In the News

As U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal took to the podium Monday at the celebratory opening of the $43 million Residences at Mill 8, Thomas Erb kept his eye in his watch and his ear to the sky.

It was nearly noon. And Erb, president of Electric Time Co. of Medfield, was the contractor who repaired and restored the building’s signature clock with its 10-foot dials that caps the 110-year-old building but hadn’t told time in decades. The friendly bells had fallen silent to neglect.

But not anymore.

“It went off right on time,” Erb said of the noontime chimes. “Right on time.”

Neal, D-Springfield, incorporated the clock tower into his speech.

“It’s reassuring. It means that somebody cares in the restoration that the clock actually tells the right time. It’s a big deal,” Neal said.

State Sen. Jacob Oliveira, D-Ludlow, said the clock tower is Ludlow’s symbol.

It’s on every police officer, every firefighter’s badge,” Oliveira said. “It hangs in the State House on our town flag that flies ... in the great hall.”

The $43 million rehab and reconstruction of historic Mill 8, the clock tower building, produced 95 mixed-income apartments for those age 55 and older. The project was the recipient of $20 million in federal tax credits, including historic tax credits and low-income housing tax credits — both of which Neal has championed in the House Ways and Means Committee.

Neal defended the federal expenditure, saying: “No one looks at a project like this and says, ‘Too much government involvement.’”

At the building, 43 units are reserved for older adults at or below 60% of the area median income, 12 are for those at or below 30% of AMI, and 40 are market rate, according to developer WinnCompanies.

Residents already were moving in, even during Monday’s ceremony. And the building is expected to be fully occupied by the end of the year.

The building also includes 48,000 square feet of first-floor commercial space retained by Westmass Area Development Corp., which it will offer for lease, said Jeffrey Daley, CEO and president.

“We are in talks,” he said. “There is a lot of interest.”

Westmass bought the 170-acre Ludlow Mills Complex with its 1.4 million square feet of underutilized space in 2011.

Now, hundreds of millions of dollars later, the first-floor spaces are 85% occupied, and the complex is already home to Residences at Mill 10, a 75-unit rehab project completed by Winn Development in 2017. The complex also hosts manufacturers and commercial endeavors, like a brewery and a rehab hospital, and public parks.

On Monday, workers continued with water and sewer work, and were building a parking lot.

Founded in 1868, Ludlow Manufacturing and Sales Co. made cloth, rope and twine out of jute, flax and hemp from India.

At its height, the plant had about 4,000 employees, many of them children. It had its own rail lines, hydroelectric plants and worker housing.

“These mills are the reason that my family immigrated from Portugal and Poland in the early part of the century,” Oliveira said.

But World War I disrupted the supply of jute fiber from India, so the company decided to open a mill there instead and started shifting production overseas. What followed was decades of decline.

Daley said Westmass is eyeing a nearby building for rehab and conversion to office or retail space. It’s the biggest prize and largest building on the campus, a project that could yield 225 apartments and first-floor retail or commercial space at a cost of about $250 million.

The Ludlow rehab and conversion is the largest brownfield mill redevelopment project in New England, according to the EPA.

Mill complexes like Ludlow’s are assets in the fight against the state’s housing shortage, said Edward Augustus Jr., the state’s housing secretary.

“They often provide a really unique housing option for folks,” Augustus said. “This is an adaptive use to meet a modern need and preserve that history.”

In August, the state passed the $5.16 billion Affordable Homes Act into law, a signature portion of Gov. Maura T. Healey’s agenda.

Right now, the state is finalizing regulations for accessory dwelling units — so-called mother in-law apartments — that will now be allowed by right. That work will be done in February.

Related spending will flow with the state capital plan this summer.