How a North Carolina City is Trying to Reinvent its Downtown

Story by Gin Phillips / Dec. 6, 2002

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The 1818 mill (Rocky Mount Mills)

Founded around one of North Carolina's first cotton mills in the mid-1800s and nourished by an early railroad depot, Rocky Mount, N.C., located 55 miles east of Raleigh, owes its existence to those early structures at its city center.

To revitalize its downtown, five years ago the city of 56,000 embarked on a 10-year program involving three major restoration projects. A $9.5 million effort to restore the local train station began a new era in the sprawling town's self-image. As the refurbished depot opened two years ago, a local group launched a plan to restore the city's so-called "mill village," a neighborhood of 62 rental houses built between 1885 and 1940 for employees of the cotton mill. Now plans are under way to transform an old tobacco warehouse into a downtown arts complex.

"We're about 30 years behind," says John Mebane, president of Rocky Mount Mills, which owns the mill and its village. "People have been doing this in other places for a long time. We're doing it all at once."

By the late 1990s, Rocky Mount's downtown, like that of other small Southern cities, needed resuscitating after decades of decline. "Commercial retail growth has moved toward the suburbs," says Rocky Mount Mayor Fred Turnage. "I don't think we'll go back to where we were in the 1950s, with downtown as a primary shopping area. Shoppers tend to lean toward malls now. But a downtown is still an important part of any community."

The community's restoration trend began in 1997, when the state's department of transportation, using state and local funds, oversaw the renovation of Rocky Mount's 1893 brick Romanesque train station. The city also restored a historic fire station across the street, converting it into a museum.

Plans for the new Imperial Center

In 1999 Hurricane Floyd flooded Rocky Mount, destroying a children's museum, performing arts center, and visual arts center. Because of the area's propensity to flood, the city council decided not to rehabilitate the buildings; instead, it opted to convert downtown's 100-year-old Imperial Tobacco Company warehouse into an arts complex that will house the three previously separate venues. Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency provided some funds, the project needs more money; architects are now determining the total cost of the renovation. To help, the city council this year approved a tax increase of four percent, which will go toward not only the proposed renovation but to six blocks of downtown parks. Mayor Turnage predicts that the center will open in three years.

"We view it as a part of downtown development," Turnage says, "With the train station on one end of town and the new arts center and library on the other end. We wanted to anchor the southern end of downtown."

Six blocks from the Imperial Center, Rocky Mount Mills was the center of town in the early 1800s; today, the city is flush with other manufacturing plants and food-distribution companies, and its main street is lined not with thriving shops but office buildings and banks.

First documented in 1816, the name "Rocky Mount" derived from a mound near the Tar River. The mill was erected at that same large rock in 1818, and the Wilmington-Weldon Railroad was built two miles east of the mill in 1845. Together, the main railroad line and Rocky Mount Mills jumpstarted the area's prosperity, and by the turn of the 19th century, 3,000 people lived in Rocky Mount.

A restored mill village house (Rocky Mount Mills)

But industrialization slowly made the mill obsolete. When it finally closed in 1996, retired mill workers and only a handful of mill employees lived in the 74-acre village. The mill's closure posed the question of what to do with the rental houses, most of which needed repair.

That question led to the formation of Preservation Rocky Mount, a nonprofit founded to preserve and resell the houses and mill buildings. Part of the group's determination comes from the emotions tied to the mill. One current tenant moved in as a 19-year-old bride 76 years ago. Another woman recently purchased the house her mother and grandmother before her had rented all their lives.

"People come in all the time and say they've never set foot here, but their grandparents lived here," Mebane says. "It's touched the lives of so many people."

In May 2000, the city council approved designation of the Rocky Mount Mills Village as the town's first local historic district. Each of the one-story and two-story houses, all listed on the National Register of Historic Places, will be sold with covenants—new owners must rehabilitate their homes following specific guidelines that preserve their historic integrity. Currently 26 houses are for sale. Priced from $20,000 to $39,000, most of the 850- to 1,600-square-foot homes still boast original windows, doors, hardware, and an occasional claw-foot tub. Tin roofs are mandatory, so new owners must convert asphalt roofs to tin. Mebane estimates that it will cost $40,000 to $60,000 to rehabilitate a house. "But when you're done," he says, "you've got a solid house with real character."

As for the future of Rocky Mount, Mebane says retouching the past has benefits. "It does make a difference," he says. "We're getting more people looking, saying they've heard about us or read about us. They hear about what's going on, so they come look for themselves."

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