Lowell artists' lofts are going fast 
By JASON LEFFERTS

June 16, 2000

Sun Staff

LOWELL -- Views from the fifth floor of the J.C. Ayer Building are some of the best in the city. The City Hall clock tower looms in one direction, the smaller buildings of downtown spread out in another.

On the fifth floor, however, there's a very different view as crews work furiously to complete the new artists' living and working spaces in the old factory building. Sheetrock walls are unpainted, floors are dusty, window trim is untouched, and kitchens and bathrooms are unfinished.

Just six weeks before it opens to tenants, the J.C. Ayer Building is showing the gawkiness of awkward adolescence. The youthful construction stages are done, but some pre-adult polishing remains.

John Bouchie, who is selling the 51 units for the building's owner, Peabody Properties, said not only will the work be done in time for loft occupants to move in during the first week of August, but the building is a long way from where it was when work started.

"When we took people through here before, it was nothing but open space," Bouchie said. "You could stand here and look from one end of the building to the other."

Those days of wide-open space are long gone. Walls (or at least their frames, on some of the lower floors) breaking up the units have gone up, and other rehabilitation work has continued.

As he walks through the building, it's rare that Bouchie doesn't point to a brick wall, massive ceiling beam or other element that has been or will be sandblasted. The work to transform a factory into condos includes a lot of cosmetic clean up.

Even though the work isn't done, he says sales are brisk. Only 13 units are unsold, and showing a potential buyer the shell of a unit is better than the vision and the blueprint Bouchie was pushing before.

"When we brought people through here before, it was nothing," Bouchie said. "I knew what it was going to look like, because I've been involved with projects like this before. But people were initially nervous. We had a lot of first-time home buyers who didn't know what they were getting."

During the last few months, some buyers have been in on a weekly basis or more to keep tabs on the work. About 30 construction workers chip away at the project every day.

Units range from 1,700-square-foot duplex monsters to 528 square-foot spaces not much bigger than the average studio apartment, which come with $79,900 price tags.

All units are arranged with bathrooms to the left or right of the door, and an open kitchen beyond them. The rest of the space is wide open, with big windows and nods to the building's past.

When possible, parts of the original factory were saved and spruced up. Many units have exposed brick walls, antique wooden beams, and wood or iron support columns. In many spaces, there is well-preserved dark-wood trim at the top of the ceilings.

"It was really in pristine condition," Bouchie said of the trim.

Many big units with the best views onto Middle Street are gone. Bouchie expects most or all of the spaces to be sold by the time doors open in August.

In the meantime, crews continue to sandblast, put up walls and wire up the units.

"It's amazing how different it is from when we started," Bouchie said. "There's still a lot to do, though." Acknowledgement to The Lowell Sun