News

Kau Announces New Dining Concept and Features at Revolution Mill: Butcher, Market, Deli, and Events to Enhance Greensboro's Culinary Scene

Kau, at Revolution Mill, is thrilled to announce an exciting expansion and revamp of its services at Revolution Mill. This transformation more than doubles the capacity in their Market and Butcher shop with the addition of a deli and seafood case, along with a revamped dine-in menu, and expanded private event spaces.

Deli and Seafood Addition

Beginning August 6, the expanded Kau Market will now offer a deli which will include made-to-order sandwiches, quick grabs, and takeaway trays. Patrons can choose from a variety of subs, as well as deli favorites like chicken and tuna salad available in convenient sizes. Online preorders will also be available soon for added convenience. The seafood case will include fresh fish, scallops and shellfish.

Enhanced Dine-In Experience

Kau’s dine-in service will now be focused on the indoor bar area and adjacent seating inside, offering a tweaked menu with weekly features alongside the popular staples. The bar area will also host a new raw seafood bar, featuring oysters, peel-and-eat shrimp, and occasional low country boils.

Private Event Space

Kau is also excited to introduce a new private event space within the former dining room,
"The Main Floor " perfect for hosting gatherings and celebrations. Private gatherings can be accommodated at the Main Floor dining room or in the upstairs Mezzanine. Private Events | Kau | Greensboro, NC (kaugreensboro.com)

Pop-Up Dinners

Pop-up dinners will be more frequent, building on the success of previous events like the "build-your-own ramen buffet bar". Upcoming events include a Wild Game Night in August, and dates to be announced for a Seafood Boil, and Pig and Oyster Roasts.

A New Dining Model

"The traditional restaurant model has evolved, and it's time for a new approach," says Kayne Fisher, Kau's visionary owner. "At Kau, we are committed to providing an interactive food experience, allowing guests to engage with the many facets of our culinary offerings."

Kayne, along with his dedicated management team and staff, are eager to share this new model and look forward to offering guests a unique and engaging dining experience.

New Operating Hours

Market: Tuesday-Saturday 11 AM - 7 PM, Sunday 11 AM - 4 PM
Deli: Tuesday-Saturday 11 AM - 3 PM
Dine-In: Tuesday-Saturday (Kitchen 4 PM - 9 PM, Bar 4 PM - 10 PM)

See more on Kau’s website >

Incendiary Brewing Company will open a satellite taproom at Revolution Mill

A new brewery is coming to Greensboro later in 2024.

Incendiary Brewing Company announced it will open a satellite taproom within Greensboro's Revolution Mill.

The brewery first opened in Winston-Salem in 2018. Then, in 2023, it opened a taproom in Raleigh.

Incendiary Brewing Company said the new space on Revolution Mill's campus will open up to a large courtyard common area. There will be live music, community events, and beer releases. It's not clear what part of the campus the brewery will occupy.

Learn more on WFMY >

Mill Power: Where Workers Once Made Bolts of Flannel, a Busy Mixed-Use Complex Hums Away

Architect Eddie Belk, 74 years old and dressed in a well-worn green T-shirt, khaki pants, and a red-and-white North Carolina State University ball cap, looks over what was once an enormous cotton-spinning room at Revolution Mill in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s an impressive scene: two rows of 14-foot-tall heart-pine columns run down the middle of the expanse, longer than two football fields. Sunlight from the clerestory windows above creates patterns on the polished maple floors. White doors with transom windows on each side of this building and an adjacent one lead to 150 apartments with tall ceilings, recycled-glass countertops, and exposed brick walls. “No matter who I bring in here, they get that smile on their face trying to gather it all in,” he says, noticing my grin. “It’s a wonderful space. I’ll come in here just to spend a minute. Just to enjoy it.”

Decades ago, this space was impressive for different reasons. This was the heart of Revolution Cotton Mills, at one time the largest cotton flannel mill in the world. The spinning room was where hundreds of looms the size of golf carts clattered away, 24 hours a day. Cotton lint filled the air as fans moving along a track, still present on the ceiling, blew debris off the machines. Giant “air washer” units did their best to suck the particles out of the room. Workers, dubbed “lintheads” by those outside the mill communities, would leave their shifts covered in dust. Some came down with brown lung disease caused by inhaling fibers or lost fingers to the rapidly moving looms. Millwork was a dangerous job.

This spinning room is one of nine renovated buildings—six contiguous—on the sprawling 42-acre campus of Revolution Mill, a mixed-use development that includes apartments, offices, restaurants, shops, and event spaces. Belk, principal at Belk Architecture in Durham, North Carolina, is eager to show me them all. This is the 14th mill complex that Belk’s firm has worked on, and at 750,000 square feet it isn’t even the largest. That title goes to the 1-million-square-foot American Tobacco factory: nine buildings in Durham that Belk and his team turned into a mixed-use campus, the first tenants arriving in 2005. All told, Belk says he’s redesigned more than 7 million square feet of historic properties since launching his firm on his birthday in 1982. “This is one of my architectural children that I’m proud of,” he says of Revolution Mill in a lilting Carolina drawl. “By the time we got to this one, [old mills] were just something that we understood.”

We began our tour several hours earlier in what was the distribution warehouse, a five-story, brick-clad building that dates to 1915 (with a 1930 addition). Here, workers would store reams of finished flannel awaiting pickup via trains on adjacent tracks. Belk’s firm ended up removing a 40- by 40-foot section of the building’s interior to create a soaring atrium topped by skylights. At night, LED lights mounted on metal rings around concrete support columns shine upward. “It’s just a beautiful sight,” he says.

Traces of the building’s prior use can be found throughout: nicks on the columns from careless forklift operators, scorch marks from some past fire, an old bale press repurposed into a bench. On one concrete support someone has scrawled, “T.W. Nelson, Aug. 27, 1969.”

When Belk and his team surveyed the property in 2013, they found the majority of the mill buildings structurally sound. The sturdy columns and floors had done their jobs, but most structures required new roofs. As in many Southern mills, at some point the windows throughout the complex had been bricked over, as the advent of air washing systems and fluorescent lighting replaced natural ventilation and sunlight. During the rehabilitation, crews removed these bricks and repaired and replicated hundreds of windows and frames throughout, including in the warehouse, dubbed Mill House.

These days, the warehouse holds a coworking space, a nail salon, a cosmetic medical office, a future eatery and market, and three apartments on its ground floor. Upper floors contain another 30 apartments as well as office space, including the homes of two national textile design firms. More than four decades after Revolution Mill’s looms went silent, the textile industry has returned. “These companies have all decided, ‘Well, let’s go back to the mill,’” says Belk. “It seems very appropriate, doesn’t it?”

Revolution Mill’s roots date to 1891, when brothers Moses and Ceasar Cone, the two eldest sons of a prominent German-Jewish immigrant family in Baltimore, formed the Cone Export & Commission Company to broker Southern textile products. Soon they decided to operate their own mills and built their first Greensboro plant, Proximity Cotton Mills, which began weaving denim in 1896. Revolution was the brothers’ second mill; they opened it in 1899 with business partners Emanuel and Herman Sternberger specifically to produce cotton flannel. Six years later the Cones finished building White Oak Cotton Mills, which became the world’s largest denim factory, eventually supplying material for Levi Strauss, Lee, Wrangler, and others. Proximity Print Works, opened in 1912, was the South’s first plant to specialize in printed cotton fabrics.

Like other mill owners in the region, the Cones built self-sufficient villages for their employees. The company provided land for churches, stores, schools, playing fields, and recreation centers, and constructed hundreds of simple clapboard company-owned houses that workers leased. Black employees lived in a separate village and often worked lower-paying jobs at the mills or toiled in the houses of company higher-ups who occupied an area dubbed “Snob Hill.” By the 1940s, more than 2,600 workers lived in 1,500 houses around the four plants.

But by the 1970s, the American textile industry was in decline, as manufacturing jobs moved overseas. Revolution Mill produced its last flannel in 1982, and the complex was left to deteriorate. The local economy also declined as workers sought opportunities elsewhere. The other Cone mills closed, with White Oak hanging on until early 2018—one of the last remaining denim mills in the country.

Proximity Cotton Mills was razed, and many thought Revolution Mill would suffer the same fate. “Mills were not celebrated as part of North Carolina history at all,” says Benjamin Briggs, head of Preservation North Carolina, who previously consulted on the rehabilitation of Revolution as executive director of Preservation Greensboro. He says lawsuits from brown lung and the rapid decline of United States–made textiles precipitated the demolition of historic mills across the state. “How did you deal with our deep textile mill history?” asks Briggs. “You got rid of it.”

But starting in the late 1990s and into the 2000s, a couple of local developers, Jim Peeples and Frank Auman, saw an opportunity. They purchased Revolution Mill and transformed several buildings into office and event space. Although the economic bust of 2008 forced the pair to abandon their plans, Briggs credits the duo with saving the complex. In 2012 one of their creditors, Self-Help Ventures Fund, a Durham-based nonprofit and community development lender, acquired the property. It has since pumped more than $140 million into the project, with just over $40 million coming from federal and state historic tax credits and about $13 million from New Markets Tax Credits. The National Trust Community Investment Corporation (NTCIC), a for-profit subsidiary of the National Trust, provided critical tax credit financing needed for the Mill House rehabilitation, completed in May 2023.

Self-Help tapped Chicago native Nick Piornack, who had previously redeveloped historic buildings in Greensboro’s South End into a bustling restaurant and entertainment scene, as business development manager. Piornack says his role was to help “sell the sizzle,” but at that point, there wasn’t much of a spark. Although the mill sits just two miles northeast of downtown, it might have been another world. “The people downtown and in more wealthy areas had no reason to come here,” says Piornack, now general manager of the property. “It’s an old mill and it’s collapsing. How the heck are we going to get this thing back on the map?”

Piornack thought Revolution Mill was a project that “people had to touch.” He began inviting different groups—young professionals, garden clubs, Rotary clubs, Kiwanis members—luring them with the promise of free food and drinks and “behind the scenes” tours. Using renderings created by Belk, he painted pictures of the mill’s future. “You’ll see this place in two years and you won’t believe it,” he told them. For several years, Piornack sold the promise, telling everyone he could. “All of a sudden, the buzz started,” he says. “People were telling people, ‘Boy, you won’t believe what they are doing over there!’ It just snowballed.”

Read the rest on Saving Places >

Venee Pawlowski of Black Magnolia Southern Patisserie wins national contest, talks expansion

***Venee Pawlowski (photo by Dhanraj Emanuel Photography)***

She’s done it again.

On Thursday, it was announced that local baker and community favorite, Venee Pawlowski of Black Magnolia Southern Patisserie won the national General Mills Foodservice Biskies contest.

The ask was simple, use Pillsbury’s Southern Style Unbaked Biscuits and combine them with two or more additional ingredients to create a unique new recipe. The grand prize was $20,000, a check that has now been cut to Pawlowski.

For her entry, Pawlowski created a fluffy buttermilk biscuit layered with brown sugar roasted apples, served with bourbon buttermilk sweet biscuit ice cream and topped with bourbon caramel, pecan pralines and salted toffee.

The judges noted that The Upside Down Apple Praline Biscuit is “an innovative twist on a simple classic” where “the biscuit shines as the star of the dish, blending perfectly with unexpected flavors to create a culinary masterpiece. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, the addition of biscuit ice cream takes this dessert to a whole new level of deliciousness!”

She told TCB that one of her all-time favorite desserts is the classic Tarte Tatin, “so it just made sense to try this with a fluffy, buttermilk biscuit. (Plus, adding a scoop of ice cream never hurt anything.)”

In 2020, Pawlowski won another General Mills contest, that time for her mouthwatering Bourbon Banoffee Pecan Rolls which she serves on her bakery’s menu.

“Our family and team are beyond overjoyed for this win and what it means for the future of Black Magnolia Southern Patisserie,” Pawlowski told TCB. “We’re forever grateful for such an amazing community of people that help make our dreams come true every day.”

When asked if the Upside Down Apple Praline Biscuits would be added to her regular menu, Pawlowski said that she plans to make the item available starting this weekend available as a biscuit by itself or “all the way” with their house made Bourbon Sweet Biscuit Ice Cream, Bourbon Caramel, Praline Pieces and Toffee.

As reported by TCB in the past, Pawlowski has been baking for years.

She had previously worked in a coffee shop before the pandemic and had been training to be a pastry chef, when she decided to start baking with her daughter; as they baked, they found that their favorite item was cinnamon rolls.

That’s how Black Magnolia was born.

In the summer of 2022, Pawlowski opened a brick-and-mortar, grab-and-go location at Revolution Mills where she serves her baked goods daily. Her pastries can also be bought at Borough Coffee at Double Oaks, Common Grounds, Cille & Scoe and Danny’s Restaurant in Greensboro.

Read the rest on Triad City Beat >

Tenants lining up for retail space in renovated Triad mill building

Potential tenants are showing interest in the latest renovation project in an area already boosted by two recently completed similar projects.

Construction is underway on Phase 2 of Revolution Mill, the renovation of Mill House off Yanceyville Street, just northeast of downtown Greensboro. Nick Piornack of developer Self-Help and general manager of Revolution Mill, told Triad Business Journal that he has four letters of intent from prospective retail and/or restaurant tenants for the four, first floor retail spaces.

Delivery on the building is expected in May or June 2022.

C.T. Wilson of Durham and Greensboro is the general contractor on the $36 million renovation of the five floor, 167,000-square-foot building into a mixed-use facility. The closest building on the campus to Yanceyville Street, Mill House is planned to have two restaurants, retail and office spaces, and 33 apartments.

The plans for Mill House call for a 5,800 SF restaurant anchoring the first floor with a patio over the banks of North Buffalo Creek, which runs along the back of Mill House, separating Mill House from Revolution Mill Apartments. Piornack said he's negotiating for that premier restaurant space with a local tenant.

A $525,000 grant will be used to dredge and widen the creek and build a stronger bank that will allow better access while combating flooding. Big rocks and boulders will be added for cosmetic purposes.

"It will be turned from a liability into an asset," Piornack said of the creek.

An 1,800-square-foot atrium with a skylight is a central feature of the building's interior.

Piornack said two current Revolution Mill tenants have expressed interest in moving to Mill House, taking up to a floor apiece on the three top levels.

The second floor will have office spaces of 7,000 SF and 2,800 SF, plus apartments. The third, fourth and fifth floors will include about 12,600 SF of office space and apartments. Total office space will measure about 60,000 SF.

"There's going to be some really cool architectural features," Piornack said.

Subtracting the atrium and common space, Piornack said Mill House will have about 120,000 SF of rentable space. Revolution Mill and Mill House are managed by Kane Realty of Raleigh.

Mill House won't be the final phase at Revolution Mill, said Piornack, who pointed to the 13 or 14 acres south of the creek, a mostly open space along Yanceyville with a 13,000 SF industrial building at the west end, as the next phase, once Mill House is up and rolling. Self-Help refers to the next phase as the "Olympic" tract. Development there will be mostly new construction, a contrast from earlier phases.

See the Article on Triad Business Journal >

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.

See the full article on News & Record >

'We're here to stay.' -- Inside Kontoor Brands' global headquarters in Greensboro

On the Kontoor Brands campus in downtown Greensboro, you'll see constant motion. Most every day of the week, a photoshoot is taking place. During WFMY News 2's recent visit, male models wore shorts and short-sleeved shirts that will debut in the summer.

At the design center at Revolution Mill, employees are preparing for next year.

"I just finished spring 2021 so we're about to start on fall 2021," said Betty Madden, Lee's Vice President of Design.

The staple of Lee and Wrangler designers is the five-pocket jean but their creations go far beyond that.

"We also make jackets, shirts, t-shirts, graphics, non-denim bottoms..." said Madden.

Those creations will be shipped across the globe.

"You can find Wrangler in Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, South America, everywhere," said Vivian Rivetti, the Vice President of Design for Wrangler.

You'll also find Kontoor employees worldwide. It employs 15,000 people with headquarters in Belgium and Hong Kong. Its global headquarters is in Greensboro, North Carolina also known as Jeansboro.

"This was a denim town so we're here and thriving in this community and making sure we are keeping denim alive in Greensboro. It's really fun," said Tom Waldron, Wrangler's Executive Vice President and Global Brand President.

Kontoor was formed when VF moved its headquarters and 85 executive jobs from Greensboro to Colorado. Wrangler and Lee spun off to create Kontoor. Waldron admits the announcement was a surprise.

"It was shocking for all of us when it came out."

Kontoor has replaced those VF jobs and then some. It's hired more than 200 workers in the Triad including Lee's Executive Vice President and Global Brand President Chris Waldeck.

"I can tell you the city has been absolutely fantastic. The people of Greensboro have really embraced the employees that have moved over," said Waldeck.

Designers Rivetti and Madden are also new residents of the Triad.

"Being down here in Greensboro is the most creative environment I've ever been in... I love being in this environment," said Rivetti.

"I think it's a quaint, sophisticated, interesting city with such a cool history especially for denim and textiles," said Madden.

Kontoor is less than a year old and has already grown. It opened the Lee and Wrangler Hometown Studio, a retail store in downtown Greensboro. Its new photo studio is used to create high-resolution images of their clothing to be featured online. The company also opened offices at Revolution Mill which is home to the company's global merchandising, design, product development, and innovation teams.

"Just walking in the door is inspiring every day to me," said Madden.

In all, about 1,500 people work for Kontoor in the Triad. Here's the breakdown: 800 at world headquarters at on North Elm Street in downtown Greensboro; 150 at Revolution Mill; 200 at a service support center on South Elm Eugene Street; and 350 workers at a distribution center in Mocksville.

"When people move in from outside whether it be from New York City, we bring a lot of talent in. They get here and they don't want to leave," said Waldron.

Kontoor may be a new company but their brands are steeped in history. Lee is 130 years old and Wrangler is over 70 years old. You probably recognize their fashions and the famous people who wore them. Actor James Dean wore Lee jeans in 'Rebel Without a Cause.' Actor Bob Denver wore Wranglers on 'Gilligan's Island.'

They are brands with a rich past and a company committed to the future in the Triad.

"This is a natural place for us to be. We're proud to be here. We're here to stay to build a great corporation together with the city," said Waldeck.

See the rest on WFMY >

Our Opinion: Kontoor fits here like a pair of old jeans

When three executives from the freshly minted Kontoor Brands paid a visit last week, they came dressed in denim and steeped in optimism.

They were bullish about their company, which was part of a more familiar company, VF Jeanswear, before it was spun off last year.

They see sales ticking up and new possibilities for their marquee brands, Wrangler and Lee, which will remain separate.

And most encouraging, they see a bright future in Greensboro, which they have embraced warmly and unequivocally as their hometown.

They say they like it here because of Wrangler’s deep roots in Greensboro.

They also consider this city a good place to live and raise a family, with reasonably priced housing and manageable traffic.

And they not only want to be in Greensboro, they want to be partof Greensboro.

See the rest on News & Record >

Native Greensboro artist returns home to Revolution Mill studio

I’ve watched Jan Lukens stick to his goals for years despite the many twists and turns his career has taken. We were studying commercial art and advertising design in 1978 when he took a job as an art director for an ad agency. In 1980, after working for a few agencies, he began freelancing as a graphic designer and then as an illustrator until 1992 when he left advertising after feeling burned out.

Lukens had an idea that people who owned horses would be interested in paintings of their horses. He called a dressage trainer who referred him to Parker Minshin, who not only invited him to her stables but also helped him select, groom and pose horses for his reference photography. “That was my first break, back in 1992,” Lukens said. “I did several spec paintings, framed them, printed up business cards and became a horse show vendor.”

Yet, he left his first two shows in Blowing Rock and Asheville with no commissions.

When Lukens visited his friend, Pattie Harris Boden, an art director who rode hunters (a type of horse in competitive horseback riding), she noted that few horse painters could paint people as well as he did and suggested he paint a girl with a horse. Minshin was happy to have him paint her 12-year-old daughter, Jennifer, with her hunter. This painting landed him three commissions at a Raleigh horse show and a new client, Joanne Boyd.

Lukens recalled the day he photographed Boyd with her horse, “she liked my work and said if I came to Birmingham, Alabama, she’d throw a cocktail party and invite her equestrian friends.” Three months later, Lukens left that party with 13 portrait commissions.

“That’s when I realized I could make a career out of this,” he said. “I owe my success in equestrian portraiture to a handful of generous, influential people who just wanted to help me succeed. Parker and Joanne were the first.” He added, “I enjoyed the equestrian community, painting portraits, and being outside with the horses. My new career really suited me.”

Read the rest on Yes! Weekly >>

Part Of VF Corp. Moving To Revolution Mill In Greensboro

GREENSBORO (WFMY) - VF Corporation has selected Greensboro’s Revolution Mill as the new home for parts of its Jeanswear business. In August, VF announced it was creating an independent, publicly traded company, currently called 'NewCo,' which comprises VF's Jeans brands including Wrangler and Lee.

VF has signed a five-year lease with Revolution Mill. Around 125 U.S. NewCo employees will move into the 43,000 square-foot space in the former textile mill beginning in March 2019.

“We are making great progress in our work to establish the Jeanswear business as its own publicly traded company, and today’s announcement is another important milestone as we move toward the separation in the first half of 2019,” said Steve Rendle, VF’s Chairman, President and CEO. “Revolution Mill is a historical property that honors the Greensboro community’s storied textile heritage. It’s only fitting that our Jeanswear organization will locate select functions there and help to continue the rich history and legacy of the Revolution Mill campus.”

In August, VF announced it's moving its global headquarters from Greensboro to Denver. The Denver headquarters will also become home to VF brands such as The North Face, JanSport, Smartwool, Altra and Eagle Creek.

The official name of NewCo will be announced by the end of 2018. NewCo will employ approximately 25,000 employees globally.

See the rest on WFMY >>

VF spinoff taps Wrangler building for HQ, but some functions are bound for Revolution Mill

The jeanswear spinoff company of VF Corp., temporarily named "NewCo," will move certain functions into 43,000 square feet at Revolution Mill in Greensboro.

VF made the announcement Thursday.

NewCo will be a publicly traded company consisting of the Lee, Wrangler and Outlet brands. VF announced the spinoff in August, when it also announced it would be moving its global headquarters from Greensboro to Denver.

The jeanswear company will have its headquarters at 400 N. Elm St., the current home of the Wrangler brand, VF said.

The company signed a five-year lease at Revolution Mill – a former textile mill north of downtown Greensboro owned and redeveloped into a mixed-use complex by nonprofit community development organization Self-Help.

The anticipated move-in timeframe is March 2019.

NewCo will put merchandising, design and product development and innovation functions in the space that will house 125 NewCo employees.

Triad Business Journal previously reported that there have been rumors that VF was considering locating functions in the mill complex.

VF said minimal upfits are needed.

"As we begin our NewCo journey, Revolution Mill is the ideal space to create an inspiring, creative working environment for our employees," said Scott Baxter, the appointed CEO of NewCo. "We're excited about what this space will offer our employees and brands, and we look forward to joining the vibrant community that exists on the Revolution Mill campus."

See the rest on Triad Business Journal >>

The Faces of Revolution

When painter Suellen McCrary moved her studio to Greensboro’s Revolution Mill two years ago, curious walk-ins included folks who remembered the workspace from another era when the mill turned out flannel from 1898 to 1982.

“They had all kind of stories to tell,” says McCrary, who specializes in portraits. “Some of them said they’d worked there, or their grandparents had worked there.”

To honor that history, McCrary pitched a project to the mill’s current owner, Durham-based Self-Help Ventures Fund, which acquired the complex in 2012.

In return for a monthly stipend, McCrary would spend two years painting oil-on-panel portraits of 25 people connected to the mill, whether they’d worked on machines bolted to the maple floor, handled clerical duties, or lived in the mill village.

At the end of the project, the portraits would join the permanent historical collection at the mill, now a hive of live-work-play development.

The portrait subjects would receive free prints of their likenesses, making possible an otherwise costly keepsake. The price of an original oil portrait can range from $3,000 to six figures.

“I was looking for a way to democratize portraiture,” says McCrary, who solicited subjects on a Facebook page called Cone Mills Villages — My Family’s History.

A dozen former Revolution employees have reached out to her, and she has completed a few portraits, but she wants to round up more applicants.

“I would love to get a cross section,” says McCrary, 60, who grew up in Greensboro and attended Page High School with the children of mill families, though she didn’t personally know them at the time.

Now living in High Point, McCrary hopes to capture the faces and stories of her schoolmates’ families while there’s still time. She recently painted 101-year-old Dorothy Sheppard Davis Brewer, a former mill inspector.

“This is a generation that’s passing, so I’ve got to get moving,” says McCrary. — Maria Johnson OH

Contact Suellen McCrary at smccrary4@gmail.com or (336) 848-3900. She’ll post progress shots of the project on her Instagram account, @suellenmccraryart.