Old mills hum with new uses

"Albatross, isn't it?" says Howard Hoffman, a Boca Raton, Fla., developer now working to rehab part of the downtown Salisbury, N.C., mill into a civic center. "But people are starting to come onboard now. Why? Because their towns are dying."

In Greensboro, the old Revolution Mill is a groundbreaking "small business incubator," says Erskine Bowles, the Democratic Senate candidate for North Carolina.

"That mill revolutionized the textile industry 100 years ago, but now it's revolutionary again," says Mr. Bowles. (While Bowles helped raise $15 million in redevelopment "equity," his opponent, Elizabeth Dole, has not had to fight so hard: Townspeople in her hometown of Salisbury want to put a "Liddy Dole Museum" in an empty downtown mill.)

And even tiny Bynum, N.C., a one-mill town that seemed on the verge of disappearing after the looms shut down, is making its way back with a "Front Porch" country music concert series that now draws fans – and new residents. Friday night, one of the prodigies from the Front Porch, Tift Merritt, played her first national gig on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Other towns such as Spartanburg, S.C., are turning the mills into mines. Selling rare "heart of pine" mill beams for $12 a boardfoot is a profitable business.

Still, in former company towns like Clinton Ware Shoals, N.C., gigantic mills loom portentously against the hard sky. In many places, the mills are but barren reminders of a fulfilling community endeavor that sewed a nation's jeans, curtains, and socks.

"My dad has memories of when he was a child walking to this place to take my granddaddy's lunch," says Ms. Stultz. "Everybody has been touched by these mills."

The industry won't die, analysts say, but rather than denim, the few remaining textile mills will churn out niche-market items like fire-proof fabrics for rescue workers. At the same time, many workers, are having to find other lines of work.

"It's the smaller sewing operations in the smaller towns where the major impact is going to be felt," says Conner Bailey, editor of the journal of Southern Rural Sociology at Auburn University in Alabama.

To help, developers can get historic preservation tax credits – like the ones given to the developer of the 600,000-square foot Loray Mills in Gastonia, where a bloody textile strike occurred in 1929.

What's more, 18 mill projects are now under consideration for "brownfields" designation, which means developers will get taxpayer help in cleaning up the land.

Despite the remoteness of Joanna, the drive to revive the mill is coming from the community's faith in itself, says Hightower: "We're trying our best to recreate the town to the way it was."

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