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The old Alba-Waldensian Mill at 408 Praley St. SW, still sits vacant and deteriorating with its 2024 property taxes of $2,812.33 unpaid.

Valdese Water Recycling LLC bought the 2.15-acre property in December 2016 for $27,000. The building, which has 124,285 square feet, was built in 1927 and is valued at $276,000, according to county land records.

The old mill has been vacant for years and has a large hole in the roof. It is boarded up and has a fence around a portion of it.

Valdese Water Recycling company

In April 2017, the town of Valdese received approval for a $500,000 grant from the North Carolina Rural Infrastructure Authority under the state’s federally funded Community Development Block Grant—Economic Development program. The grant was to be spent to demolish the old mill and Valdese Water Recycling would build a new $1 million office and testing center at the site, according to a previous News Herald article.

The company also planned to have a processing location at the former Burke Mills site at 936 W. Main St. in Valdese.

Facilities would bring wastewater to the facility, where it would be treated and then discharged to the town, said Derr Leonhardt, an owner of Valdese Water Recycling Company. He said the company used chemical physical treatment. It would add material to change the chemical nature of the wastewater, he said.

Valdese Water Recycling did have a processing location at the old Burke Mills site, but it was hit with more than $18,500 in penalties, costs and fees after numerous violations from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and it has ceased operations. The business was focused on chemical recycling.

After inspections conducted in 2020, NCDEQ issued the violations to the company in 2022. Some of the violations included not submitting a waste report in the allotted timeframe, storing hazardous waste without a permit, failure to label or mark about 200 to 300 containers of universal waste lamps, and failure to provide documentation about length of time those containers had been on site.

Grant to demolish

The grant approved for demolition of the former Alba-Waldensian site never materialized.

Bo Weichel, finance director and assistant town manager for Valdese, said the grant was structured as a reimbursement grant, meaning the town was required to pay project expenses upfront and then submit invoices for reimbursement once approved by the granting agency. The project never moved forward, he said.

Weichel said the grant also required a 25% local funding match, which Valdese Water Recycling initially agreed to provide.

After the grant was awarded, the company withdrew its financial commitment for the match, leaving the town with the option to either cover the match from its own reserves or withdraw from the grant, he said.

The town ultimately chose to withdraw, Weichel said.

He said a key factor in the decision to withdraw from the grant was that Valdese Water Recycling would retain ownership of the property following project completion. As a result, the town had little incentive to invest public funds into improvements that would exclusively benefit a private entity, Weichel said.

The $500,000 grant was never disbursed, Weichel said.

Weichel said the company has been keeping the building up to town code to avoid violations.

That has not always been the case.

The owners got a notice of condemnation of the property from Burke County code enforcement previously. There were issues with homeless people living inside and there was a fire in the building on Dec. 18, 2017, Dec. 3, 2018, and on April 26, 2022, said Valdese Mayor Charlie Watts, who was the fire chief until July 2019.

The county held a hearing on June 22, 2023, in the Valdese Town Hall and Valdese Water Recycling was given 60 days to either renovate the building where a fire previously occurred, demolish the building and remove all debris, or board up and secure the building to stop from people from living there. The company was ordered to remove debris and waste from the site, according to the order from Burke County.

Burke County Chief Building Inspector Steve Holden said the company boarded up the property and put a fence around it. He said the county hasn’t received any other complaints about the property.

Holden said at the time of the order, the owners estimated it would cost between $600,000 to $700,000 to demolish the building.

The future of 408 Praley St.

Derr Leonhardt, an owner of Valdese Water Recycling Company, said the company stopped processing wastewater at the old Burke Mills site a couple of years ago.

Leonhardt said there is a small amount of material at that facility that’s scheduled to be removed and then it will be empty.

As for the Praley Street location, Leonhardt said the company is considering several options, one of which is seeking a grant through the town where the town would take ownership of the facility.

“But that’s just in the discussion phase,” Leonhardt said. “No decisions have been made.”

He said the company will do something but there are no firm plans.

Weichel said there are not discussions with the company about the town taking ownership of the facility. He said the owners asked about the town trying to find a new grant. He said the town will require an environmental study to be done before any grant discussions could take place.

“The owner has failed to fulfill this requirement and thus no grant discussions are taking place,” Weichel said.

He said there are no grant opportunities at this time. The owner has since backed out of that request due to the requirement of an environmental study, Weichel said.

“There’s been no opportunities for us to step in and do anything different. We plan to ultimately do something there,” Leonhardt said. “We’ve talked to them (the town) many times about our options, but we just haven’t picked the path yet.”

He said, “We’re exploring a lot of options, none of which are active at the moment, but under exploration.”