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Tag: Lowell Innovation Network Corridor

  • UMass Lowell ranked state’s top value school by U.S. News

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    LOWELL — U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 national rankings of top colleges and universities again this year give high marks to UMass Lowell for the education and economic value it provides to students.

    The media outlet, best known for consumer advice and news analysis, places UMass Lowell at No. 11 in Massachusetts for its “Best Colleges” ranking of higher-educational institutions defined as national universities. Such institutions offer a full range of undergraduate, master’s and doctoral programs and produce groundbreaking research.

    U.S. News also lists UMass Lowell as the No. 1 “best value school” in the Bay State and No. 92 in the country, up 105 spots from last year.

    “UMass Lowell delivers a world-class education that is accessible and affordable while helping students succeed today and throughout their careers. We’re proud to be No. 1 among ‘best value schools’ in Massachusetts and No. 92 in the U.S. — rankings that reflect our strong return on investment and emphasis on career-connected experience,” said UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen.

    The rankings come just months after UMass Lowell was named a Carnegie Research 1 university, a prestigious designation used to identify the nation’s top research institutions.

    In acknowledging the university’s leadership in scholarship and economic value, the rankings also reflect UMass Lowell’s commitment to the region’s economic vitality through the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor. Now underway, the initiative envisions a 1.2-million square-foot mixed-use development on and beyond UMass Lowell’s campus that includes offices and research labs, housing, retail businesses and entertainment destinations. The ecosystem is providing UMass Lowell students with paid career experiences at LINC member organizations.

    For its 2026 assessments, U.S. News & World Report evaluated nearly 1,700 higher-education institutions. To determine UMass Lowell’s place on the Best Colleges list, the media outlet used 17 key measures of academic quality including student retention and graduation rates, financial resources provided per student, faculty to student ratio, number of full-time faculty and amount of published research.

    To determine the “best value” ranking, the outlet additionally examined the 2024-2025 net cost of attendance for an out-of-state student who received the average level of need-based scholarship or grant aid. The higher the quality of the program and the lower the cost, the better the deal. Only schools ranked in or near the top half of their categories are included, as U.S. News considers the most significant values to be among colleges that are above average academically, according to the media outlet.

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  • HCID housing, retail development poised for take off

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    LOWELL — UMass Lowell hasn’t broken ground yet on its $800-million Lowell Innovation Network Corridor project, and the potential billion-dollar Frontrunner City Initiative is still in early stages, but the city’s Hamilton Canal Innovation District is having a moment.

    At its Sept. 9 meeting, the City Council unanimously approved access agreements with two major developers – Wexford Development and Winn Companies.

    “Wexford is proposing the development of a 75,000-square-foot research and development facility,” City Manager Tom Golden said in a Sept. 4 memo to the council.

    The HCID area is adjacent to Lowell’s downtown and within the boundaries of three historic districts: the Lowell National Historical Park and Preservation District, the Downtown Lowell Historic District, and the Locks and Canals Historic District.

    It is a critical part of the Jackson/Appleton/Middlesex urban renewal plan and the Thorndike/Dutton Street entry corridor to the city. It has a direct route to the Gallagher Transportation Terminal less than a mile away.

    It is also within walking distance to UMass Lowell’s LINC project, an 80% private and 20% publicly funded project that will build out the university’s East Campus footprint. The university hopes to break ground on a three-phased building plan that blends industry, infrastructure and housing. The groundbreaking for Phases 1 and 2 are to take place this year, with a two-year timeframe for completion.

    But the vacant HCID parcels have struggled to attract developers with the vision and scope to build out the centrally located and high-profile parcels.

    Wexford Science & Technology, which is pulling together the ambitious LINC project, is known for its mixed-use, amenity-rich, innovation-focused communities blending industry/university community models. It responded to a request for proposal on the three-phased housing-retail LINC project that UMass Lowell sent out more three years ago.

    “Wexford Development continues to have interest in developing parcel 15 in the Hamilton Canal Innovation District (HCID),” Golden said. “It is our hope this due diligence work will result in the successful negotiation of a Land Disposition Agreement for this parcel.”

    A formal land disposition agreement with Wexford is when the purchase price to the land would be agreed upon.

    At the same meeting, the council also unanimously approved the execution of an extended temporary access agreement between the city and WinnDevelopment.

    Sometime in 2028 or 2029, WinnDevelopment, the construction arm of the WinnCompanies, hopes to have built 124 apartments in a six- to seven-story, mixed-use building along Dutton Street. The area encompasses Parcels 11 and 12 in the HCID and is located across the Pawtucket Canal.

    The last development within the HCID was WinnCompanies’ 201 Canal Apartments in 2022.

    At the council’s next meeting on Sept. 23, it referred to an Oct. 28 public hearing an ordinance to amend the form-based code on parcels 2, 3A, 4, and 5 in the HCID to allow development by Cabot, Cabot and Forbes, which acquired the properties from the Sal Lupoli Companies.

    In an agreement negotiated by the city, Lupoli sold his undeveloped parcels to CC&F, although he will retain ownership of the $26 million, eight-story, 550-space parking garage on Parcel 1, across from Kiernan Judicial Center on Jackson Street.

    The form-based code specifies what goes on each parcel and has to be submitted to the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities for administrative approval.

    The new developer is proposing to build 270 market rate residential units and 10,000-square-feet of street level retail on the parcels.

    “A form-based code change would allow for a larger building footprint across the parcels and an increase in the maximum building height on parcel 5 – from 70 feet to 85 feet,” Golden said. “Combining parcels 2, 3a, and 4 will create an opportunity to build more housing units, directly addressing Lowell’s growing housing needs of all types.”

    LINC is 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. One development will build out land next to the Tsongas Arena, and a counterpart will take place near the Wannalancit Mills.

    Both locations will each add about 300,000-square-foot buildings, about 20 percent of which UMass Lowell will occupy. Companies who want to be close to campus will lease the remaining space.

    “To date, the vision for the HCID that was created over twenty-years ago still resonates,” Assistant City Manager and Director of Planning & Development Yovani Baez-Rose said. “While there have been modifications over time, the creation of new housing, the introduction of retail, and office space is still guiding all ongoing discussions…the district has a lot of momentum at the moment.”

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    Melanie Gilbert

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  • 96,700 gallons of diesel fuel on Lowell’s Council agenda

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    LOWELL — Almost 168,000 gallons of diesel fuel will be stored at the Markley Group’s data center in Lowell’s Sacred Heart neighborhood if the company’s most recent application for fuel storage is approved by the City Council Tuesday night.

    The fuel powers the facility’s backup generators that provide emergency power to the state-of-the-art data-storage and cloud-computing company in the case of a grid failure.

    “As part of this phase of construction they [Markley] are proposing to install additional emergency generators, each with an aboveground diesel fuel belly tank,” Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. PE Senior Project Manager William Taber said in a letter dated Sept. 5. “This will increase the on-site diesel fuel storage from 71,100 gallons to 167,800 gallons.”

    The storage of greater than 10,000 gallons of combustibles in Massachusetts requires a license from the City Council, a permit to store combustibles from the Fire Department, and the fuel storage must also be registered with the City Clerk. All emergency generators have already gone through the appropriate Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection air quality permitting process before being presented to the council for consideration.

    Markley purchased the former Prince pasta plant parcel for $4 million in 2015 and embarked on a dramatic renovation of the foreclosed property that had been vacant since 1998.

    The company started its operations with four diesel generators, but as its mission-critical operations have expanded, the plant’s energy infrastructure has, too. Its systems power and provide routing to a wide variety of private companies, state and local governments, universities and internet companies.

    Drone footage shot by Lowell residents John McDonough and William Palermo show the scope of the work being done on the 14-acre site in what is zoned as light industrial.

    At its June 24 meeting, a majority of councilors approved Markley’s license for four diesel-powered generators holding 24,000 gallons of fuel, despite resident and community concerns around ongoing construction projects, equipment noise and air pollution.

    But several councilors stated approval of future fuel storage applications would be weighed against Markley meeting with the city’s Sustainability Director Katherine Moses to explore non-fossil fuel alternatives for backup power generation, as well as better communication with the neighbors living on its vast periphery.

    Moses presented a report to the Sustainability Council at its Aug. 28 meeting, where she said it was important for the city to have conversations with Markley to “make sure we’re all going in the same direction.”

    “I had an initial conversation with them,” Moses told the Sustainability Council members. “I felt a little better after that conversation. I think they do recognize that they can’t indefinitely bring diesel generators on site… .”

    The Sustainability Council’s function is to advocate for green design, construction and development practices in the city of Lowell that will increase sustainability and reduce the environmental impacts of building and other development activity.

    Moses told the Sustainability Council that the biggest emissions category in Lowell are buildings, “and it is split almost half and half between commercial industrial kinds of buildings and residential buildings.”

    Reducing carbon emissions has proved challenging as the city has also embarked on an economic development plan that embraces large-scale technology-driven companies like Draper Labs that relies on data centers like Markley to power its work. And UMass Lowell continues to build out its microelectronics program that also relies on Markley’s technology.

    Resident Mary Burns, who is chair of the UMass Building Authority, told the council in June that the university’s Lowell Innovation Network Corridor project depends on a data center presence in Lowell.

    “In order for LINC to happen, we need Markley,” she said. “They store the data that these companies looking at coming to our campus – it’s required. They can’t come here if we don’t have Markley.”

    That development is both in contrast to and aligned with the city’s selection as Frontrunner City by the Urban Economy Forum, an international organization that collaborates with the United Nations, municipal leaders, partners such as the World Urban Pavilion, and the private sector to reshape urban economies through the implementation of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

    UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen met the UEF delegation when they visited Lowell in July and addressed the group via a remote link during an August signing ceremony at the United Nations Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Academic partnerships are integral to UEF’s develoment goals in Lowell.

    Although the MassDEP greenlights Markley’s diesel generators based on compliance to its regulations, the city is working other angles to move toward a carbon-free emissions future.

    The City Council sent a letter to the state and federal delegation to encourage the availability of sustainable non-fossil fuel alternative to diesel for use in emergency backup power generation to help Lowell meet its climate goals.

    Moses said Markley has agreed to meet with her on a quarterly basis.

    “I also encouraged them to think about creating a plan to move away from all this onsite diesel storage and find other ways to provide the backup generation,” she said.

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    Melanie Gilbert

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