The World’s Largest Flannel Mill Sat Vacant for Many years. A CDFI Gave It New Life.

With big crimson brick smokestacks that jut within the sky, Revolution Mill is tough to overlook. The 800,000-square-foot former flannel mill was one of many dozens of business mills in Greensboro, North Carolina.

When totally working, the mill was a cornerstone of the native financial system. It modified the lives of 1000’s of residents, offering constant work for many years and completely shaping the panorama. The Cone Mill Company, which owned Revolution Mill, constructed worker housing within the surrounding hills. In the present day, the easy one-story “mill homes” dot northeast Greensboro.

However in 1984, with demand for flannel plummeting, the mill ceased operations. For practically 20 years, it sat in disrepair.

Durham-based Self-Assist – a neighborhood improvement monetary establishment that embody two credit score unions, a nonprofit mortgage fund, and a analysis and coverage affiliate – started because the lender to the property’s developer. Their function was to search out cash to assist the mission, not take the lead on it. However in 2008, the Nice Recession threw a wrench within the mission and halted additional progress.

Self-Assist started strolling their shoppers via foreclosures — however as an alternative of going forward with the method, Self-Assist determined to develop the property themselves. By 2012, the historic property formally belonged to the credit score union. With the textile trade gone, Self-Assist determined to revive Revolution Mill and give it a brand new life as industrial and retail area, ultimately including a housing element with industrial loft-style flats.

A view of the Revolution Mill campus. (Picture by Self-Assist/Joey Seawell)

Taking up a 50-acre property amidst an actual property disaster can be an enormous danger for many banks. However Self-Assist isn’t a typical banking operation. As a CDFI, its major aim isn’t to line its traders’ pockets. Their stakeholders are rooted within the native communities they serve, like Greensboro. That implies that of their capability as property traders, actual property builders, builders, and mission collaborators, all the pieces they do has to make each financial and cultural sense for the neighborhood.

So much made sense to them in regards to the property, regardless of its dimension. There’s nonetheless right this moment a technology of residents who bear in mind working at Revolution Mill. The property was as soon as the most important flannel mill on this planet, in line with UNC Greensboro researchers. It additionally helped that Self-Assist Founder Martin Eakes was born and raised within the metropolis, and that the financial institution had simply accomplished its downtown nonprofit heart simply two miles from the location. The way in which Self-Assist’s leaders noticed it, it will have been a waste of historic, cultural, industrial, and residential area if Self-Assist didn’t step in.

Emma Haney, the present director of enterprise and mission administration for Self-Assist, was simply an intern within the early days of Revolution Mill. “It’s actually due to our function as a lender, and since we additionally had this capability as a neighborhood actual property developer to sort of step in and tackle such a big mission and an advanced, credit score funding construction that we contemplate doing,” she mentioned.

There are greater than 140 companies and nonprofits now working within the constructing together with eating places, cafes, artwork galleries, and occasion areas, in line with Haney. In the summertime of 2024, a free metropolis trolley that runs straight from the property to downtown Greensboro made Revolution Mill much more accessible to the general public.

“It’s gigantic simply when it comes to the influence of area that was sitting there vacant earlier than, however is now energetic not directly and bringing individuals to [the mill],” mentioned Haney. “You may depend the folks that stay there, and you may depend the companies that stay there, and people are the individuals day in and day trip on campus.”

Self-Assist made deliberate selections to protect the historic structure of the previous textile mill, together with preserving the unique maple flooring—patching areas solely the place it was crucial. (Picture by Marielle Argueza)

Self-Assist’s distinctive place as a CDFI gave its group a deep understanding of what funds have been obtainable to maintain creating the property as a industrial area—and ultimately a residential mission too. As a result of the property was recorded on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations in 1984, Self-Assist had entry to historic tax credit. However in addition they tapped into new market tax credit, obtainable to CDFI to assist develop economically “depressed” areas, and even some metropolis funding to assist restore and renew the property.

Entry to this numerous pool of funds meant decrease development prices, which ultimately meant permitting them to suppose past the unique mission and herald some new collaborators.

For instance, historic tax credit which reward builders for preserving the vast majority of necessary historic components of the constructing, like the unique brickwork, maple flooring, and the long-lasting towering smoke stacks—allowed Self-Assist so as to add an reasonably priced housing factor. In the intervening time, they’ve 184 items, 20% of that are reasonably priced housing. “On this a part of city, that’s a variety of housing,” mentioned Haney.

Residents who stay within the industrial-loft type flats have quick access to the industrial and retail areas of Revolution Mill via the a number of of the mills walkways, accessible on the second story. (Picture by Marielle Argueza)

Establishments like town and native universities have been funders and collaborators too. Greensboro’s Parks and Recreation Division helped convey federal Greenway Funding. These funds introduced a brand new recreation path and helped restore the North Buffalo Creek that runs via the property.

UNC Greensboro was important in preserving and unearthing the historical past of the mill. Curated by UNCG researchers, small historical past displays could be noticed alongside a few of the corridors of the property, and a everlasting historical past museum memorializes the cultural and financial influence of the previous mill in images and outdated equipment.

“The extra you zoom out, the extra you see simply kind of like tens of 1000’s of individuals having the ability to work together with this campus that basically wouldn’t have ever been capable of with out redevelopment,” Haney says.

This story is a part of our collection, CDFI Futures, which explores the neighborhood improvement finance trade via the lenses of fairness, public coverage and inclusive neighborhood improvement. The collection is generously supported by Companions for the Frequent Good. Join PCG’s CapNexus e-newsletter at capnexus.org.