Credit Woes Further Delay Fitchburg Project
Illustration/Courtesy
An artist rendering of Preservation Mill, a private student housing project planned for downtown Fitchburg.
A converted mill project that promises to provide 152 off-campus beds for Fitchburg State College students won’t open until at least the 2010 spring semester because of financing difficulties, according to the project’s manager.
Chris Stewart, of Hilson Contractors in Rindge, N.H., is managing the project, known as Preservation Mill, for owner David Aho, also of Rindge.
Stewart said he’s exploring various options to secure the $6.3 million he needs to restore and expand a downtown factory building that was originally built in the 1800s.
When the building is finished and fully occupied, he said, it should be worth about $9.5 million.
Six-Year Plan
City officials approved converting the mill to apartments in 2004, but the project has been slow to get off the ground.
Now, it’s fully designed and permitted, and a property management company has even begun marketing it to potential student tenants, with a web site promising that it will open for the 2009-2010 school year.
But Stewart says construction has been pushed back to August at the earliest, and students won’t be able to move in until next spring or summer.
Stewart said he has talked to 12 different banks seeking financing for the project but so far hasn’t found an offer that is attractive enough. He’s working with MassDevelopment, the state’s quasi-public finance authority, looking at the possibility of bond financing, loan guarantees or a direct loan to augment private funding.
While the college has no formal ties to the project, school officials have said it would make sense to have more housing options for students in the city.
Jay Bry, assistant vice president for administration at FSC, said the school is now expanding its dorms but wants to keep about half of the student population living off campus.
“I think there’s potential based on the number of students requesting off-campus housing,” he said.
Still, he said the delay in opening probably won’t cause any big problems for students, who should be able to find apartments elsewhere in the city.
Stewart said he has worked on a number of other mill conversion projects, but Preservation Mill will have certain unique features because it is aimed solely at students.
Suites and the individual rooms within them will be accessible only with key cards, and the building will have a video surveillance system.
It is also expected to be LEED certified at the silver level. LEED stands for leadership in environmental and energy design.
The standards are set by a group called the U.S. Green Building Council. Several projects in Central Massachusetts have sought and earned LEED accreditation. The largest certified project is Boston Scientific’s endosurgery headquarters in Marlborough.
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