The 42-acre former Beacon Manufacturing site is getting a thorough cleaning in anticipation of possible development.
The massive blanket manufacturing plant closed in 2002 and burned nearly to the ground in a spectacular fire in September 2003. Contractors removed about 57,000 tons of debris from the site after the fire, and in March 2005 the investment group Swannanoa Valley Properties bought the property for $1 million.
Two of the organizers of Swannanoa Valley Properties are Bob Ingle, the founder and longtime chief executive officer of Black Mountain-based supermarket chain Ingles Markets, and Gordon Myers, former vice president of real estate for Ingles.
“We don’t have any immediate plans for development — we’re waiting till the market turns,” Myers said, referring to the downtrodden real estate market. “We had an opportunity to clean up the site, so we took it. It just really depends on the market, but we think a mixed-used facility would be very well suited for that site.”
That eventually could include retail, commercial and residential components. The Swannanoa village area, built largely as housing for mill workers, includes about 14,000 residents, and local leaders are considering incorporation.
The cleanup started about two months ago and should be complete by March or April, Myers said. Local contractor Taylor & Murphy Construction Co. is handling the job, which involves crushing slabs of concrete into aggregate that can be reused for road projects and other uses.
“Most of the really good sites for development in different markets are currently occupied by older buildings, so I think we’re going to see more and more of this in the future — people going in and buying existing site and rebuilding on them,” Myers said. “This is a great way to recycle undesirable property and make something new out of it. It adds to the tax base and the enhancement of the community.”
The Beacon plant opened in 1925 and employed thousands of local residents over the years. It was vacant at the time of the fire, which burned more than one million square feet of space and brought out 24 fire departments. The blaze and subsequent cleanup cost $450,000.
A Black Mountain man, Brendon Alexander Cummins, confessed in 2004 to setting the fire with a homemade pipe bomb and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Now, the site is busy once again, but not with industrious mill workers. Excavators and rock crushing machines gobble up the chunks of concrete and debris and spit out aggregate that is trucked off site to be used in road projects.
Some hazardous materials were found after the fire, but they’ve been cleaned up, Myers said. For now, they’ll simply plant grass on the site and keep it ready for development.
Buncombe County Planner Jim Coman said some sort of mixed-use plan makes sense for the site, which still remains the heart of Swannanoa. Large-scale manufacturing continues to wane in the county, and it’s unlikely another big manufacturer would locate there, he said.
“A lot of the other buildings in that area are begging to be rehabilitated and reused,” Coman said. “It would be a great catalyst for redevelopment if they could get a mixed-use project on that old Beacon site.”
Source: Asheville Citizen Times
1 Comment
January 28, 2009 at 10:19 pm
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