History becomes housing in Clayton

CLAYTON — A development company has brought a historic textile factory back to life as an apartment building known as the Spinning Mill Lofts.

Thomas Taft Jr., principal at Taft Development Group, said it took some time to see the full potential of the 120-year-old building that was home to the Clayton Spinning Co. for nearly eight decades.

“We were active in the area,” Taft said. “We had always noticed the old spinning mill building behind the post office but didn’t see much potential around it at the time.”

Later, rehabilitating the historic structure would become a priority to provide something new and different in Clayton, Taft said. “We started getting active in what are called historic tax credit projects in 2017,” he said.

Those tax credits proved key to transforming the former textile plant, where earlier rehab projects had faltered, Taft said. “There had been a lot of kind of false starts on projects going through in the past, and we kind of assumed that maybe historic tax credits were the missing piece of the formula,” he said.

But the tax credits don’t give developers license to do as they wish with a building, Taft said. In exchange for the credits, developers like himself have to respect and preserve a building’s history, he explained.

“When you have historic tax credits, everything is monitored and reviewed by two sources: the state preservation office and the national park service,” he said. “They make really nuanced decisions for you, like what color walls can be, what type of windows can go back in and what the uses for even some of the spaces are so they can reflect the building’s heritage.”

The process of preserving and restoring the Clayton building’s history was tedious, Taft said. “You had to run a significant amount of daily decisions through different third parties,” he said. “Then you are waiting on those decisions to be made at times, so it slows the project down. But it also ends up leading to a more meticulously planned and built project.”

The back-and-forth began in 2018, and the first apartments became available for rent in December of last year.

“It’s an unbelievably large amount of work,” Taft said. “But it’s a really great program that more people should take advantage of.”

The historic mill architecture provides a unique setting for 25 apartments. “The way the building is laid out, it’s got what’s called a clear story, which is the long skylight that runs the length of the building,” he said. “The skyline was put in because the active mill used it as light before the advent of electricity.”

With its natural light, that portion of the building was perfect for apartments, Taft said. “This clear story sort of defined where the residential units would work.”

The skylight runs along about 60% of the length of the former factory, which is surrounded by 230 units of new apartment construction. The remaining space is filled with amenities available to all tenants.

In all, Taft figures the building has about 25,000 square feet of amenities. “That’s a whole heck of a lot of space — from a co-working room, conference rooms, cafe, and the list kind of goes on,” he said. “But it really does distinguish us from more traditional projects.”

The building’s history adorns the walls of the amenity spaces.

“For historical rehab projects, you have to do an archaeological survey,” said Taft, whose firm hired Archaeological Consultants of the Carolinas, which has its office in Clayton.

“They helped us understand the history, and then my general contractor is a bit of a buff on this.”

The archaeologist on the mill project found a trove of history, including Coke cans from the 1900s and medicine bottles, Taft said. “He found people’s names carved in the wood, and then in the concrete where people would put dates, like Pearl Harbor.”

The mill building offers a variety of floor plans, including a traditional loft apartment, where a lofted sleeping space, with a full bath, walk-in closet and natural light, overlooks a living area and kitchen.

Rents for available apartments range from $2,020 for a one-bedroom, two-bath unit with 1,291 square feet to $3,145 for a two-bed, two-bath apartment with 1,600 square feet.

A traditional pricing model for apartments wouldn’t work for the mill building units, Taft said. “You can throw all that out when it comes to the loft units because every single one of those is a completely different unit,” he said. “And so we went through them and basically decided to put premiums on various things. Does it have the original floors? Does it have four windows instead of two?”

“Honestly, we’ve had zero resistance to the mill loft rent,” Taft added. “We may have had more resistance to the new construction rents … but that is based on the cost of construction.”

Clayton residents have welcomed the rehab project, Taft said. “Everyone knows about it because they grew up here,” he said. “They just wanted it to become something they could still use, and that’s what we did.”

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