By Laura Patterson
Dunn Daily Record
ERWIN – A New York-based developer purchased the old Erwin Mills for $9.5 million on Feb. 1. The former denim plant has undergone an extensive cleanup — $4 million worth of cleanup — and although that took years and selling it took even longer the old plant is closer to finding a new purpose now than it’s ever been.
“We made the decision in 2018 to make application for the North Carolina Brownfields Program,” said Jeff Smith, president of CIRA Solutions, who oversaw the massive restoration project. “We were accepted into the Brownfields Program in 2018 and we’ve been working on it ever since.”
The state’s Brownfields Program claims it aims to “break barriers” to the redevelopment of sites threatened by environmental contamination. The former mill site was littered with contaminants that kept it from selling: petroleum, asbestos, old and leaky electrical transformers and a smorgasbord of chemicals.
“We had to first bring environmental consultants and environmental specialists in and we had to do an assessment on the property to identify where contamination might be and to identify the types and levels of that contamination,” Smith said. “Based on that information, we had to submit a work plan to the state Department of Environmental Quality for their approval and they monitored our progress. …
“There were many underground fuel tanks and all of the different compounds and contaminants that might have been used over 100 years,” he said. “We did very extensive sampling, soil sampling, water sampling, indoor air sampling …”
The Army Corps of Engineers came in to point out the boundaries of neighboring wetlands and the Environmental Protection Agency assisted with PCB chemicals from old electrical transformers on the site.
“We remediated all of that to the satisfaction of the EPA,” Smith said. “We have completed all of the environmental remediation that was required of us for their to be a Brownfields agreement on the tract.”
The final Brownfields agreement was entered into by the new buyer, he added.
The new buyer is listed on deed records as 200 North 13 LLC — the address of the Erwin Mills site. Moshe Silberstein and Michael Schlesinger of NS Builders LLC in Brooklyn, New York, are listed as the registered agents of 200 North 13 LLC in an article of organization with the Secretary of State. Silberstein could not be reached for comment as of press time.
