December 8, 2024

In last Sunday’s newsletter, I mentioned a Lowell Sun report that the city of Lowell had imposed a $300 per day fine on the Eliot Church for failing to clear trash from its property. As I predicted, the matter came up at Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting. Councilors self-righteously criticized the Sun for saying the fine was per day when it was only a one-time fine (for now). To me, the issue is not the frequency of the fine but the imposition of it in the first place.

Located at 273 Summer Street, across from the South Common, the Eliot Church celebrated its 150th birthday this year. The current church building was constructed in 1874 although the congregation was organized several years earlier. The church is named after the Rev. John Eliot (1604-1690) who was born and educated in England, but who fled that country in 1631 because of his Puritan religious beliefs.

Eliot settled in Massachusetts and became minister at the First Church in Roxbury. In addition to his traditional pastoral duties, Eliot became devoted to the task of bringing the Christian religion to the indigenous people of Massachusetts. To advance that goal, Eliot learned the Wampanoag language and began traveling to and beyond the frontier of English settlement to preach to the Native Americans. In the late 1640s, that frontier included Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River. Each spring, Eliot would travel to the large Native American village called Wamesit, which was located to the east of the falls at the confluence of the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (today’s downtown Lowell). Because he returned each year and stayed for extended periods, Eliot constructed a small log building on a prominent hill inland from the river and used it as a chapel. The site of that log building, the first Christian house of worship in this region, is the location of the current Eliot Church.

In 1930, the Massachusetts Tercentenary Commission erected a plaque that still stands at the corner of Summer and Favor Street that reads:

“MEETINGHOUSE HILL – Site of chapel erected in 1653 for John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians. Here he preached to the Wamesit and Pennacook Indians, converting many and establishing a village of Christian Indians called Wamesit.”

While the wording of the plaque and the sentiments expressed on it depict an outdated and not entirely accurate view of history, the land the church sits upon has enormous historic and moral significance as does the mission pursued by those who work and worship within the church. Besides hosting a traditional Christian congregation and all its related functions, the Eliot Church is used by related organizations to feed and shelter the homeless, although not with overnight accommodations. (It is homeless individuals who camp on the small lawn of the church after the building closes each night who are the primary depositors of the trash for which the Eliot Church has been fined.)

Homelessness is a big problem nationally and locally, both for those who experience it but also for those who suffer from collateral damage. The latter group includes those whose lives and businesses in the vicinity of the South Common are adversely affected by things like discarded needles and human waste left in entryways to businesses by those who sheltered overnight in those spaces. History shows that there is no easy solution to such problems. What is required is thoughtful persistence backed by adequate resources. But in America today, it seems that frustration and impatience with complicated problems like homelessness – and many other issues – has led many to seek solutions that masquerade as easy, effective, and decisive, but which are instead cruel, shortsighted and futile.

In its turn toward fining a church that serves the homeless or outright arresting homeless individuals (see, “Arrested for the crime of being homeless” in the December 5, 2024, Lowell Sun), the Lowell City Council mirrors this broader trend in America today.

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If you go to LTC’s YouTube channel and watch the last half dozen Lowell City Council meetings, you would conclude that the mission statement of the current city council has three parts: (1) eradicate the homeless (as opposed to homelessness); (2) improve the trafficability of our streets; and (3) penalize those who drive too fast on the streets that the city has spent millions to make it easier to drive fast on.

Someone with a passing interest in local government or urban planning might be left wondering, where is the economic development strategy? Well, in 2024, there isn’t one. Sure, councilors will pontificate about economic development, and they will cherry pick an occasional issue, but that’s not what a “strategy” is.

An urban development strategy is a long-term, comprehensive plan that guides local government decisions and actions to shape the physical, economic, and social development of a city. It aims to promote sustainable growth, improve quality of life, and address current and future challenges through coordinated policies and initiatives.

What is perhaps most frustrating is that the city’s Department of Planning and Development has historically developed superb strategic plans, but successive councils have never even read them, never mind followed them. Instead, councilors take a reactionary approach to whatever issue bubbles up that week while disregarding the big picture that is essential to moving the city in a positive direction.

The coming closure of Mill No. 5 is fallout from this approach. Predictably, on Tuesday the council suspended its rules to take up the Mill No. 5 news. Councilors urged the City Manager to help the Mill No. 5 businesses locate elsewhere, reminded people that those businesses will still be open for a few more weeks, but generally acted as passive bystanders tut-tutting the bad news.

I devoted a big chunk of last week’s newsletter to how the ownership of Mill No. 5 is organized. But since that is an extremely complicated arrangement, the understanding of which is important to following how this will play out, I’ll review some of it again.

There are two separate mill buildings on the south side of Jackson Street. They are known as Mill No. 6, which is closer to Central Street, and Mill No. 5, which is closer to the Lord Overpass. The buildings share a common wall, so it’s tough to know exactly where one ends and the other begins, although the elevator for Mill No. 5 is at the boundary between the two mills. But the buildings are legally separate structures, on separate parcels of land. Since the 1980s, both buildings have been owned by the Lichoulas family in various ways. By 2004, Jim Lichoulas Jr. was the record owner of both buildings in his capacity as trustee of a family trust.

In 2004, Lichoulas “condominiumized” Mill No. 6. What makes this difficult to envision is that when we hear “condominium” we think of a single living space, maybe half of a duplex, or a single floor of a triple decker, or an apartment-like unit within a larger building. Each condominium unit is separately owned, although there is a condominium association that manages the “common areas” such as hallways, elevator shafts, and basements. The condo association is composed of all those who own individual units.

While that is the most common manifestation of a condominium, it is not the only type. In 2004, in a novel-for-this-area arrangement, Lichoulas converted the six-floor Mill No. 6 into three condominium units. Each of those condominium units consisted of two floors. The unit covering the first two floors was already occupied by the Lowell Community Charter Public School, which was renting those two floors, and continued to do so after the condominium conversion.

In 2006, Lichoulas took the original condominium unit that consisted of the fifth and sixth floors of Mill No. 6, and created a new condominium within it. Called the “Upper Cotton House Lofts”, this condominium development consisted of 31 residential units that were all sold to individual owners. The Upper Cotton House Lofts is what most of us think of when we hear the term condominium.

Then in 2007, Lichoulas took the original condominium unit that consisted of the third and fourth floors of Mill No. 6 and created another new condominium within it. This one was called Cotton House Lofts II and it consisted of 30 residential units, all of which were sold and occupied by individual owners.

The next big change to Mill No. 6 occurred in 2015 when Lichoulas sold the single original condominium unit that consisted of the entire first and second floors to the Charter School which had occupied that space as a tenant since 2000. The purchase price was $3.6 million.

To review thus far, since 2015, Mill No. 6 has been owned as follows: the first and second floors are owned by the Charter School; the third and fourth floors are owned by the 30 unit owners of the Cotton House Lofts II Condominium; and the fifth and sixth floors are owned by the 31 unit owners of the Upper Cotton House Condominium.

The recent news about Mill No. 5 has no direct impact on Mill No. 6.

As for Mill No. 5, in the same 2015 transaction that sold a portion of Mill No. 6 to the Charter School, Lichoulas “condominiumized” Mill No. 5, only this time the “condominium” consisted of just two units. A “school unit” which consisted of most of the first and second floors; and a “commercial unit” which consisted of small portions of the first and second floors and the rest of the building (meaning the third, fourth and fifth floors). At that time, Lichoulas sold the school unit to the Charter School for $3.8 million, and kept the commercial unit for himself.

The recent news about the “closure” of Mill No. 5 was that Lichoulas intends to transfer ownership of the commercial unit in Mill No. 5 – meaning the entire third, fourth and fifth floors, including the space occupied by the many retail establishments in the building – to the Charter School.

Reportedly, that transfer will be a gift from Lichoulas to the Charter School. Although many have speculated on Lichoulas’s possible motives, I’ve seen no actual reporting on that.

To the best of my recollection, I have only met or communicated with Jim Lichoulas Jr. once and that was probably eight years ago, right after the Mill No. 5 retail phenomenon burst on the Lowell scene. I was an admirer of the space and an enthusiastic and frequent visitor. But it was news about the decision to build the new Lowell Justice Center on Jackson Street, just a block from Mill No. 5, that prompted me to seek a meeting with Lichoulas. The site of the new courthouse was not a secret, but I had some thoughts on how technology was changing the legal and real estate businesses and suspected there might be some synergy between the recently emerged retail space in Mill No. 5 and the coming proximity of lots of legal business.

I contacted him and we met at Mill No. 5. He gave me a tour of the space and shared some of the thinking behind it. Jim said he had always been fascinated by the traditional “Main Street” business district of the prototypical small New England town where a number of small shops and retailers seemed to thrive with business from local residents and visitors despite the seismic shift of American retail to the shopping mall and then online. He also believed that the same model would work well in downtown Lowell and was frustrated that successful downtown retail was so scarce. My sense is that he attributed much of the downtown retail difficulties to the lack of a coherent, strategic, support structure that would allow private businesses to thrive. He decided to “prove the concept” and created a supportive, nurturing environment for small businesses on the fourth floor of Mill No. 5. Experience has shown that the idea worked and even worked brilliantly.

But I never got the impression that Jim Lichoulas wanted to spend the rest of his life as a Main Street retail manager. I think he wanted to show others, particularly the leadership of the city, that with the right support systems in place, small retail establishments could thrive (relatively speaking) in downtown Lowell in the hope that they would duplicate the model on Middle Street and Palmer Street and Central Street and Merrimack Street. But that never happened. Despite all the talk on the council floor of economic development and supporting downtown businesses, successive city councils have never shown the vision to adopt a strategic plan nor the discipline to follow it. Instead, we’ve had a reactionary approach that wanders from one crisis to the next, always playing catch up and never getting ahead of events. So maybe – and I’m just speculating here – Jim Lichoulas just ran out of patience. He demonstrated what works in terms of downtown Lowell retail but it’s a lesson that’s been largely ignored, so perhaps he finally decided to move onto his next challenge, whatever that might be.

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Yesterday was the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Killed in that attack were Lowell residents Arthur Boyle, a private in the US Army Air Force assigned to the Hickam Field air base, and Navy Seaman Clifton Edwards who died when a bomb struck his ship the USS Curtiss.

Other Lowell residents were at Pearl Harbor that day. One was 19-year-old Henri Champagne who saw considerable action with the US Navy throughout the war and made the remembrance of Pearl Harbor his life’s mission. Champagne, who died in 2006, was instrumental in getting major American printing companies to include “Pearl Harbor Day” as one of the regular annotations on annual calendars.

Back in 2008, I was the guest speaker of the Greater Lowell Veterans Council Pearl Harbor Remembrance Ceremony. My remarks focused on the parallels between December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, and the reasons why Pearl Harbor was still very relevant in our lives. My speech is available on my website if you wish to read it.

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Also available on richardhowe.com is an on-the-ground update from Paris on the reopening of Notre Dame by frequent contributor Louise Peloquin. Her initial post provides all the details of the recovery from the great fire with 21 photos illustrating the work. There’s also a “news flash” from yesterday reporting that due to high winds and heavy rain, the rededication ceremony has been moved inside the church.

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If you’re looking for Lowell-themed Christmas gifts, don’t forget two wonderful books by local authors. The first is Legends of Little Canada by Charlie Gargiulo; the second is Portraits Along the Way by Paul Marion. Both are available online from Loom Press and also in person at lala books on Market Street.