Seven Epsilon Projects Receive Preservation Massachusetts Awards

July 3, 2019

 

On May 8th, Epsilon celebrated with clients, colleagues and friends at the Preservation Massachusetts annual preservation awards ceremony at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel. The ceremony honored seven projects which Epsilon provided with environmental and historic tax credit services.  This year’s awards program, entitled “Preservation Is…” celebrated preservation’s role as more than just historic buildings and landscapes.  In keeping with this theme, the projects which Epsilon supported represent housing, jobs, community engagement, partnerships, and investment in the Commonwealth.

 

Four Epsilon projects received Paul and Niki Tsongas awards, named for the husband-and-wife Lowell politicians whose visionary efforts spearheaded the revitalization of their historic hometown.  In Salem, nineZero Washington Street was recognized for its sensitive repurposing of one of Salem’s few mid-century buildings.  Directly opposite Salem’s City Hall, 90 Washington Street has been put to active use as Salem’s new City Hall Annex.  In Lawrence, the National Register-listed Wood Worsted Mill was honored for the completion of the Mill’s original Office Building rehabilitation, the portion of the monumental Wood Mill complex which sits at the city’s busiest intersection. 

 

The restoration and rehabilitation of the historic Longfellow Bridge connecting Boston and Cambridge, an extraordinary example of teamwork and investment in historic infrastructure, also received a Tsongas award.  Further west, the MGM Springfield project was recognized as a complex transformation of the downtown which successfully preserved and integrated historic structures with new development.  Among other notable achievements, the project reused the 1895 State Armory and relocated a 130-year-old National Register-listed church.        

Three additional Epsilon historic tax credit projects also received awards.  In Leominster, the Ivory Keys Apartments was awarded a Robert H. Kuehn award for its preservation of the Jewett Piano Factory.  The project restored significant historic features and brought a building on the brink of demolition back to active use as 41 units of affordable housing.  The Lenox Schoolhouse Apartments in Lenox received a Charles Eliot Award for its renovation of the 1908 high school building, also for housing.  Finally, the Miller Block in Newton received a People’s Choice Award, following the casting of nearly 300,000 votes.  This newly restored building is a locally rare example of 19th-century commercial architecture which survived the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike.    

 

Epsilon was honored to serve on the project teams for these transformative projects.