Clock Tower Renovation Project

Clocktower Building
Burrillville, Rhode Island, a town of 16,000, also has firsthand experience with these Industrial Age pyramids. In 2006, the town received a boost in redeveloping its vacant mills in the form of a $500,000 HOPE VI Main Street grant. These funds were applied to the $15 million Stillwater Redevelopment Project, which converted a historic three-story former wool-weaving mill into 47 apartments, 37 of them reserved for low or very-low income families, and two office suites. Thomas Kravitz, Director of Economic Development, credits the HOPE VI Main Street funding with paying for all of the project's soft costs, including engineers, architects, and lawyers fees — professional services that produced the documents and drawings so useful in generating community support for the undertaking. The Stillwater project, due to open in December 2010, is joined by a new 25,000 square-foot library that opened in 2008, and a riverwalk that runs through Main Street. The owner of an eatery adjacent to the Stillwater project was inspired to rehab and rename it the Waterfall Café, in anticipation of the loft development. Besides the inherent sustainability of the historic rehab, the project wins major points for utilizing six geothermal wells that will provide low-cost energy to the mill development.
By Erica Stewart | From Main Street News | August 20, 2010 | See full article 

Housing Works RI recently made an economic development video featuring the Clocktower called Building Homes Rhode Island: Growing the Economy, Building Communities. View the video here.