Plans for conversion of historic mill into 90 tony apartments put on hold (again)
A plan to convert an historic mill in Burlington into apartments has been postponed for the fourth time in three years for reasons that are ultimately unconnected to the city’s evaluation of the project.
It was ultimately financial considerations on the part of the developer that prompted Burlington’s city council to put off its review of the Pickett Hosiery building’s proposed metamorphosis when it came up for a hearing on last Tuesday.
Originally known as the Aurora Cotton Mill finishing plant, this vacant facility at the juncture of East Webb Avenue and Everett Street is perhaps best known as the erstwhile home of Pickett Hosiery, whose name still graces its exterior brickwork.
For the past five years, however, this property has belonged to a subsidiary of Clachan Properties, a Virginia-based development firm that specializes in the “adaptive reuse” of historic industrial sites.
Prior to its acquisition of the Pickett Hosiery building, Clachan had completed the transformation of Burlington’s iconic May Hosiery plant into a set of tony rental apartments. In 2021, the company turned its attention to the Pickett Hosiery building, and it applied to have the plant designated an historic landmark before it acquired the property on September 15 of that year.
Clachan went on to send Burlington’s planning department a detailed rezoning request for the conversion of the old mill building into 90 multi-family residences.
Ryan Moffitt, an attorney who has represented the project’s developer, recalled just how much effort his client put into this project before it first came up for a hearing in front of Burlington’s city council in 2023.
“I’ve been working with this group since late 2022,” Moffitt said when he addressed the council last week. “It has gone through the extensive planned development process and has received TRC approval but has stopped short of [receiving] its full zoning [from the city council].”
Rather than proceed with the original hearing, the city council agreed to put the matter off for a year at Moffitt’s behest. The attorney asked for another year-long-postponement when the project came back up in 2024, and he reiterated the request in 2025.
This year, Moffitt felt the need to offer the council a bit more of an explanation as he faced its members for the fourth time with a request for the hearing’s deferral.
“This is a situation where market conditions changed substantially during the time that this was being taken through the development process,” the attorney told the city’s elected leaders last week. “These adaptive reuse projects run on very tight margins…and the circumstances have not improved where they’re ready to move forward with this.”
The council voted 5-to-0 to postpone the public hearing until an unspecified date in September, 2027.
