ROCK HILL – Much like Rome and San Francisco, there was a time when Rock Hill burned, too.
That was July 2009, when a pair of arsonists set fire to a former textile mill site in downtown Rock Hill. Firefighters fought blazes at the site for a week, and the smoke billowed high enough that it could be seen from neighboring counties.
“Here’s this blighted thing, right in the middle of Rock Hill. All of this burned down,” said businessman Skip Tuttle, owner of the real estate firm Tuttle Co.
The devastating blaze at the former Bleachery building served as a parallel to the situation in downtown. Industry had taken up several blocks of the area across the previous century, starting with automotive manufacturing, then the textile business.
Figuratively, it had all gone up in smoke long before the arsonists torched the place.
At its height, The Bleachery employed nearly 5,000 workers in downtown in the 1960s. That dropped across the decades, finally dipping below 800 when it closed in 1998.
When the fire started in 2009, the main building along West White Street and others nearby had sat dormant for more than a decade. Municipal leaders still saw potential in the land. Some private-sector leaders also had some visions for it. And state lawmakers pitched in, too, with tax credits.
What developed was taking the sprawling blocks and converting the decaying buildings into office space, sports complexes, educational space, restaurants and apartments. Collectively, it’s known as Knowledge Park. One component, The Thread, has nearly completed its renovation of the flamed-tattered hull of The Bleachery. The Charlotte-based Keith Corp. is putting $100 million into transforming the 400,000 square feet there.
And once it’s done, it will culminate in a total of $375 million in investments, 1,000 jobs and 1,000 housing units overall for those blocks.
Knowledge Park
The revitalization area stretches from downtown to Winthrop University, with the former mill in the middle.
University Center, renovated by The Tuttle Co., takes up 23 acres of former factory buildings that are now filled with student housing, hotels, restaurants, and the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center, which is owned by the city. The Thread is to the south of University Center, followed by the Cotton Factory, which was restored in 2006. Gary Williams, founder of debt-collection firm Williams and Fudge, partnered with the city to revitalize the property, then moved his company into it.
Beyond them all having the ties of revitalizing Rock Hill, the Knowledge Park components will be connected by the Storyline Trail, a footpath that will stretch through all of them, beginning at Fountain Park and ending at Winthrop.
Tuttle credits the city for partnering with firms in various ways throughout the process.
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“The City Council has what I describe as an entrepreneurial-type spirit,” he said. “They have approved investments that were very risky. I mean, when they built the arena, they did not know whether that $30 million was gonna pay off or not.”
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“The state of South Carolina realized that something had to happen because all these towns, Rock Hill included, were losing industry,” Tuttle said. “And so the state created the textile mill tax credit. And it has worked to stimulate people like us to redevelop those mills. (University Center) is a good example of that. We now have 500 people working in this building and really good white-collar jobs.”
While most states across the country offer tax credits for historic preservation projects, the Palmetto State is the only one that offers tax credits for revitalizing abandoned buildings: giving developers a 25 percent discount on their property or income taxes for an amount up to a half-million dollars.
Specific to places like the Knowledge Park properties, the South Carolina Textile Communities Revitalization Act provides a credit for renovating, rehabilitating and redeveloping abandoned textile mill sites. The credit is not available to a taxpayer who owned the textile mill site immediately prior to its abandonment if the site was operational at that time.
It’s a 25 percent discount on the rehabilitation expenses unless the expenses exceed 125 percent of the estimate. State Department of Revenue officials could not specify how much in tax credits was given to the Knowledge Park properties.
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There are complications associated with the refurbishments, though.
“The entire site is on the National Register of Historic Places, which is good news, but that’s a challenge, as well,” Tuttle said. “That means that there are people in Washington that tell us how to design it, what materials we can use, what the finishes need to be, in great detail. You’ve got to maintain the integrity of that original structure.”
Keith Corp. leaders said the restrictions involved with the tax credits made them choose not to apply. Nonetheless, their goal was to retain as much of the building as possible.
“These structures are priceless and irreplaceable,” said Jay Coleman, an office partner at Keith who is overseeing The Thread project. “And from a cost standpoint, you wouldn’t replace them. It doesn’t make sense because they’re so well-built, and they really have a unique story. Kind of a cool factor.”
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