Marianne Paley Nadel doesn’t consider herself an entrepreneur but rather a “sort of connective tissue, pulling them all together.’’ As the head of the family owned, historic Everett Mills in downtown Lawrence, Paley Nadel is continuing the legacy of manufacturing and entrepreneurship in this post-industrial immigrant city by filling the 525,000-square-foot space with business owners willing to share their skills and be involved in the community. She took her mission a step further last year by helping to launch the Maker Innovation Lab Lawrence, or The MILL, the city’s first makerspace for the next generation of innovators. When completed, it will include a wood and metal shop, a 3-D printing robotics lab, and a transportation design hub. Paley Nadel recently spoke with the Globe’s Katheleen Conti about the makerspace concept and how she came to run Everett Mills.
1Paley Nadel’s mission to connect the mill’s tenants and the community is modeled after her father’s. When Bertram Paley purchased Everett Mills in 1981, he purposely filled the space with a mix of social service agencies, professional office space, and manufacturers, including Ralph Lauren Corp., whose line of men’s suits was made there at the time. Paley Nadel took over operations in 2008 after her father’s death.
“We owned a major piece of real estate, so what we had in there impacted the community. He really cared a lot about workforce development and understood how workforce development and job creation impacts the community. He may not have articulated that to me in the way I understand it now, but it really made an impact. . . . I see real continuum from his legacy for the kind of work I can do today because we have this asset. It gives me a platform to do things in the community that are innovative and important to communities.’’
2Paley Nadel became aware of makerspaces about three years ago after hearing about Artisan’s Asylum, “the granddaddy of makerspaces,’’ in Somerville. That’s when she met local community organizer Jennifer Hilton, whose interest in American manufacturing and production ultimately propelled the idea of a makerspace in Lawrence that would foster the next generation of entrepreneurs and manufacturers. With a mix of about a half dozen members that include local artists and entrepreneurs, the group founded The MILL in 2016 in a 10,000-square-foot open corner space in Everett Mills, which Paley Nadel donated rent-free for a year. In December, The MILL also received a $65,000 MassDevelopment grant, which will be used to finance construction in the space.
“The idea of makerspace is a collection of tools in a number of different disciplines that could be shared. What I think is exciting is the person who does the repair of the machines might offer assistance to other people who need to learn that expertise, so there’s that cross-pollination that helps build expertise in the community. . . . There’s a lot of entrepreneurism in Gateway Cities; I see it everywhere. It’s different than having artists in your communities . . . it’s a different take on the same opportunity, where you provide a space for entrepreneurs where they can do their entrepreneurism and be part of a community to do that. Where they can test that idea and get advice and counsel.’’
3An urban planner by trade, Paley Nadel was attracted to the idea of a dedicated space for creators in Lawrence partly because of the city’s rich history of textile manufacturing. Everett Mills, a former cotton textile mill, played a major role in that history.
“I did a lot of heritage planning, which is really about teasing the story of a place out and how you convey that story to people so they can connect with it and learn about it. It is important that we lift the heritage of the building and this community. We’re a planned industrial community in Lawrence; people came to the city to work the mills, but they also built these buildings and the machinery. There is certainly poetry in updating that history in a way that resonates with people now, and it provides jobs for people and educational opportunities in a contemporary way. . . . The piece I’m really excited about is the resurgence in manufacturing that’s happening in the building. We have several manufacturers and other industrial and distribution uses as well.’’
4After graduating from Brandeis University in 1985, Paley Nadel went to work for her father as a community liaison, before moving to New York City to work for its quasipublic economic development agency. She returned to Massachusetts and in 1991 received a master’s degree in urban planning from MIT. After starting a family, Paley Nadel returned to work in Lawrence and joined a group that was interested in starting a Lawrence chapter of Groundwork USA, a nonprofit network focused on environmental work in marginalized communities.
“I helped to build Groundwork Lawrence. It’s one of the things I’m really proud of being involved with. That’s really how I got to know the city so well. We worked in taking brownfield properties and turning them into community-based open spaces. What’s kept me [in Lawrence], in addition to our real estate, is the intellectual community and seeing planning in action. It’s an area where you can see changes in a place with 80,000 people in 7 square miles.’’
5Paley Nadel said she worked “doing different crazy things’’ in her early years, including as a camp counselor for fifth-grade boys when she was a teenager (“That was terrible’’) and selling tickets for the Cape Cod and Hyannis Railroad. Now a Newton resident and mother of a 23-year-old daughter and two sons, ages 20 and 12, Paley Nadel said she, like her father, is teaching her children all about working and being part of a community.
“It’s always been important to me that my kids understood what I do and see value in what I do. All my kids pay a lot of attention to what it means to be in [Lawrence]. . . . What interests me is the integration of place and the potential for workforce development and education and entrepreneurship.’’
Katheleen Conti can be reached at kconti@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeKConti.
