“What makes the project relevant now is the need for housing,” he told the Globe.

Projects such as these are far from new, but the repurposing of vacant mills into residential properties has taken on a fresh urgency. Massachusetts needs to build nearly a quarter of a million new homes over a decade to address a severe housing shortage in the state, developers and municipal leaders say.

“The housing crisis is increasingly acute. It’s bigger now than it was five, 10, 20 years ago. So we have a capital C crisis,” said Larry Curtis, chairman of Boston-based WinnDevelopment, which has converted nearly two dozen mills in Lowell, Holyoke, and elsewhere in Massachusetts over the last four decades.

Old mills, though difficult to develop, have some built-in benefits. They offer available building stock, in a state where land for big, new projects can be hard to come by. And repurposing long-vacant buildings into residential or commercial properties can skirt the kind of NIMBY community opposition that can sometimes derail new construction, according to Curtis.

Jessica Rudden-Dube, executive director of Preservation Massachusetts, said that some of the easier mill projects have already been converted. But improved incentives from the state have encouraged developers to repurpose those that still remain.

For her organization, the projects are a way to preserve history and build new housing at once. “It’s sort of a no-brainer if that space is historic and can be preserved in its historic character but serve a new purpose,” she said.

Two decades ago, New Bedford conducted an inventory of about a 100 of its mills and changed zoning laws to permit their development into housing or mixed uses, said Jennifer Carloni, director of city planning. A lot of them have found new uses, such as the Kilburn Mill that overlooks Clarks Cove. It’s now home to artists, antique vendors, a cafe, and a bookshop, along with yoga studios, gyms, and other small businesses.

But a few New Bedford mills remain untouched, awaiting builders with enough wherewithal — and deep enough pockets — to tackle challenging environmental conditions.

“We have the policies and the procedures in place that are ready to go when any one of those properties wants to be developed,” Carloni said.

The housing shortage in the state is making some developers take on even complicated projects, according to Quentin Ricciardi, CEO of real estate firm Acorn Inc., whose company has repurposed mills in New Bedford.

“With so much demand, some of these mill properties are now coming back into focus,” he said.

Glassman bought his power plant building in 2019 for $350,000. It will be, to put it mildly, challenging to make apartments out of a boiler room at the back of his building, a turbine room in the middle, and office spaces at the front. But there are high ceilings and wide windows that open up to the view of the Acushnet River.

Glassman and his partner in the project, Lisa Serafin, are looking into state and federal tax credits for historic rehabilitation projects, and will take out a loan against expected rent revenues. They hope to secure financing and permits soon, then begin construction next year.

Glassman owns two other former mills in New Bedford. An old leather lamination plant now houses Darn It, his apparel repair business, and a warehouse operation. A few minutes away is Hatch Street Studios, a 130,000-square-foot old yarn-spinning mill that has become a working space for sculptors, painters, woodworkers — even a clown school.

“There’s so much history with these buildings and in the city of New Bedford,” Glassman said, ”it would be a shame if people started knocking these down to build up something else.”

“We’re a community that is ever changing, always taking our assets and making the most of them,” New Bedford’s Carloni said.

WinnDevelopment has completed historic reuse projects across Massachusetts. They include the repurposing of mills in Lowell, such as at the historic Boot Mill Complex, that have created nearly 600 units of housing in all. In January, the firm finished transforming an alpaca wool mill in downtown Holyoke into 88 units of senior housing.

The largest such project in Taunton, the Whittenton Mills, involves 42 acres that was vacant for more than a decade. Work has finally begun after years of trying to attract developers, said Jay Pateakos, executive director of the Taunton office of economic and community development.

The plan is to create 390 apartments, as demand has grown with the arrival of a new commuter rail and new residents relocating to Taunton, after being priced out of elsewhere in the state.

“Housing is number one, especially affordable housing,” Pateakos said. “A lot of these mills make excellent apartments, so we look at it, and we try to create some housing opportunities.”

In Fall River, officials say renovating the old mills can have a multiplier effect on the local economy by creating jobs for people working on the projects and by attracting deep-pocketed new residents to live in the city.

Mayor Paul Coogan acknowledged that it is tough work. But developers regularly come to the city inquiring about them.

“They’ve had good success here, and they come back and they [say] ‘Look, what else do you have?’” he said.

“Some people that are holding on to these old mills want more money than I think they’re worth, and that a developer is willing to commit to,” he added. “But if we can put together a deal … it turns around a neighborhood.”

Omar Mohammed can be reached at omar.mohammed@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter (X) @shurufu.