LOWELL – High-end condominiums – 63 to be exact – are envisioned for a new building just off Lower Locks, with prices not often seen in Lowell: between $400,000 to potentially as high as $900,000.

The luxury condos would be in a new building on Merrimack Street overlooking the Concord River. It will feature a glass facade with touches of limestone that echo the stately architecture of the nearby Lowell Memorial Auditorium and Middlesex Community College’s Federal Building. If the project goes forward, it will be the ninth substantial housing development approved in Lowell that, taken collectively, is dynamically changing the downtown residential landscape. At present, developers have received approvals to build 665 residential units, and a majority of them are under construction. That total does not include a 438-unit private dormitory being constructed at the former Lowell Five bank headquarters.

The projects are generating more than $140 million in economic development in the city.

The developer of the luxury condo project, Pridestar EMS CEO David Daly, has not yet formally submitted permitting applications but said he’s been working with city officials on his plans for several months.

Daly has proposed knocking down the current brick building, which is the former home of several nightclubs over the years, and more recently, a theater and cafe for Middlesex Community College. He said he considered a new use that would include space for Middlesex or UMass Lowell, and then considered a hotel after several city councilors expressed a desire for one.

“The market wasn’t there then and isn’t there now,” he said of a hotel.

A report last year from the city’s Division of Planning and Development came to the same conclusion about the city’s downtown hotel market, citing hotels along the periphery of the city as meeting demand.

In the end, Daly has settled on 63 high-end units that will each feature a balcony, many with up-close views of the Lower Locks and Concord River. A residential use comes during a stronger rental market, while Daly said there’s a shortage of high-quality residences downtown.

One or two retail spaces are planned, plus a fitness center for residents, with new landscaped space behind the building. An estimated cost for the project is $20 million to $25 million.

City Councilor Bill Samaras, who chairs the council’s economic- development subcommittee, said he and other councilors value market-rate housing, especially downtown.

“It’s a beautiful location along the water,” he said.

Daly said he hopes to formally submit plans to the city in the next month or two. He is optimistic that he could start construction as soon as next spring. He said he’s been in initial talks with the city on a parking agreement for tenants to park in the adjacent city-owned Davidson Street lot.

The project would follow several other developments adding several hundred residential units in the city, mostly in and around downtown.

Just across the Concord River, the former Sun newspaper offices at Kearney Square are being turned into 22 units. Those advertised prices, at $415,000 to $480,000, were the previous high-water mark for for-sale units downtown.

Just on the other side of Prescott Street, 47 units opened earlier this year in the former Chalifoux Building at a project called 22 Merrimack.

Massachusetts Mills is also working on a new phase that will add 70 units in a converted mill building next to where the Concord and Merrimack rivers meet. Just off Jackson Street, the Adden Lofts project that recently began will include another 75 units.

Elsewhere, a private college dorm at 1 Merrimack Plaza will add beds for more than 400 students and at 685-689 Lawrence St., an old mill is being turned into 50 residential units.

The largest projects are outside the center of the city.

On Thorndike Street, the 152unit Thorndike Exchange project was recently approved for the former Comfort Furniture and Bedding mill. Off Chelmsford Street, a 240-unit apartment building was approved earlier this year for a vacant lot on Wellman Street.

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