Tenants face eviction after UMass Lowell buys luxury apartment building
Every resident of Perkins Park in Lowell recently received an eviction notice, an unlikely occurrence at one of the city’s luxury loft apartment complexes.
The building is being sold to the University of Massachusetts Lowell in a deal that’s expected to close in July, The Boston Globe reports, and all the tenants must move within the year so the building can be turned into a residence hall for students and faculty.
UMass plans to purchase the building for $61.5 million, well above the city’s assessed price for the complex, which includes 230 apartments, an administrative building, and a parking lot, the Globe notes. The university plans to turn it into housing for about 700 graduate students, which it says is necessary to keep up with an enrollment increase.
But not everyone is happy with the plan. City councilor Rita Mercier told the Globe that Lowell could not afford to lose the hundreds of residents that had helped revitalize the city.
“To take people that we begged to come to the city and to kick them to curb, just breaks my heart,” Mercier told the Globe.
Read the full Boston Globe story here.
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