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Rock Hill, SC: Courtyard at Highland Park |
| Description: In the 1890s, when cotton was king, the Highland Park Mill in Rock Hill, S.C., was the heart of a mill village, putting food on the tables of workers and their families and helping boost the fortunes of a growing city. A century later, the abandoned mill was an eyesore emptied of life, a blight threatening to take the neighborhood down with it. Like cities and towns across the Carolinas, Rock Hill suffered economically with the decline of the domestic textile industry in the last decades of the 19th century. After working for more than 20 years to replace lost textile jobs, the city turned its attention to abandoned mills that encircled downtown. More specifically, could the Highland Park Mill become a source of much-needed housing for low- to moderate-income elders? But for that to happen, the city would first have to find a private partner because federal housing funds had dried up. |
| Impact: Through an innovative four-layered partnership, Highland Park Mill, LLC was created to convert the mill into 116 housing units and then some. Owing to participation by the county’s council on aging, the renovated complex includes a senior services center and an industrial kitchen to provide meals to seniors throughout York County. The Housing Authority provides management and maintenance for the new complex, and The Landmark Group provides tax guidance and regulatory oversight. In a little over a year after reopening as affordable senior housing, the mill had gone from eyesore to energizer. In July 2006 the Rock Hill City Council adopted a planning guide for the Highland Park neighborhood that called the mill “the most significant land use transition to happen in the neighborhood in two decades.” |
Key Ingredients:
- Low-Income Housing Tax Credits
- Historic Property Tax Credits
- Community Development Block Grant
- South Carolina Mill Revitalization Tax Credit
- Public/Private Partnership Including Senior Services Agency
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| The Landmark Group uses South Carolina’s new mill-revitalization tax credit to develop senior housing.
Read more about it
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| " The Highland Park Mill, at this point in time, is probably the single most important success that has been achieved. " |
Stephen Turner
Director
Rock Hill Department of Economic and Urban Development
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| Other Views
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