The former Burlington Industries property on Main Street south of downtown Mooresville has been vacant for a decade and up for sale since August. Eager to find a use for the 38-acre, prominently located textile mill site, town commissioners toyed with the prospect of buying and redeveloping the sprawling property themselves.
But following a closed-session discussion Monday morning about purchasing the facility that currently lists for $1.7 million and includes 755,000 square feet of buildings, commissioners decided not to act on the matter.
Still, said Town Manager Steve Husemann, "Just because they took no action, which de facto means they decided not to purchase, doesn't mean there will not be a future discussion."
While Husemann could not disclose what was said in the closed meeting, he insisted the mill property remains valuable to the town. "How can we get the best and fastest reuse of this property? Is it better accomplished if we become redevelopers, buying, subdividing and reselling the property?" he said.
While that question has been temporarily decided, Husemann envisions some type of collaboration with current mill owner Cherokee Mooresville LLC or a future buyer.
Two years after Burlington closed the mill in 1999, the site was bought by Cherokee Mooresville, a real estate private equity firm. Hoping to develop it as an "urban village" celebrating Mooresville's heritage, Cherokee made extensive interior and exterior renovations to the property.
But a $150 million proposal in 2006, called Mooresville Mills -- combining residential, retail and office space – faltered.
Saying they had expended their second investment fund and not found suitable tenants, Cherokee officials announced last summer they had put the property up for sale and hired Pappas Properties LLC of Charlotte to market it.
With its potential to become a possible commuter rail terminus and its close proximity to the downtown, the mill site could serve a wide variety of future uses, town officials say. The mill also housed the original Mooresville Cotton Mill in 1898 and its successors until 1999 when Burlington Industries closed.
"It's an important part of the community, which is why the town would even want to consider it," said Husemann, but he also added it's a large investment to make without knowing who might be the future users.
"If I had five people knocking on my door, lined up, that would be different," he said.
Commissioner Chris Carney said he thinks a venture of this size should be left to the private sector.
"It just wasn't the place for the town to get involved with redevelopment," said Carney. "In reality the town is taking the position of we should be administrators of planning guidelines and not developers of property."
Commissioner Mitch Abraham said Cherokee still has some options on the table and he wants to see how those play out. "We're looking at the whole situation and what Cherokee is going to do to sell it," said Abraham. "We need to stand back."
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