Real estate experts and developers call it “adaptive reuse.” In this process, vacant buildings, some with historic backgrounds, are given new life and reused in a different capacity from their original purpose.

Adaptive reuse is gaining momentum these days, and preservation is one forward-thinking way to create housing inventory.

The old mill cities of Nashua, Manchester and Lowell are no strangers to adaptive reuse. One fine example is sprawling Clocktower Place Apartments downtown. The red brick, 19th-century former textile factory sits on the south side of the Nashua River and has been home to 326 residential apartment units since 1989.

If these walls could talk…

My late newspaper father John Stylianos and his childhood friend Frank “Punch” Ackstin got a job at the cotton mills in their late teens. I enjoy these nostalgic vignettes about Nashua’s past. He would be impressed to see how far his hometown has come.

I’m sharing a few excerpts from his old Nashua Telegraph column:

“This was in the mid-1930s when the nation was fighting back from the Depression. Weekly wages were between $14 and $15 for non-skilled employees like ourselves.”

My dad and “Punch” were both assigned to the carding room of the textile factory. As I understand, carding was the process in which the raw cotton fibers were fed through machines to disentangle and clean them.

“The job certainly kept us in top condition. It was moving trucks on small wheels. Each truck carried eight laps of cotton, about 400 pounds. Several miles were covered daily in pushing the trucks from the Number 7 mill — now home of the plastics firm, west past the 1st, 2nd, 3rd mills to the No. 4 mill, near Pine Street.”

The city had another life all those years ago with the textile company operating continuously in Nashua for more than 100 years.

“No city should have to depend on one industry alone as was the case for years with the textile operation,” my father wrote. “But the Nashua Manufacturing Company was also a blessing to the community; it provided jobs for thousands and with these jobs rode the hopes and ambitions of entire families.”

Palm Square Apartments, the former Batesville Casket Company (1973) that employed approximately 300 workers during its peak until its closing in 2005, is another adaptive reuse success story in the Gate City’s downtown. The 3-story, red brick building (1886), about 160,000 square feet, houses 140 units (for 55+ residents).

And now, possibly one of the largest, adaptive reuse projects that could impact my city centers around the recently closed former Elm Street Middle School built in 1937. I’ve mentioned this school in previous columns. Mayor Jim Donchess recently told the Board of Aldermen that four offers for housing at the imposing site have come in under the city’s RFP or Request for Proposal. A committee is being formed to interview the applicants.

“In general, they propose keeping the Elm Street building as opposed to razing it and building entirely new units,” Donchess said.” Each of the proposals would add units to the site but would keep the traditional building which is an interesting aspect to these different proposals.”

The mayor understands the sentimental significance this former high school, then junior high school and later, middle school has had on thousands of older and younger residents. He invites Nashuans to make their voices heard when these housing proposals are presented to the public.

I’m all for preserving a legacy of the past. How about you?