According to Adam Baacke, Lowell’s assistant city manager for planning and development, achieving this transformation was essentially a three-step process that could perhaps be best described as politics, permitting, and pathfinding. Politics refers to changing attitudes (and people) on the city council, where most members shunned downtown housing because “only commercial development was considered good.” Eventually, the city’s new outlook motivated it to sell one of its underutilized parcels for the express purpose of creating artists’ housing downtown.
