Feb. 16, 2002 

Past and future
MARY NEWSOM

Peter Thompson wasn't looking for publicity about his mill rehab project, but for help convincing the city not to destroy a small woods nearby and replace it with a garbage truck parking lot.

But after he showed me around the property, the underlying story -- developer trying to reclaim a century-old piece of Charlotte's past -- was what really grabbed me. Not that I want the trees chopped down, either, you understand.

The 1897 Louise Mill, like most of the city's old textile-mill past, gets scant attention these days. But for the good part of a century, Charlotte was as much a mill town as a banking town. The Carolinas textile industry may be shaky now, but the mill buildings left behind are as solid as fortresses.

The 1897 Louise Mill, between Hawthorne Lane and Louise Avenue, has maple plank floors, clerestory windows, pillars of heart pine and about 110,000 square feet of historic space.

It's poised on the fringes of two steadily improving neighborhoods. A few blocks east, the Plaza-Central business district is incrementally reviving. A few blocks south, the Sunnyside section of the Elizabeth neighborhood displays newly rehabbed homes and new construction, a renaissance boosted when Independence Boulevard, which used to cross Hawthorne like a big ugly river, became an underpass.

That simple street change somehow knit Elizabeth together again. That so minor a thing could make that big a difference shows how, in real estate, perceptions matter.

Because perceptions matter, Thompson doesn't want people to have to get to his project, which he's dubbing Hawthorne Mill, or to the rest of the Belmont neighborhood by driving past what he calls a "garbage truck gateway."

Why, he asks, should the city government do something so unattractive to a key gateway to Belmont while it is simultaneously spending thousands to put together a plan for revitalizing Belmont? Wouldn't it be smarter to do the plan first, then figure out whether to park garbage trucks on Hawthorne? Sound questions.

Friday, though, David Garner of the city's engineering department said parking lot construction starts next month. The city hopes to keep a 20-foot setback along Hawthorne and to protect trees and the embankment in the setback, he said.

The mill has always had strong ties to Belmont. I had known for years that a Louise mill once existed near Belmont but had never figured out where it was.The mill, I learned, is on an 8-acre tract between Hawthorne Lane and Louise Avenue, next to the CSX railroad tracks. Until recently its front said "Hanford's," one reason I hadn't recognized it.

The building has been in use since 1897, when it opened as Louise Cotton Manufacturing Co., named for the wife of merchant and mill owner H.S. Chadwick.

You don't hear a lot about the labor struggles of Charlotte's working poor. It's a story the city's boosterish historians of years past preferred to squelch. But almost from the start, the Louise mill had labor troubles.

As Tom Hanchett recounts in his book, "Sorting out the New South City," that era saw rising labor unrest in the South, including Charlotte. In 1897, 45 Louise Mill employees went on strike over wage cuts -- the largest walkout in Charlotte history at the time.

In 1900, Hanchett reports, a drunken "and evidently disgruntled millhand" broke into the factory at night and shot it up with a revolver. In 1901 a series of suspicious fires erupted, and the superintendent's house was destroyed.

In 1904, all but nine of 169 plant workers walked out, this time because management demanded they work for free to make up time lost because of a machinery breakdown.

Because of the unrest, Hanchett writes, the nearby Belmont neighborhood -- platted in 1896 as "an attractive resort" called Belmont Springs -- scaled back its vision. Out the window went plans for a winding drive, a landscaped park around a delightful spring and a romantic footbridge. Belmont became a white neighborhood of millworkers and other laborers. When the city bulldozed its largest black neighborhood, Brooklyn, in a late '60s urban "renewal" project uptown, other neighborhoods were flooded with Brooklyn residents needing housing. In little time, Belmont became predominantly black.

The Louise Mill most recently housed Hanford's Creations Inc., a florist supply business once owned by the brother of U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Hanford Dole.

In the '70s, Thompson said, the building was used by Eckerd as a warehouse. He pointed out a small outbuilding on Hawthorne that was campaign headquarters for Eckerd founder Ed O'Herron's 1976 race for governor.

The building's future may be as interesting as its history. Thompson and fellow owner Roger Lovelett bought it recently for $1.6 million. They believe its location and construction make it a good investment, likely as a combination of housing and commercial space.

Several other Charlotte mills have been successfully renovated, including Atherton Mill on South Boulevard, and the Johnston and Mecklenburg mills on North Davidson Street. Two more are in the works -- Highland Park on North Davidson and the Charlotte Cotton Mill uptown.

The new owners' enthusiasm is encouraging, and long-term trends in the area are positive. But can the mill's selling points -- historic feel, convenience to uptown -- overcome its liabilities? Right out back sits one of the city's poorest and most distressed neighborhoods, Belmont.

The city has begun work on a plan for Belmont, in hopes of solving some of its problems. I wish the planners well, but I confess to being skeptical that any plan can solve the underlying social dysfunction that has damaged Belmont for years.

But can an old mill come to life again? I'm more optimistic about that one. I think -- I hope -- the answer is yes.

Mary Newsom