Adaptive Re-use in a New England Mill District: Factors Contributing to Success in Manchester, nh.

New England once relied heavily on its industrial sector for its economic prosperity. When large industries moved out of the region, they not only left behind empty mill buildings but also left many cities and towns without an economic base. The restoration and adaptive reuse of those buildings can help those cities and towns to regain some of their former prosperity. To understand better the processes of adaptive re-use of textile mill buildings, the city of Manchester, New Hampshire was examined. At one time Manchester was home to the largest textile company in the world, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company. When the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company went bankrupt in 1936 it economically devastated Manchester and left the city with a huge complex of abandoned mill buildings. These buildings stood mostly vacant for half a century, but have recently been restored and through adaptive re-use now support new businesses in the city. This remarkable transition of the mill district of Manchester represents an opportunity to examine the processes and elements by which an aging industrial area can be revitalized. In order to identify the processes that led to the redevelopment of Manchester's mills, the actions undertaken by both public and private interests in the area over time were examined through the use of city records and personal interviews. Study of these actions illuminate four important factors that led to major redevelopment and successful adaptive re-use in the Manchester Mill District: infrastructure improvement, mixed use zoning, significant private investment and improvement of the perceived image of the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]