NEW BEDFORD – The former Cliftex Mill, a 300,000-square-foot building that had been in danger of being knocked down a year ago, will undergo a $30 million renovation and be reopened as rental apartments.
Construction is expected to begin in 2009, developers Keith Properties Inc. and Winn Development said in a joint release with the city.
“New Bedford’s mill buildings are tremendous historic assets that can be converted for 21st-century use,” Mayor Scott W. Lang said in a statement.
“What is currently an eyesore will become a beautifully renovated, affordable residential rental development,” Lang said. “This transformation will result in an affordable-housing development of equal quality to the award-winning Whaler’s Place,” another Keith Properties-Winn Development project.
At Cliftex Mill, the developers will be working with The Architectural Team, a firm focusing on historic preservation and adaptive reuse.
The mill – a historic property in New Bedford’s Upper Harbor Redevelopment District, near Whaler’s Place – “has over the past several years been vastly underutilized and a blight on the neighborhood,” city officials said. “As has been the fate of several such plants in the immediate vicinity, the demolition of this structure has been pressured.”
In 2007, the city noted, property owner Edward Fitzsimmons sought to demolish the structure. The City Council voted unanimously to allow the destruction, but Lang vetoed the move.
The Cliftex Mill project will receive gap financing from the New Bedford Economic Development Council (NBEDC) for about 240,000 square feet of the redevelopment, the city added.
“The efforts of many parties are responsible for getting this project together,” NBEDC Executive Director Matthew A. Morrissey said in a statement. “The rehabilitation of the former Cliftex Mill will ensure that this piece of the city’s history will continue on in another productive use and adding to the tax base.”
The New Bedford Economic Development Council (NBEDC) works with local organizations and government agencies to help your New Bedford business succeed. For more information, visit www.nbedc.org. For news and information from the City of New Bedford, visit www.ci.new-bedford.ma-us.
Keith Properties Inc. is based in Stoughton, Mass. For additional information, visit www.KeithProperties.net. Winn Development – an arm of the Boston-based Winn Companies group – has acquired and developed holdings of more than $1.5 billion. For more information, visit www.WinnCompanies.com.
