| About | | | History | | | Images | | | News | | | Leisure | | | Resources |
News
News Highlights
Opinion
Calendar
Mooresville Mills Down, But Not Out
By MEGAN PILLOW
Mooresville Tribune
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
 |
The Mooresville Mills project has taken some hits lately, but the project is far from dead, says its developer.
David Rogers of Rogers & Associates, who has partnered with Cherokee Investment Partners to redevelop the former Burlington Mills into Mooresville Mills, said at a meeting of the Mooresville Mill Village Assembly last Thursday that the project has encountered some difficulties, including problems with securing tenants and financing, but that he’s committed to seeing it to its end.
“We’re not giving up. Cherokee’s not giving up. It’s just taking a while,” he said.
A crowd of nearly 60 residents turned out at the Mooresville Public Library Thursday to hear Rogers speak about the project.
The meeting, which was moderated by Mooresville Historic Preservation Commission member and Mill Village resident Yvonne Hart, also featured Commissioner Mitch Abraham discussing some of the work the town has done to help improve the turn-of-the-century neighborhood.
The Mill Village Assembly meetings, as well as the Mill Village Revitalization Committee and the neighborhood’s community watch groups, have in recent years been part of an effort by area residents to help the neighborhood shake its reputation for run-down houses and crime and to gain recognition as a valued historic district.
Rogers said he has been working for some time on securing historical tax credits for the proposed $150 million project, but that there have been some holdups. The first time the project applied for the tax credits, which Rogers says are essentially “free money,” it was turned down.
Rogers said he and others fought for six months to get on another study list with the State Historic Preservation Office, which was supposed to be done in October 2007, but was completed just the previous week.
The project, he said, was turned down yet again because of the 1960s and 70s improvements to the buildings, and now it is with the National Park Service, which will send officials the week of April 14 to look at the property. If that fails, he said, the project will have to wait two years before it can apply again.
“We hope we can talk them into it,” he said. “We’re looking for something to move this project forward.”
The Mooresville Mills project was announced by Rogers and Cherokee in May of 2006. It plans to integrate established and new construction on the property and will include apartments, condos, “tower” homes with terraces, office space, and retail space, including room for restaurants, shops, banks and a grocery store. It is projected to generate 400 to 700 new jobs.
Construction on the project was scheduled to begin in the spring of 2007.
Another way to move it forward, said Rogers, is to secure tax increment financing, which allows an area to reserve the future tax revenues generated by a development to pay for the debt issued to pay for the project. But Cherokee, said Rogers, won’t sign the TIF papers until there are some tenants signed up for the project.
Rogers said that there had been one tenant who was seriously considering the property and who would have moved in this summer – Freightliner. The company would have moved 350 people and their jobs into the property, he said, “if the state had given us the money.”
Obviously, that didn’t happen, he said, but there are a couple other possible tenants, one of them corporate, considering the property, but they have yet to commit.
Despite being “very discouraged” about the loss of Freightliner, Rogers said he wasn’t giving up. “It takes a while to make these types of projects work,” he said, sometimes as long as five years. In addition, he said, he’s felt “more support from the town in the last 60 days than in the last six months.”
Abraham also spoke briefly about some of the projects the town has undertaken to help benefit the Mill Village, many of which he said came from a charrette held several years ago.
Abraham said the town approved a neighborhood conservation overlay at its March meeting for the Mill Village, which will help regulate how people renovate mill houses and what can be torn down and built in the neighborhood. “We want to keep this piece of history in Mooresville,” he said.
Code enforcement revisions, he said, are still in process. “We are still formulating all that.” A strike team, he said, will be taking notes in the neighborhood this month, and report on code enforcement should be forthcoming at the town board’s April 7 meeting.
Commissioner Miles Atkins, also in attendance, took a moment to address the crowd’s concerns about code enforcement. He commended Abraham for working on the problem, and said he first was made aware of the issue at the neighborhood’s candidate forum last fall.
“Your voices were heard, and your town is moving forward in that direction,” he said. Abraham also said the town is working in conjunction with the Urban Land Institute to implement a study to help develop a small area plan, which citizens will be asked to participate in. In addition, he said, the town knows there are problems with the water and sewer lines in the area and is working to survey and resolve those as well.
“We know the pressure’s down. We know there are water leaks,” he said.
Abraham said the neighborhood needed to have another clean-up day in the near future, and that Nesbit Park was close to completion. A ribbon-cutting for the park, he said, will be held on April 16 at 10 a.m.
Sidewalks, he said, are another big concern in the neighborhood, and the town is working to answer those needs as best as possible in the next year or so. “We don’t have as many sidewalks as you need down there,” he said. “We’ve got sidewalks coming.”
Mayor Bill Thunberg, who was also in attendance, thanked the crowd for the healthy turnout. “We’ve got a lot to be proud of in our heritage here in Mooresville,” he said.
For more information on the Mooresville Mills project, visit www.mooresvillemills.com. For more information on the Mill Village, visit www.mooresvillemillvillage.com
Reprinted courtesy the Mooresville Tribune
Subscribe to the Mooresville Tribune