A developer who has already poured tens of millions of dollars into reviving Vicksburg's long-dead paper mill now wants to add something new to the mix: Saturday night concerts for up to 10,000 people, in a village that counts fewer than 4,000 residents total. The proposal, unveiled at a Vicksburg Planning Commission meeting on Monday, would place an outdoor concert venue in the horseshoe of the old mill complex, about a mile southwest of downtown.
The site plan, submitted by The Mill Group, calls for one-day outdoor concerts on Saturdays beginning next summer, according to Vicksburg Village Manager Jim Mallery, as reported by MLive. Mallery said village officials are still evaluating documents and leaning on outside experts to help determine whether he should recommend approval to the Village Council, which holds final say over the site plan.
Before any shows can happen, Vicksburg must work through legal, engineering and zoning reviews, Mallery said. Much of that scrutiny centers on traffic and noise — officials are assessing potential adverse impacts, off-site parking locations, and how concertgoers would safely travel between parking areas and the venue itself.
A Different Kind of Crowd Than Christmas in the Village
Vicksburg isn't unfamiliar with big crowds. Mallery noted that the village's annual Christmas in the Village festival can draw more than 8,000 people, roughly double the town's population. But that event unfolds during the day, with attendance spread across many hours rather than concentrated arrivals and exits.
Nighttime concerts are a different animal. Mallery said The Mill Group's proposal envisions shows wrapping up by 11 p.m., with arrivals and departures bunched into tighter windows — exactly the kind of compressed traffic surge that has planning officials asking more questions before signing off.
From Shuttered Paper Plant to $120 Million Redevelopment
The Fox River Paper Mill closed in 2001, a quiet end for a complex that traced back to 1904, when it opened as the Lee Paper Company mill. At its peak the 420,000-square-foot facility churned out more than 17 tons of fine rag-content paper a day and employed hundreds of local workers, according to Wikipedia. The company merged into Simpson-Lee Paper in 1959 and was later bought by Fox River Paper Company in 1996, which ran the Vicksburg plant until the 2001 shutdown, per the Forest History Society. The mill then sat empty for over a decade. Chris Moore set out to save it from demolition in 2014 and acquired the site in 2018.
Moore, a Vicksburg native whose family traces back to the 1830s and whose relatives worked in the mill across three generations, made his fortune in Seattle's tech industry founding Concord Technologies before co-founding Old Stove Brewing Co. in Pike Place Market, according to Corp! Magazine. In 2018 he outlined an $80 million plan for the mill that originally included a brewery, museum, hotel, retail and event spaces, and residential apartments. That plan has since grown and shifted: The Mill Group says it has spent roughly $53 million rehabilitating the mill and on surrounding projects, including nine downtown commercial properties and 35 homes near the complex, most of which are now rented out, the group says.
Residential apartments are no longer part of the plan at all, Steve Sielatycki, vice president of The Mill Group, said in June. The group still intends to build a brewery, boutique hotel, retail space, event spaces and a museum that will house Moore's collection of bar and brewery memorabilia. Sielatycki pegs the overall mill redevelopment cost at about $120 million, financed by Moore himself, with the Fox River mill complex itself still sitting vacant as of this year even as money flows into the broader project.
State Incentives and a Pattern of Culture Before Construction
Michigan has already bet big on this project. The Michigan Strategic Fund approved a $30 million Transformational Brownfield Plan incentive package for the redevelopment back in 2019, with the state projecting nearly $80 million in private investment and 221 jobs, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. It was only the second project in the state to land that kind of approval, following Bedrock's redevelopment push in Detroit. Michigan later broadened the incentive program through Senate Bill 671 in December 2021, extending it through 2027 and allowing up to 100% income tax capture on qualifying projects, per Point Blue.
Ahead of any concerts, The Mill Group has used the vacant complex for smaller-scale culture. It sponsors the Prairie Ronde Artist Residency, which hosts up to a dozen artists a year for multi-week stays inside the former mill and stages public exhibitions downtown — fewer than 100 artists have passed through since the program launched. The group also reopened Kalamazoo's 40-year-old MacKenzie's Bakery in a restored downtown storefront in 2022, intended as a retail anchor to pull regional foot traffic into Vicksburg.
Environmental cleanup across the 120-acre mill campus has included crushing 10,000 tons of concrete on site for reuse, as well as fruit-tree planting and a beekeeping operation, according to Second Wave. The work also included environmental remediation across the property and removal of interior asbestos and lead-based paint.
Another Mill Project Still Underway
The Michigan Classic Auto Mill is being renovated and is expected to open in October.
The Mill Group will present its concert venue proposal to the public at a Vicksburg Village Council meeting on Monday, October 19, at Village Hall, 126 N. Kalamazoo Ave., starting at 7 p.m. The Planning Commission tentatively plans to vote on the site plan at its November 9 meeting, setting up a decision that will determine whether a village of under 4,000 people becomes home to a venue built for 10,000.
