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It started as one of the city's premier fine cotton textile mills. by Michael J. DeCicco Now "Kilburn Mill at Clarks Cove" features retail, professional, art, and entertainment space, and a rooftop deck with a panoramic view of New Bedford's Clarks Cove and Buzzards Bay. It has a goal of being a destination site for the city. The 465,000-square-foot Kilburn Mills, at 127 West Rodney French Blvd., opened in 1905 as a cotton spinning mill. It changed owners in 1952 to become more of a retail manufacturer and eventually the "Furniture City" retail store. Its new owners, which include both local and Boston-based partners, built the third-floor rooftop deck that now faces the hurricane
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The fact remains that old and new will continue to co-exist at Kilburn Mills. dike and west beach, and they say it's just a part of big plans for the mill's future. Property manager Peter Andrade, who's worked at the building for 33 years, said Mother Nature sparked the Kilburn Mills' current ownership's future goals. In 1960, Hurricane Donna tore a 7,000-square-foot section off of the mill's wooden roof. After that, nothing much was done with the entire
September 2021 | The South Coast Insider
third floor of the building until the New Bedford Whaling Museum brought a grand whaling voyage panorama (painted images linked to create one long illustration of a whaling trip around the world) to the third floor in 2018. Then the Schwartz Center Meeting School in New Bedford asked to host its annual fundraiser in the space the next year. "We didn't have a plan B for that space, until
being approached by Meeting Street," Andrade said. "That's when the light bulb went off as to how we could use this space in the future." Since then, the third floor has been renovated into an Entertainment Center that now hosts regular "Night Stage" programs of music and comedy. A new roof and platform have been added to the section laid bare by hurricane Donna, turning it into an expansive rooftop deck that regularly hosts Sunday entertainment events (which can be moved to the indoor center in case of rain) as well as rental space for private events. These renovations are just the beginning of the plans the
