By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
The clock is ticking on the former Kesler Manufacturing property, also known to generations of Salisburians as Cannon Mills Plant No. 7.
The Historic Properties Commission set in motion Monday a 90-day period before demolition can start on the vacant site, which includes nine buildings dating between 1895 and 1928.
George Culver, the Kings Mountain demolition contractor hired to clear the buildings, pleaded with commission members to waive the 90-day period and allow him to start tearing down the structures.
He said he already has some $90,000 tied up in the project and delays would be costly.
FCS Urban Ministries of Atlanta, a nonprofit organization which received the property in 2007 as a gift, wants to sell the land once it is cleared.
Culver, who owns Applied Abatement Concepts, Demolition and Trucking, said the main structures of the textile operation are falling apart. He said there isn’t a contractor or developer in the country who would touch the site without expensive environmental investigations being done first.
“It’s a cancer,” he said.
Old textile buildings such as the ones on this site at Park Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue come down three ways, Culver said. They burn down, fall down or come down at the hands of contractors like him.
Culver agreed some former textile mills have been redeveloped for other uses, but he expressed doubt that any prospective owner had pockets deep enough to take on this project in its present location.
But neighbors to the site, while expressing sympathy for Culver’s dilemma, urged the commission to allow for the 90-day waiting period.
Carl Peters, who lives on Park Avenue, said a wholesale demolition would leave his neighborhood stuck with a empty field. He argued that the oldest manufacturing building on the site is an architectural gem and questioned why the building should be torn down if all that would replace it would be a box store or apartment complex.
Peters spoke for the adaptive reuse of the buildings and called on the city for help in saving the structures. Another neighbor said he had tried to negotiate the purchase of some buildings, but FCS Urban Ministries had taken an all or nothing approach to date.
Jack Thomson, managing director for Historic Salisbury Foundation, said his organization stepped in and asked the city to rescind the original demolition permit Culver had secured in October, about six weeks ago.
City Manager David Treme agreed to take back the permit after the foundation noted a clause in the city code stating the owner had to give written notice of a demolition within a National Register of Historic Places district.
FCS Urban Ministries gave that formal notice Monday.
After written notice is received by the Historic Properties Commission, a 90-day waiting period goes into effect, unless the commission agrees to reduce the time or eliminate the waiting period altogether.
The commission voted 4-1 to stay with the 90-day period Monday. Jack Errante voted against that decision, while Anne Lyles, Judy Kandl, Kathy Walters and Andrew Pitner voted for the 90 days.
Kandl said she had heard nothing that repudiated the historical significance of the mill property as described in the original nomination for the National Register. Pitner agreed that the entire site has significance and deserved the extra 90 days.
Thomson said the additional three months might give his organization time to identify a developer willing to save the buildings. If that doesn’t happen, the foundation would at least like to save the 1910 office building and 1917 machine shop, both of which front on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
“We do need time to make this process work,” Thomson said.
Photographer Ben Martin has been hired by the foundation to do a survey of textile mill villages in Salisbury, including the one that grew around Kesler Manufacturing Co. and is part of the 1985 approved historic district.
Jeff Youngblood, the city codes officer who issued the original demolition permit, said the Salisbury Fire Department considers the primary manufacturing building an unsafe structure. Firefighters would take a defensive stance against a fire involving the old mill.
As much as he supports historic preservation, Youngblood said, “the buildings need to be demolished.”
He urged the commission to waive the 90-day period and allow Culver to start with the demolition.
Culver said the rescinding of the city’s demolition permit “was insulting to me.”
“Don’t stop me dead in my tracks,” he asked the commission.
Culver said someone with the city, neighborhood or Historic Salisbury Foundation “should get off the pot” and do something if they really meant to save the structures.
“I haven’t heard any developer step up to the plate yet,” he said. If nothing’s going to happen, he added, “Leave me alone.”
But Mary James, a Fulton Street resident, said Culver’s issue shouldn’t be with the city but with the property owner who hired him prematurely without knowing the rules.
As for not getting off the pot, James said, “We only have just learned of this issue.”
She told the commission it was in the business of encouraging historic preservation and should look for alternatives to demolition. In addition, James said, 90 days is a “nanosecond” in comparison to how long the buildings have been there.
“Ninety days is nothing,” she said.
Culver warned that the site is probably contaminated with PCBs, mercury and oil. He showed spots on an aerial view of the site where electrical transformers had been located and where possible PCB contamination might be.
He also reminded the commission of a major fuel oil leak that happened on the property a couple of years ago from an abandoned tank. The oil showed up in the city’s sewer system and contaminated groundwater and a nearby stream, Culver noted.
Culver’s crews have been taking out asbestos over recent weeks, removing windows to aid in that process. The asbestos removal should be completed by next Monday, meaning he would be ready to start demolition then, Culver said.
He has been keeping 24-hour security on the site, but if he can’t begin demolition right away, he will pull that officer and expense, Culver said. He has plans to recycle virtually all the building materials on the site except for the roofing.