A textile mill on Phenix Street is one step closer to becoming apartments. Kings Mountain City Council voted 6-1 to rezone the historic Phenix Mill property from light industrial to semi-urban residential, clearing the way for its redevelopment as housing.
Council member Tyler Fletcher cast the lone dissenting vote, according to the Shelby Star, which reported the rezoning.
From Dilling Mill to Phenix Plant
A town founder opened the historic mill in the late 1800s. Dilling Mill was built in 1893 and became the Phenix Plant in the 1940s.
The rezoning clears the way for the mill property to be redeveloped as housing.
The Monument Companies
The Monument Companies is based in Richmond, Virginia, and was founded in 1988.
The Monument Companies describes itself as a licensed commercial contractor specializing in Historic Tax Credit rehabilitation and adaptive-reuse projects, with hundreds of millions of dollars in such work completed to date.
In West Virginia, the company's portfolio includes an $80 million project to remediate and redevelop the former Interwoven Mill and Perfection Garment sites in downtown Martinsburg, according to a City of Martinsburg announcement. That project was planned as a roughly 370,000-square-foot, historically sensitive mixed-use development delivered in three phases, with about 387 market-rate residential units and more than 5,000 square feet of commercial space, the city said.
The Proposed Mill Redevelopment
The proposed redevelopment would convert the mill into apartments.
The Phenix Mill proposal would convert the property into apartments. The City of Martinsburg's announcement about Monument's West Virginia project similarly noted that redevelopment there had to meet federal, state and local requirements around land remediation and development, though that requirement applies to the Martinsburg site rather than Phenix Mill.
The rezoning opens the door to redevelopment.
Part of a Broader Growth Push
The Phenix Mill proposal arrives as Kings Mountain looks for ways to jump-start development after a period of slow growth. The city's population reached 11,200 in the 2020 census, only about 500 more residents than in 2010, according to Business North Carolina. Elsewhere in the city, Insignis Partners has filed plans to rezone a 384-acre property near the Catawba Two Kings Casino and Interstate 85's Exit 5 for a mixed-use project called Dixon Ridge, envisioned at roughly 5 million square feet of buildings with 1,600 apartments and townhomes and an expected value exceeding $750 million at full build-out, per the outlet's reporting.
The rezoning marks a step toward redevelopment of the Phenix Mill property.
