QUESTION: Does anyone intend to either rebuild or demolish the old Carolina Mill building in Hopedale that fell prey to arsonists this past fall?
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ANSWER: The charred carcass of the historic mill at 2058 Carolina Mill Road has remained largely untouched since a group of local firebugs set the structure ablaze in November.
Yet, there are hints that a plan may, indeed, be afoot to remove this remnant of the county’s textile heritage from the riverside acreage it occupies in the unincorporated Hopedale community near Burlington.
At the moment, there are still many imponderables about the ultimate fate of the old Carolina Mill building. But one thing that appears to be certain is that the desires of local government officials will have little bearing on what happens to this industrial ruin.
Jessie Quinn, the county’s deputy fire marshal, recently told The Alamance News that his office has more or less washed its hands of the mill since it completed its post mortem of the fire-ravaged structure.
“The building was turned over to the property owner after fire investigation was completed,” Quinn explained in an interview last week. “We secured the building to keep people from going in there, but other than that, we have nothing to do with it.”
Quinn added that the final arbiter of the mill’s future will be the owner of the now-desiccated edifice.
For nearly two decades, this property has belonged to the Capitol Broadcasting Company, the Raleigh-based proprietor of media outlets like FOX 50 and WRAL – the Triangle’s long-time NBC affiliate. Alongside its diverse broadcasting empire, Capitol Broadcasting has launched a sideline in historic redevelopment that’s perhaps best represented by the American Tobacco Campus, which has sprung up on the grounds of an old cigarette factory in Durham.
In 2006, Capitol Broadcasting expanded its real estate portfolio to include a 50-acre tract in Hopedale that was once home to a thriving textile concern. Known as Carolina Mill, this facility was established on land that the family of industrialist E.M. Holt had purchased on the left bank of the Haw River in 1869. The old mill had been out of commission for decades by the time that Capitol Broadcasting acquired the property. Yet, any plans that the company may’ve had to redevelop the edifice literally went up in smoke when three men in their early 20s set fire to the structure on November 25.
Since The Alamance News first spoke with Quinn about the fate of the mill, the newspaper has received an update about the property owner’s plans from Alamance County’s fire marshal John Payne.
In an interview on Monday, Payne recalled that, in a recent conversation with one of his staff members, a representative of Capitol Broadcasting shared some potentially promising news about the old building.
“They said that the property owner is going to start demolition in a couple of weeks,” Payne went on to explain in an interview Monday. “They plan to recycle the bricks, so they expect it to take about six weeks.”
The Alamance News has put in a call to Mark Stanford, the head of Capitol’s real estate division, to get more details about the company’s plans for this site. Stanford hadn’t replied to the newspaper’s voice mail as of press time on Wednesday.
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