Tucker Bartlett: Make New Markets Tax Credit permanent

Once abandoned, the 45-acre Revolution Mill in northeast Greensboro is helping transform a formerly written-off neighborhood into a major driver of economic development. What started as 600,000 square feet of empty historic mill buildings has transformed into galleries, creative studios, office space, mixed-income residential units and public amenities like restaurants, cafes, greenway trails and community spaces. The project is spurring further investment, including the renovation of other historic mills creating additional affordable housing.

Northeast Greensboro is a community with a rich cultural and socioeconomic history. When the Cone Textile facilities closed in the 1980s, it experienced extensive disinvestment. Today, northeast Guilford Greensboro experiences a poverty rate of 27.9%. Revolution Mill is helping change that statistic.

The project would not be possible without help from the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC). The NMTC provides patient, flexible capital to businesses and communities left out of the economic mainstream, creating quality jobs, improved services and economic opportunity.

One of the most efficient community economic development tools for low-income communities ever enacted, the NMTC has leveraged an unprecedented level of investment to both rural and urban low-income communities, generating more than $110 billion in total capital investment through public-private partnerships and creating more than 1 million jobs. The NMTC has an outstanding track record of revitalizing some of the poorest, most disinvested communities in our country — and it has the potential to achieve even greater success.

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Local companies large and small are pivoting to make protective masks for Cone Health

GREENSBORO — Lynda Layton leans over a sewing machine, carefully stitching a small piece of pleated navy blue fabric. She pauses, adjusts the swatch and stitches again. Within a minute, she has stitched elastic ear loops onto the fabric. What was just fabric and elastic is now a face mask that might be the only thing standing between a hospital worker and the coronavirus.

“If it can help anybody, that’s good,” Layton said.

Layton works on a sewing machine brought out of retirement from the textile industry. Layton herself is retired from Cone Mills, where she worked for 37 years. She now works part time in a sew shop for Hudson’s Hill, a small company that produces limited runs of denim wear and accessories like tote bags. The shop is in Revolution Mill, a former Cone mill that's now a sprawling mixed-use campus of offices, creative spaces and apartments. The fabric Layton sews is from Burlington, a former giant in the Piedmont textile industry that has a weaving facility in Reidsville. The masks Layton is sewing are being donated to Cone Health to provide a meager level of protection against the coronavirus for caregivers, custodians and other workers.

The path from Greensboro’s textile legacy to a hospital built on that legacy is not lost on Evan Morrison, owner of Hudson’s Hill and a self-professed geek of denim history, particularly that of Cone Mills.

“It’s been kinda cool to tap into the denim community to do things for the hospital system that was founded on denim money,” Morrison said.

Morrison, a Greensboro native who has traveled the globe pursuing an interest in textile and clothing, put his sew shop to work to make about 10,000 protective fabric masks after Cone Health sent out a call asking local companies to help with medical supplies. Morrison said the masks can be washed and reused.

“I read that health-care companies were suffering shortages of health-care equipment,” Morrison said. “Having a small-batch cut-and-sew facility and having a lot of network built within the local textile community, I thought we might be a resource.”

Morrison is just one of a growing number of local companies responding to a call Cone Health put out asking for donations of medical supplies to reinforce the hospital as patients affected by the coronaivirus COVID-19 climb.

Seth Coker also responded to Cone’s call.

Coker is a Greensboro developer who plays tennis with Dr. Dalton McLean of Cone Hospital. During a conversation with Coker, McLean expressed concern that the hospital would need more masks.

“I didn’t want our local health-care workers — not just the doctors and nurses, but the orderlies and other people that are working at Cone — to have to worry about this one thing that seemed like a solvable problem,” Coker said.

Coker turned to his old Grimsley High buddy Matt O’Connell.

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Cugino Forno will expand to Clemmons

Cugino Forno is planning to open a Clemmons location this spring.

The wood-fired pizza restaurant has signed a lease for 6316 Clemmons Point Drive, next to Abbott's Frozen Custard in the Clemmons Town Center, said co-owner Joseph Ozbey.

Ozbey and his cousins, Yilmaz Guver and Adam Adksoy, own two other Cugino Forno locations. They opened their first restaurant in March 2017 at 1160 Revolution Mill Drive in Greensboro. They opened their second in March 2019 at 486 N. Patterson Ave. in the Bailey Power Plant in downtown Winston-Salem.

Ozbey said that construction is getting ready to begin on the 3,500-square-foot space in Clemmons, which is smaller than the 5,800-square-foot Bailey Power Plant space. He hopes to open the newest location in May.

Ozbey said the restaurant will seat about 100 people inside, plus perhaps 60 more on the large patio outside. The restaurant will again use long wooden picnic tables that seat 10 people each to accommodate large groups or encourage community seating.

The menu will be the same as the other Cugino Forno locations with one major exception: The Clemmons restaurant will not sell gelato. “Since there is frozen custard next door, we don’t want to compete with our neighbors. We’re happy to send people next door if they want ice cream," Ozbey said.

Cugino is known for its wood-fired ovens that can cook a pizza in less than two minutes. Cugino doesn’t sell much else besides pizza, just a few salads, cannoli, cake and cupcakes. There will be beer on tap and wine in the Clemmons restaurant, Ozbey said.

Ozbey said customers have been asking for a Clemmons Cugino Forno for some time, but it took the restaurateurs until now to find a suitable location.

“Clemmons is exactly what we’re looking for — a place with a lot of families,” Ozbey said. “But we let our customers tell us where we should go next. At the end of the day, they are our bosses.”

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Artists revive Revolution Mill gallery space

For nearly three years, Jan Lukens looked out from his Revolution Mill art studio onto a mostly-empty gallery space across the hall.

Lukens creates paintings in the historic former textile mill off Yanceyville Street, now a campus of offices, studios, event areas, apartments and restaurants.

Back in 2016, UNCG’s Weatherspoon Art Museum and Revolution Mill managers had arranged for Raleigh-based artist James Marshall (aka Dalek) to paint a colorful geometric design on the walls of the 2,800-square-foot space with 18-foot ceilings.

They called it Gallery 1250 for the building’s address on Revolution Mill Drive.

They wanted to make that mural the first in a series of collaborations, reflecting a commitment to present bold and imaginative exhibitions and reach new audiences.

But there it stood. Weatherspoon didn’t receive the grants needed to proceed with other artists’ projects there. Campus tenants used the space for meetings.

This year, Lukens proposed another idea for Gallery 1250 to Revolution Mill’s managers.

“Give it to me,” Lukens said.

They did.

On Oct. 11, Gallery 1250 will reopen as an art exhibition space.

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Cugino Forno Pizzeria has opened in Greensboro

Cugino Forno Neapolitan Pizza has opened at 1160 Revolution Mill Drive.

Cousins Joseph Ozbey, Yilmaz Guver and Adam Adksoy opened the pizzeria. Cugino is Italian for cousin. Forno is Italian for oven.

The pizzeria specializes in Neapolitan-style pizza using imported ingredients.

Customers sit at picnic tables and watch their custom-order, hand-tossed pizza being baked in 90 seconds in one of three 800-degree specialty ovens.

The menu is small. There are only 11 16-inch specialty pizzas ranging from a vegetarian-friendly Marinara to the Napoletana with Italian sausage and Bufala Mozzarella.

Additional toppings, such as artichoke or caramelized onion can be added to the Margherita pizza. The restaurant also offers salads and Cannoli.  Italian beer and wine will be offered soon.

The pizzeria is in the free-standing building that was a machine shop for the former Revolution Mill. The mill opened in 1899 and produced flannel for decades before closing and falling into disrepair. In 2012, Self-Help assumed ownership of Revolution Mill and is completing the property’s transformation into a mixed-use development of offices and apartments.

Cugino Forno may well be the beginning of the mill campus as a destination for diners. Urban Grinders coffee shop is expected to open in the main building this spring. Natty Greene’s Kitchen + Market, a spin-off from Natty Greene’s Brew Pub featuring a full restaurant charcuterie and bar, is expected to open this year in another free standing building overlooking Buffalo Creek on the campus’ south side. A pedestrian bridge has already been constructed so that patrons can reach the restaurant from parking on the stream’s south bank.

Cugino Forno is open from 11 a.m. until the dough runs out, around 9 p.m.

Follow Cugino Forno on Facebook.

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Short Orders: Urban Grinders coming to Revolution Mill

Urban Grinders coffee shop is opening at Revolution Mill in Greensboro.

This will be the second location for Urban Grinders, which opened a coffee shop and art gallery in 2015 at 116 N. Elm St. in downtown Greensboro.

The new opening is part of a redevelopment for the historic old textile mill that produced flannel for decades before closing and falling into disrepair.

In 2012, Self-Help assumed ownership of Revolution Mill and is completing the property’s transformation into a mixed-use development.

The coffee shop will be on the first floor of Building 1250, home to more than 45 businesses, art studios and creative firms. It also houses the artist-in-residence program and the WAMRev Gallery, which hosts rotating exhibits in collaboration with Weatherspoon Art Museum.

“Focusing on art and music more so than any other coffee shop has helped to breed a certain culture downtown that you can’t find anywhere else,” said owner Jeff Beck. “We like to tell people we have taken a chunk of New York and plopped it right down in the middle of Greensboro. Urban Grinders at Revolution will have the same spirit as our Elm Street location, but we will be focusing more on a refined coffee shop atmosphere.”

The shop’s open concept will feature seating for 35 to 50 people. It will overlook Revolution Docks — an outdoor plaza that can be used for casual gathering, events and performances.

The coffee shop will open in early spring.

It joins dining concepts Cugino Forno Pizzeria and Natty Greene’s Kitchen + Market, which also are expected to open on the campus this spring.

For more information, visit http://revolutionmill greensboro.com.

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Creative (Work) Space

Darryl Howard doesn’t feel like he’s ever going to work.

That’s because his office doesn’t look like your typical, drab workspace. You won’t find chunky, impersonal office furniture from the 1970s. Or faded carpets hosting crumbs from the meals of long gone employees.

His office at Revolution Mill is filled with artwork that includes paintings, sculpture and found objects. The floors are hardwood, and the large windows and high ceilings bring in abundant natural light.

Howard’s design and technology studio, Space Logix, also includes workspaces for a dress designer, pharmacist, aquarium lighting manufacturer, angel investor, physician and several corporate remote employees.

Children and pets are welcome there.

And occasionally, they have after-work wine tastings.

“Most of us at one time or another have spent our working lives in a dull, traditional workplace. We enter feeling uninspired and leave feeling drained,” Howard says. “Work has changed. Workers’ expectations for their work environment has changed. ... I built this location to satisfy my own needs as a place I would like to work.”

It’s a space set within a campus that includes about 250,000 square feet of office space, 142 loft apartments, restaurants, art galleries, fitness center, yoga studio and event venues. Many of the offices, like Howard’s, resemble a spread from a modern furnishings catalog. 

The site holds significance in Greensboro’s manufacturing history. Brothers Moses and Ceasar Cone partnered with longtime friends, the Sternbergers, to open Revolution Mill in 1898. It became the first flannel mill in the South. The mill closed in 1982 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. There is a permanent gallery documenting its history on the campus.

Today, the mill hosts a mix of professionals, including photographers, health care workers, hairstylists, attorneys and counselors.

There are regular socials for tenants, and an amphitheatre will feature a variety of entertainment events.

“It is so diverse but so casual and laid-back that not working here, I believe, would be difficult,” Howard says. “You get so used to the beauty, the different creatives, the diversity and the expansive campus that it takes on more of being a physical part of you. I don’t think that anyone refers to it as the ‘office.’ Coming into ‘work’ never feels like ‘work,’ rather just a part of the natural rhythm of your creativity.”

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$100 million Revolution Mill redevelopment project ramping up for 2016 finish

GREENSBORO − The group that is doing a  redevelopment of the historic Revolution Mill textile mill complex said today that it will ramp up construction and finish the project by the third quarter of 2016. 

Self-Help Ventures Fund, owner of Revolution Mill and the surrounding 45 acres two miles north of downtown Greensboro, said it closed recently on a financing package and began an accelerated construction schedule to complete the redevelopment of the mixed-use, destination campus by the third quarter of 2016, according to a news release. 

Development Manager Micah Kordsmeier said in the release that the project will exceed $100 million and will include 142 one and two-bedroom apartments, 240,000 square feet of  office space, and multiple dining options.

The company will also offer space for 20-30 working artists, galleries, and a variety of indoor and outdoor event spaces.

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