Wilson has a lot of experience renovating abandoned mills and says they’re easily adaptable to any space desired. “The nice thing about mills is they’re just big open spaces. They’re all brick exterior walls and heavy-timber columns and beading and hardwood floors.”
However, the project was not without challenges, a couple of which arose because of the upper mill’s era and its former program. “Because the mill was built in the mid-1900s when air conditioning already existed, the building was windowless,” Belledin says. “From the exterior it was a big, characterless brick box.”
In addition, the mill consisted of unreinforced masonry walls with very little lateral load resistance. “They’re great warehouses; you can stack lots of heavy things up and they perform beautifully,” Belledin adds. “However, when you’re repurposing them as assembly spaces in which you’re putting lots of people, you need to meet current structural codes. We introduced a new structural system around the perimeter to meet the current code requirements.”
Belledin’s goal, and that of the ownership team, was to restore the mill in a way that contributes to its beautiful landscape and rectifies any previous damage the mill may have caused. “There are stories that the Haw River would run red or blue, depending on the color of the dye being used that day,” Belledin says. “Like a lot of mid-century industrial projects, the mill didn’t have the strongest relationship with the environment, so it was important to all the owners to reverse that cycle.”
The design team started by introducing daylight to minimize artificial lighting requirements as much as possible. Windows of specific heights were carefully oriented and sunshades were integrated where necessary to mitigate heat gain. “All the windows are operable, so natural ventilation can be utilized whenever possible,” Belledin says.
Wilson adds: “In the event center, we basically removed the whole exterior wall on one end to create a wall of windows that goes from the ground floor all the way to the roof. The windows mimic the metal windows you see in a lot of old mills.”
From an energy standpoint, the team chose geothermal heating and cooling. Water is heated through use of a solar-thermal system on the roof. The team also repurposed the mill’s existing water-treatment plant so secondary water uses, such as toilet flushing, will rely on graywater.
Rainwater is being collected in cisterns for irrigation; water that isn’t captured is directed through a series of rain gardens before flowing into a constructed wetland and finally into the Haw River.