Plans for Model Mill development fall through

More than a century of turning seasons and eroding economic tides has given Johnson City's Model Mill the resilience to weather many challenges, including those from development, it seems.After a nearly year-and-a-half-long parade of public hearings, variances, lawsuits and cries for historic preservation, North Carolina-based Evolve Development plans to back out of a deal to purchase the West Walnut Street property, leaving the blighted structure in the hands of the Johnson City Chamber of Commerce's fundraising organization for a while longer."Evolve has notified us they are not going to develop the mill," Chamber President and CEO Gary Mabrey said Tuesday. "We're working on contract amendments that will allow us to dissolve that agreement, and then we will consider what our next steps should be."Mabrey said Evolve notified him of the company's intention to back out of the deal Monday, and the Chamber's executive committee met to discuss the organization's options and the needed contract changes.Until the contract is officially dissolved, Mabrey said he's still technically bound by a confidentiality clause to not discuss the specifics of the business transaction.Evolve planned to demolish the crumbling flour mill and build five 48-unit apartment buildings on the 6-acre site created by combining the mill property and the adjacent land previously occupied by Mize Farm & Garden Supply, a plan not well-received by some in the nearby neighborhood.In public hearings of zoning change requests for the land, some residents of the Tree Streets neighborhood objected to the traffic, noise and general nuisance they believed would be created by the building of the apartment complex blocks away from their homes.In requests from the Chamber of Commerce for variances allowing the buildings to be constructed farther out of the floodplain, with parking between the structures and State of Franklin Road, attorney Amber Floyd Lee, a nearby resident and member of the Southside Neighborhood Organization launched an attack on the Board of Zoning Appeals' variance process, saying the exceptions from city code were improperly granted.After slogging through the zoning change and variance processes twice, because of improper notification for the first hearings, two lawsuits were filed in Washington County Chancery Court, one by Lee challenging the variance, the other by a group of Tree Streets residents claiming the Chamber misrepresented its intention during fundraising to purchase the property and asking a judge to block the mill's sale.Both lawsuits were initially dismissed, then the attorneys representing the plaintiffs appealed the decisions. They were awaiting hearings when the filers learned of Evolve's intended plans to cancel the deal."I'm pleased, and my neighbors are pleased, that the developer has lost interest in this project," Lee said Tuesday evening. "We hope the Chamber Foundation sees this as a renewed opportunity to open bids, and maybe they can have something amazing come to this property."Originally purchasing the mill in 2008 for $400,000 to rehabilitate and use as its headquarters, during the course of the next seven years, the Chamber decided to sell the property to a developer.Mabrey said Tuesday the Chamber would like to pursue development of the property, but any future plans would be speculation on his part.Greg Cox, a local developer who became an advocate for preserving the mill building during the public debate regarding its future, said he was still digesting the announcement of Evolve's departure, but said he believed there would still be "interest in the property" with the prospective buyer gone.Counting the departing developer as a victory, Lee said the Southside Neighborhood Organization "would work with and encourage the historical preservation of the property, but that ultimately falls to the property owner, the Chamber of Commerce Foundation. If they chose to, they could historically preserve the structure, but if they choose, they could also raze the building."Follow Nathan Baker on Twitter @JCPressBaker. Like him on Facebook: www.facebook.com/jcpressbaker.