton Canal District process partnered residents with the developers from the get-go.
“What made the developer interested in this very public, inclusive, and very expensive for them master-planning process is that we agreed that if we could create a community consensus as to what should be there, and put that in a plan, the city would fully entitle it in zoning,’’ Baacke said.
Katheleen Conti can be reached at kconti@globe.com 
