Manomet Place
Location
New Bedford, MA
Client
WinnDevelopment
Services
Sectors
Historic Preservation + Adaptive Reuse, Senior Living
Square Footage
135,732 SF
Number of Units
71
The $19.2M historic conversion of a 114-year-old, three-story 20th-century former cotton textile mill marks the completion of the phased redevelopment of Manomet Place.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the original Manomet Mills Complex was built in the early 1900s along the Acushnet River and later housed the Cliftex Corporation, a textile clothing company.
Phase one successfully rehabilitated a 142,000 square foot portion of the mill into a 76 unit mixed-income age-restricted community. The second phase completed ten years later, involved the adaptation of the adjacent 135,732 square foot mill into 71 one-, two-, and three-bedroom affordable and workforce units, restricted to residents aged 55+. A newly updated shared entry lobby and leasing office seamlessly connect the two phases, resulting in a unified, contiguous structure.
As part of the extensive restoration, the exterior masonry was repaired, repointed, and cleaned for long-term stability and architectural integrity. Forty-eight monitor window units and 176 oversized windows more than seven feet wide and 12 feet high were replaced with historically appropriate, double-paned, Low-E replicas. The new windows allow natural daylight to enter the units while minimizing heat transfer and reducing heat loss by as much as 50%.
The mill’s exceptionally large floorplates – boasting 92 15-foot columns, and 115 25-foot beam sections, made from an estimated 250+ Southern Yellow Pine Old-Growth trees – posed a challenge for the residential program. The resulting design creatively uses the 27.5-foot-wide corridors as flexible resident amenity space. A light-filled library with a custom double-sided sofa, work pods, expansive mailroom, resident café lounge, and makerspace are demarcated by custom metal partitions along the 264-foot central hallway. Anchored at the northern-facing end, a game lounge offers flexible resident activity space with comfortable seating, a kitchenette, a TV, and a pool table.
Existing historic monitor window openings on the third floor allow additional light to filter into the central residential corridor. Thoughtfully planned routing and placement of piping and ventilation ducts complement the building’s design exposing architectural surfaces and details such as the original pine decking, while mediating the spatial volume.
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