Mill site master plan coming within six months
New mill site owner Eric Spirtas (right) speaks to NCDEQ Secretary Reid Wilson diuring a meeting at the former Champion Papers administration building on May 2. Cory Vaillancourt photo
North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson visited Canton last week, meeting with local officials and new mill site owner Eric Spirtas, who gave tantalizing tidbits of what’s in store for the 185-acre parcel and promised a bold master plan within six months.
“The idea of this, just in a real nutshell, is there are projects all through the Carolinas that have taken a dilapidated mill and made it a destination,” said Spirtas, owner of St. Louis-based Spirtas Worldwide, the company that purchased the mill last fall.
Although still somewhat nebulous, the plan includes economic development, environmental stability and mitigation components across residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Spirtas continues to treat Canton’s wastewater at his own cost, and conversations are ongoing about Canton paying fair and reasonable rates moving forward.
During a May 2 gathering at the old Champion Paper administration building, Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers lauded the ambitious nature of Spirtas’ vision.
“This is not the milltown miracle. This the milltown moonshot,” Smathers said. “Why shouldn’t we be bold? There was a time in this country we were drawn to those types of projects. We let politics and pettiness bring us down.”
The master plan, however, doesn’t just represent Spirtas’ hopes for the parcel. Throughout his time getting to know Canton and Western North Carolina, Spirtas has maintained that robust input from town and county leaders, along with the general public, will shape the final product.
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“We are going to work together to do the master planning. I am not master planning. There’s my plan and the town’s plan, and mine doesn’t count,” he said. “I am going to have the town standing over with people that are benefactors.”
Wilson, who had previously served as the head of the state’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources under then-Gov. Roy Cooper, has been to Canton a number of times, including a 2023 visit to Chestnut Mountain where he talked about integrating outdoor recreation into the future of the mill site.
“Our governor, Josh Stein, from day one has said helping Western North Carolina communities recover from Helene — and not just recover the way they were, but to build back better and more resilient — that’s his top priority, and therefore it’s my top priority,” Wilson said.
Now heading up the DEQ, Wilson’s agency will play a critical role in helping to ensure Spirtas’ cleanup of preexisting environmental issues on the site is performed safely and correctly.
“I think you rightly recognize that outdoor recreation is a huge part of what Canton is, and to connect that with this redevelopment and environmental cleanup is just a wonderful marriage of different parts of what Canton can be,” Wilson told Spirtas. “Our job at the Department of Environmental Quality is to make sure we’re working with the partners, that everything is done in an environmentally responsible manner, that all the rules are followed, the permits work.”
Spirtas proposes a 10-to-15 acre reservoir to mitigate future flooding that would also serve as an attraction of sorts — possibly with a deck overlook and some sort of performing arts venue.
“If we can take the money that was — is — spent every year or every multiple years on recovering after a flood, and put it into the redevelopment of this river, everything else will follow,” he said. “People will develop here.”
Working with a developable space that’s at least three times the size of the city itself, Spirtas has plenty of options.
“I say it will be walkable. It’ll be enjoyable,” he said. “People from Asheville want to come here and spend the evening and the afternoon and walk and visit and spend money in Canton.”
Spirtas pegged remediation and development costs towards the low end of the nine-figure ballpark but said that global economic uncertainty over tariffs and trade — not factors when the mill purchase was finalized last fall — wouldn’t be a huge concern over the 18-month demolition and remediation process.
“I think the global economics affects everybody’s plans,” Spirtas said. “If it doesn’t affect their direct day-to-day plan, it affects their mindset. And so this too shall pass. We’re working through this this month or this year. We got a year’s worth of demolition and our machines, they run on American parts and we use American gas in [them] right now.”
Smathers was enthusiastic about what he calls “the hometown of tomorrow.”
“We have to build a place where our kids and grandchildren have the opportunity if they choose to come back here and have a job and go to church and play on the ball fields, do what so many in this room have been doing for years,” he said. “We have to build something that gives them the opportunity to still call Canton home but do it in a way that embraces new technology, new ideas, brings new people, but also honors our past. I believe you can bring in new ideas, new people, new money, but not necessarily change who you are.”
