‘Eyesore monstrosity’ to get a new look? The vision for an abandoned Clover mill.

It isn’t much to look at now, but a visioning workshop could go far toward improving the view.

Clover leaders want to know what residents see in store for the American Thread property. The former mill on 16 acres, with a Main Street address, once made yarn and provided paychecks for many in town. Now it sits empty. It’s been vacant for years, and barely maintained.

“I’m 57, and as long as I can remember it’s been there,” said Laurin McCarley, who lives right around the corner. “My grandmother worked there. For whatever reason, it closed down years ago. It’s an eyesore monstrosity.”

McCarley filed a complaint with the town three years ago. She said deer, snakes and rats frequent the unkempt property at 401 S. Main St., and there were piles of debris, vegetation and old vehicles on the site where windows are knocked out of the building.

“The property can be classified as a nuisance,” McCarley said. “It’s a dilapidated mill and it presents a nuisance. We have just been fussing about this mill and fussing.”

Town Councilman Todd Blanton hears it. He, too, lives near the site.

“I live in the neighborhood,” he said. “I fought the cell tower a few years back right beside it. I hear about the mill. I supported and fought for the cleanup of the property, so I’m very passionate about the property.”

Citizen uproar led to changes with a cell tower plan just beside the site, lowering and slimming the structure many in the neighborhood opposed for several years. Now residents are concerned with the mill. Like the cell tower, they see it as potential either to help or hurt property values there significantly.

“This is a mill village,” McCarley said. “We have just been struggling with this mill. For years this mill has just sat and sat and been an eyesore for as long as I can remember.”

At 6:30 p.m. Monday, the Larne Building at 103 N. Main St. will host a visioning workshop for the American Thread property. Consultant company Cardno will facilitate. Residents and professionals will talk ideas for redevelopment of the site.

Cardno created an environmental impact study for the Haile Gold Mine in Lancaster County. That work was needed to reactivate and expand an area of open pit mining.

Grant concept

In 2018 the Catawba Regional Council of Governments received a brownfield grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study the mill site. The grant pays for the workshop and for a concept design for what could go there.

Blanton said as much interest as he has in the property, the workshop isn’t a town function.

“I’m a little concerned that it’s going to give hope to citizens when it’s just a grant to look at what could be done with the property,” he said. “Not what will be done with the property. It’s not like the owner is doing it to tell people what he’s going to be doing with it.”

County records show JA Benfield Plumbing out of Charlotte owns the site. The company bought the site from Southern Industries of Clover in 2014 for $97,500. The land value is more than four times the building value. The total market value is $290,100.

Efforts to obtain comment from the current owner were unsuccessful.

The only role the town has involves property zoning and, so far, code enforcement. Blanton said current town leadership worked hard to get the grass mowed and fence maintained. The site had a large cart of yarn on it that since was removed, along with an old tractor.

“Now it’s just a shell of a building,” said Blanton, whose grandfather worked there as an electrician. “It was a big employer for the town.”

Residents visions

For his take, Blanton would like to see the building remain but made modern. In Gastonia, N.C. ,former mill and school sites have been made into apartments or shops. In Rock Hill, they have become restaurants and businesses.

“There’s a lot of heritage there,” Blanton said. “I would love to see the building utilized and not torn down, due to its importance to our community.”

All the houses around the site were sold by American Thread to employees. Blanton’s grandparents bought theirs in the 1950s. McCarley remembers her grandparents working at the cotton mill. She remembers going to fairs there as a child.

“It was a functioning workplace,” she said.

She doesn’t know if environmental concerns would allow for the implosion of the structure with residences all around it. She can envision patio homes at the site, perhaps condos or specialty shops. A small park would fit there, McCarley said.

Anything, she said, but what is there now.

“It just brings down the whole neighborhood,” McCarley said. “Property values would definitely go up.”

Both she and Blanton say cost is a concern. Brownfields are areas with known or suspected environmental problems. Developing them can be difficult. There is a state option that can help, but it involves the site being sold.

A site under contract can have the state come in, assess environmental issues and work toward a clean bill of health for the property so liability for past damage doesn’t fall on the new owner. It’s the option Rock Hill economic development leaders have taken with the former Good Motor Company, Herald and other sites.

Just beside the site is a 3.2-acre property owned by CEB Equity Partners. Otherwise the site is surrounded by homes and smaller properties.

Property records show the site once was part of a 185-acre site. Past owners include American Thread Co., Hampton Spinning Mills and Southern Industries. The site spent some time in master in equity court during the Southern Industries run in 2013.

Blanton said he would like to see the property sold to an investor and redeveloped to benefit the town.

“That’ a 16-acre prime property in the town in Clover,” he said.