Labs to Anchor $800M Lowell Development

The University of Massachusetts-Lowell will embark on a massive, nearly $800 million development campaign poised to bring hundreds of units of housing, hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space and a new dormitory to the Mill City.

Taken together, officials view the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor project – which will be financed mostly by private developers – as one of the most substantial changes coming to the city in decades. The project is expected to generate over $3.7 billion in economic activity and create 2,000 permanent jobs over the next decade along with “several million dollars” in new property tax revenue for Lowell, the Healey administration said in an announcement March 28.

“This is the most important economic development in Lowell in more than 20 years,” UMass President Marty Meehan, a longtime Lowellian, said. “This will be the most significant commercial development on the banks of the Merrimack River since the mills.”

The project will unfold in three major phases. The first two phases will happen roughly simultaneously, each adding mixed-use space. One will build out land next to the Tsongas Arena, and a counterpart will rise a stone’s throw away near the Wannalancit Mills.

UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen said both locations will each add a roughly 300,000 square foot building, about 20 percent of which UMass Lowell will occupy. Companies who want to be close to campus will lease remaining space.

“We’re excited about that because that means those are prime companies to hire our students as paid interns as well as to hire them after they graduate,” she said in an interview.

In an announcement press release March 28, the office of Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said one of those companies will be nonprofit military-oriented researchers Draper Laboratories, who will move its microelectronics research division there. Healey’s office described Draper as the “anchor tenant” but did not say how much space the company would be taking.

For both new mixed-use spaces, developers will build housing next door, geared toward recent graduates and young professionals. That development will add nearly 500 total units of housing to Lowell’s stock.

Chen estimated groundbreaking will begin next year, followed by about two years of construction and then occupancy in 2027.

The project’s third phase, which does not have a clear timeline, envisions a new 461-bed dormitory near Lowell’s former minor-league baseball park, now used by the university’s sports teams.