04/01/2024
By Julie Chen

I’m writing to say thank you to all members of the campus community impacted by our repurposing of Wannalancit Mills. Whether you are moving or whether you are welcoming colleagues into new spaces, I wanted to share some of the background for our reorganization.

On March 28, I was pleased to welcome a number of special guests to campus to formally announce the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC). But even before Gov. Maura Healey, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, Rep. Lori Trahan and City Manager Tom Golden all joined President Meehan and I to make the announcement, I shared LINC details at our March 21 Faculty/Staff Open Forums.

If you haven’t yet visited the LINC website or viewed the open forum recordings, I hope you’ll take some time to do so. They explain our plans and goals for the new mixed-use development, including university and industry co-location space, housing and retail and entertainment spaces.

As we welcome new research partners like Draper to campus, we’re working to identify temporary space to help finalize research and educational partnerships. This is where Wannalancit Mills comes in.

By providing space for these companies and organizations in Wannalancit, we’re able to immediately start to scale up research and educational opportunities that will only grow once additional square footage becomes available in the next couple years. It also enables UMass Lowell to begin collecting revenue from these partners who are paying for the benefit of co-locating alongside our research enterprise.

Maximizing Wannalancit as co-location space will be tremendously beneficial for UMass Lowell. But I also know there are inevitably mixed feelings from staff who feel uprooted as they are relocated to other parts of campus.

I am grateful for your flexibility. University leaders are confident in taking this step in no small part due to the success of our hybrid and remote work policy and the clear commitment of university staff to advancing the institution’s education and research missions.

Moving forward, Wannalancit will be an important part of our recruitment and retention of faculty, researchers and students as we offer careers and career connected educational experiences that draw talent to and keep talent in Lowell.