from North Carolina Preservation (Fall 2005)

In 2004, the opening of Preservation North Carolina’s Southwest Regional Office in Shelby marked the full implementation of an ambitious 1993 plan to regionalize PNC’s work with endangered properties. When the plan was first adopted, the concept of a “virtual office” didn’t yet exist. By 2004, “virtual” made sense for our new Shelby-based office, charged with working throughout Southwestern North Carolina.

The 1993 plan fundamentally changed how our organization works with historic properties, calling for regional offices in Edenton, Winston-Salem, and Shelby. These offices would put PNC closer to the properties with which it works, and it would complement then-new museum properties in Wilmington and Hillsborough. No longer would we have to criss-cross the state from Raleigh to work with endangered properties. This year marks the tenth year of operation for PNC’s Northeast Regional Office. The story of how that first office came into being is instructive.

Until 1995, Preservation North Carolina’s “revolving fund” worked solely on a property-by-property basis – mainly historic houses, downtown buildings, schools, and churches. In the fall of 1995, Unifi, Inc., a large textile manufacturer based in Greensboro, announced that it would be closing the century-old Edenton Cotton Mill. The property, perhaps eastern North Carolina’s most intact historic textile site, sat along scenic Queen Anne Creek, just across the railroad tracks from a renowned National Register historic district in the picturesque town of 5,100. Preservation NC asked Unifi to consider donating the 44-acre complex, comprised of fifty-seven (mostly vacant) mill houses and 117,000 square feet of vacant mill buildings. In early December 1995, Unifi agreed to make the gift, on the condition that the closing take place by the end of the year.

Heartburn accompanied euphoria. Two weeks before Christmas, PNC’s Board of Directors held an emergency board meeting in Edenton to decide whether to accept the donation. For more than two hours on a cold and damp Saturday, the board discussed dozens of “what if’s.” In the end, the preservation vision of revitalizing a mill and mill village as a demonstration project prevailed over concerns about potential liabilities. The vote was unanimous. If all else failed, the forty-four acres would have enough financial value as raw land to bail out the organization.

The gift offered two great opportunities. First, it would give PNC a chance to work with an important and highly endangered building type: historic industrial buildings (such as mills, warehouses, and mill villages). North Carolina’s industrial landscape was dramatically changing, leaving behind scores of giant turn-of-the-century historic factories. Second, the gift gave PNC an opportunity to put its first regional office in place.

Borrowing against the value of the property, PNC immediately obtained a $150,000 line of credit from a sympathetic bank to pay for the necessary costs of staffing the project, holding the property, and preparing it for reuse (for example, installing water lines throughout the village). Interest costs would initially be paid out of the line of credit. Not surprisingly, PNC couldn’t find a developer to purchase the entire property. The project was too risky. No one really knew whether a mill village in a small, isolated town would be attractive to buyers from near or afar. So, in a new venture for PNC, we decided to develop the property ourselves.

A critical milestone would be getting the Town’s approval to subdivide the property. We contracted with a preservation-minded developer with a planning background to do a preliminary master plan. He focused on infrastructure issues, such as utilities, street dedications, and property boundaries. Where should utility easements be established? Where would driveways go? An architect from Slovakia, on leave to study with PNC for three months, provided great assistance to the project. Graduate students from the University of North Carolina’s Department of City and Regional Planning mapped, inventoried and documented the buildings. They also contemplated other planning aspects for the project. What kind of covenants should the property be subjected to? Should vacant sites along the waterfront be developed? Who would be in the market for mill houses? The idea of applying cutting-edge New Urbanist tools to the existing mill village intrigued the students. Their thoughts were incorporated into the plan. Within six months, a subdivision plan was ready for submittal to the Town.

When we publicly revealed our plans, everyone had an opinion! Our proposal that properties be sold only for owner-occupancy drew both praise and disbelief. (Without protection, we feared that the small houses would be attractive to slumlords.) The exteriors would have to be renovated within two years of purchase. We placed strict limits on the sizes of additions so that the small houses wouldn’t grow into big houses. Where village residents originally had vegetable gardens behind the houses, we designated an area where no construction could take place, no fences could be erected, and no plantings could be installed without approval. The easement keeping the former garden area open and unobstructed also provided a protected green space in the middle of every block, an amenity for the modern back-yard dweller. Some folks liked it; others said it would never work.

Our protective covenants and design review would be the strictest ever. Even though a mill house is not individually an architectural treasure, its place in context is extremely important. Many times we asked: how do we set this up so that the village is livable now, while maintaining its long-term historical integrity? If fourteen houses on Phillips Street are identical now and their significance is derived from the repetition, how do we guarantee that there are still fourteen identical houses decades from now? So we set down prescriptive rules. All roofs must be standing-seam tin, painted silver. Porch balustrades are forbidden, unless clear documentary evidence proves that a house had one. Even porch lights and street numbers are regulated. Rather than mandating color (a tricky domain of property owner’s choice), we set a standard of reflectivity for color. Since the houses had been painted in light colors for years, our standard would allow property owners to choose their own colors, so long as they were light.

We believed that having a good plan would be vital to finding buyers willing to invest in this unprecedented project. However, some people don’t recognize planning as forward motion. The question on the street in Edenton was: why haven’t you sold any houses? Before we even had legal authority to sell houses, some local folks were citing the lack of sales as proof that the project would fail.

While the planning process was underway, we fashioned plans for a “model house.” Several designers provided layouts for a representative mill house. All agreed that a small addition connecting the house to its original kitchen outbuilding would be useful in adapting the house for modern use. So, with a prodigious measure of volunteer help, PNC renovated the exterior of the house, framed in the connecting addition, and cleaned up the interior. No mechanical systems and no new interior walls were installed. The donated floorplans were mounted on the walls, a few homey touches (such as plants and throw rugs) were added, and the front door was opened for viewing. We piggybacked on the activities of the local arts council and a local historic house tour to attract visitors to our “model house.” The response was stunning; thousands of people (literally) went through the house. Some were surprised at how spacious the small house felt (thanks to higher ceilings). Others commented on the substantial building materials (real wood!) and pleasant detailing. The house was a hit.

Having a model house allowed PNC to work through design issues for new construction before having to answer similar design questions from property owners. We could be our own “guinea pig,” and we could give property prospects reliable information about costs.
During the summer of 1996, we initially offered ten houses for sale by sealed bid. Rather than having to establish asking prices for fifty-seven houses, clean them out, and prepare them for showing, we could narrow the choices down to ten that were in decent shape. We received significant publicity, as reporters played up the drama of whether we would receive any offers at all. Of course, no proposals were received until shortly before the bid opening, leaving us on pins and needles. Bids continued to arrive on the afternoon of the opening, and when the dust settled, we had acceptable bids for four houses.

The bid process helped us set market values. When the property was originally appraised for donation, the smaller mill houses were valued at $2,500-4,500. The appraiser could find no good comparable sales for mill houses in a small town. We boldly set our minimum bid levels much higher, and the bids proved us right. Offers came in around $20,000-35,000. Once again, the project hit the headlines, and others came to take a look at this curious preservation project.

We sold our first house to a local couple and financed the sale on generous terms. That first sale provided the comparable sale needed for bid buyers to get conventional financing for their purchase and renovation. Those sales then supported the appraisals for the next buyers. BB&T, the same bank that provided PNC a line of credit to undertake the project, set up a special loan package for mill village purchasers and assigned one of its loan officers to the project. Over a period of sixteen months, forty-seven houses would be sold for renovation for owner-occupied residential use.

Invariably, when the revitalization of a neighborhood takes place, concerns about affordability surface. One of the first rumors to spread through Edenton after our acquisition of the property was that we were going to kick out the former mill employees who still lived there. The rumor preposterously posited that PNC planned to sell the entire parcel for the development of new condominiums!

Former mill employees still occupied eighteen houses. Most were elderly, and several had lived in the village for decades. Generally, their homes were in much better condition than the vacant houses. We offered residents a choice of buying their homes at a deeply discounted price or continuing to rent at a favorable rate. Selling homes to first-time homebuyers in their seventies was a heart-warming experience. Nearly a decade later, we continue to rent a few houses to former mill employees.

The buyers have been diverse. White, black; young, old; straight, gay; single, families; local, distant; first home, second home – we have a real mix. That variety reflects the range of the village’s house types. The original sales prices ranged from $17,000 to $100,000; house sizes stretch from 800 square feet to nearly 3,500. With one exception, our earliest buyers were not from Edenton. It took a while for local people to believe that the project would succeed; they still saw the mill village as a dilapidated area on the wrong side of the tracks.

We quickly recognized that the renovation of the industrial buildings would follow, not precede, the revitalization of the mill village. The mill village would have to establish the market, house by house. Until the market values were sufficiently high, renovation of the mill would not take place. Fortunately, the mill was sited at the back corner of the mill village. Rather than first seeing a large empty building, prospects saw the houses and construction activity. The mill’s windows had been bricked in years ago, a regrettable alteration that initially worked to our advantage. The mill looked like a continuous brick wall that became a neutral backdrop. If the mill had still had its windows, they would have been broken out over time, and the mill would have become a liability for the mill village.

We first agreed to give the mill to a fledging nonprofit arts and humanities institute for renovation, under the condition that its leaders demonstrate their ability to raise the necessary funds for the project. Unfortunately, the ambitious project never gained any real traction. It would have been a wonderful benefit for the community. In 1998, the mill attracted the attention of two different groups of private investors but, for a variety of reasons, their plans didn’t work out. Then, in November 1999, almost four years after the initial gift, one of the celebrants at PNC’s 60th anniversary gala asked me about the mill. I immediately introduced him to an architect that had been involved with one of the earlier efforts, and within days we were all on the road to Edenton. Soon, the mill was under contract. By 2003, construction was underway, and this winter the mill welcomed its first occupants.

We had a handful of vacant lots in the mill village, where houses had been lost through the years. We decided to commission designs from a prominent preservation architect for two new houses for the mill village and specify that lot purchasers had to use one of the designs (allowing for some modifications). Our goal was to have new houses that resembled, but didn’t copy, the historic mill houses. We wanted the new houses to fit in to the streetscape, but be slightly differentiated. After the first infill house was completed in 2003, the remaining five vacant lots sold quickly.

In 1998, PNC purchased vacant land along the railroad tracks adjacent to the mill village so that we could control the design of new houses at the village’s entry. We subdivided the property into two lots and had to hold them for several years, waiting for the market to strengthen sufficiently to attract new construction. One lot was purchased for the relocation of an endangered Victorian house; the other for a substantial new house. Both complement the efforts in the mill village.

Fortunately, the Edenton project has been an enormous success – beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. The community benefits have been substantial. The local tax base, devastated by the loss of the county’s largest taxpayer and employer, was made whole after less than three years. The project may ultimately result in an 800% increase in the tax base for the property. New jobs abound as dozens of renovation projects progress and tourists visit the site. Developers, city officials, and neighborhood advocates from other textile communities have come to Edenton to see the project.

The turnaround has been remarkable. Numerous newspapers and magazines, including Southern Living and Southern Accents, have featured articles about the project. I have enjoyed observing: you certainly wouldn’t expect to find a mill village in a glossy shelter magazine. Imagine my pleasure in seeing mill houses included in the local historic house “pilgrimage” and in watching the local tourist trolley traverse the streets of the mill village. When the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated Edenton one of its Dozen Distinctive Destinations for 2003, the honor came in part because of the mill village. In a handful of years, the most shunned side of town had been reborn with pride.

The impact of the success will long be felt throughout northeastern North Carolina. The net sales proceeds have been used to fund our regional office’s work with endangered historic properties throughout the economically troubled northeastern region. PNC’s Northeast Regional Office is in the former mill office, and our staff there works to save endangered historic properties throughout 23 of the state’s most historic (and often poorest) counties. The project has netted significantly more than $1 million for the organization, much of which has been placed in permanent endowment for continued work in the region.

We’ve come a long way since that 1993 decision to regionalize the property work of PNC. With offices now doing property work in Raleigh, Edenton, Winston-Salem, Glencoe, Shelby, and Louisburg (new in 2005!), our challenge during the next decade will be to build on the success that launched our Northeast office in Edenton.