Aerial view of the Metrolina Warehouse site in downtown Davidson. Residents call the grassy slope at Sloan and Depot streets "Mystery Hill."

Longtime Davidson residents who live in the neighborhood around the Metrolina Warehouse, off Jackson and Depot streets, say they want to know more about a developer’s plans for handling asbestos buried there. About a dozen people attended a meeting at Ada Jenkins Center’s cafeteria Friday to discuss the issue. A proposal to redevelop the site has struck a nerve because of health problems reported by relatives of people who had worked at an asbestos mill on the site and because of worries about what some in the neighborhood refer to as “Mystery Hill.” 

The Rev. Dora Dubose, who lives in the neighborhood, moderated the discussion as representatives of both the current property owner and GreenHawk Partners LLC, the Raleigh developer that is considering a mixed-use, transit-oriented development on the site, listened.

The Rev. Dubose says the group that met Friday wants more members and more details about the developer’s plans. “We do not have enough information to support removing the asbestos, to be neutral, or against it. What’s the process for removal? How can we be safe? That is what we want to know.”

The site has at various times been a warehouse, a cotton mill and an asbestos manufacturing plant. Some in the neighborhood refer to a slope at Sloan and Depot streets as “Mystery Hill” because of asbestos buried there. Asbestos is a concern because if inhaled, tiny asbestos fibers can cause serious, and even life-threatening illness.

At a planning workshop in July, the developer and town officials told residents there was asbestos buried on the Sloan Street side of the site, but a previous owner had encapsulated it according to federal environmental standards, and that it had been certified as safe.

GreenHawk has an option to buy the 5.5-acre site from its current owner, Seattle-based real estate investment group Metrolina Warehouse LLC. GreenHawk, which specializes in developments near mass-transit lines, is considering a project that could include homes, offices, shops, and or restaurants.

At the July workshop, several residents raised questions about the asbestos and about runoff from the site. So GreenHawk held its own meeting with neighbors last month. A representative of GreenHawk, Brian Goray, told DavidsonNews.net last week the company has two options: Either leave the asbestos undisturbed, or remove it.

HEALTH WORRIES

Evelyn Carr, of Griffith Street, said Friday she thinks her husband and father died of cancer from working at the former Carolina Asbestos Co. plant and mowing the grass there. She said he used to mow the whole area, then he was told to let the weeds grow up over where asbestos had been buried. She says her cousin drove a bulldozer that dumped asbestos there left from the plant.

The Rev. Dubose recalled, “As children, we roller-skated, played hide and seek in that area, not knowing that it was dangerous. Our relatives who worked there came home white as snow.” She says her nephew played on that site, and has asbestos-related cancer.

One resident, Elizabeth Zavitz of Jetton Street, said she had once wanted to garden in an area near the old mill, but was told, “Don’t dig. Leave it alone.” She said she knew people who had died from working there.

Another woman at Friday’s meeting said a relative had been able to receive an insurance claim for an asbestos-related illness.

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

Some residents had been given a copy of a thick document, called a Phase I environmental site assessment, prepared for GreenHawk by MACTEC Engineering, of Charlotte, dated December 2007. (A copy of the report was posted on the town website Monday.)

It says the site was first developed in 1890 as a warehouse for a cotton mill. Additions were made in the 1940s and 1950s. The warehouse on the western part of the site was developed in 1976. The tenants were: Linden Manufacturing, Davidson Cotton Mill, and then Carolina Asbestos Co., in the 1930s. Carolina Asbestos made products containing asbestos. “Before 1975, a western part of the property was used as a disposal site for asbestos-containing materials,” the report says.

“Friable asbestos” was observed at the site in the 1980s. In 1984, the disposal site was covered with layers of soil and sealed with a permanent ground cover, according to the report. The Mecklenburg County Department of Environmental Health concluded that the site was in compliance with mandated requirements.

The report says there may be other environmental concerns, including a vent pipe from a 12,000-gallon fuel oil underground storage tank that had never been permanently closed.

When the MACTEC engineers did a “subsurface asbestos investigation” in 2002, they estimated 2,100 to 2,300 cubic yards of asbestos-containing materials were buried. The report says “a layer of soil approximately 0.15 to 2 feet thick covered the asbestos layer which was identified at depths ranging from approximately 0.15 to 9.1 feet below ground surface.”

MACTEC engineers recommended that if the asbestos area might be disturbed, the developer should consider removing it entirely, with the help of a licensed asbestos contractor.

BACKGROUND OF CONCERN

Concerns about asbestos at the warehouse site come amid a history of on-again, off-again strains between West Side residents and public officials and business leaders.

Mrs. Carr, the mother of former town board member Garfield Carr, lives at the intersection of Beaty and Griffith streets, and complained about a recent Charlotte Mecklenburg Utilities sewer line project that sent fumes into her home and forced her to move for a week. She said she had no warning the work was coming or that anything could go wrong.

She and other people in the neighborhood seem reluctant to believe the town or the developer will be forthcoming about how the asbestos will be dealt with.  And they are suspicious of town officials’ comments describing the proposed mixed-use project as a way to revive the old industrial site and possibly improve the links between downtown and the West Side. Some speakers Friday said the project’s businesses will be one more group of places they cannot afford.

Friday’s meeting produced no agreement or statement of residents’ wishes. Some said they hoped the turnout would be greater.

LINKS AND PREVIOUS COVERAGE

Davidson town website has a page about the possible Linden Mill redevelopment, with maps and other documents, including the environmental assessment. CLICK HERE>

Oct. 3, 2008, “Residents plan meeting about asbestos at old mill.”

July 25, 2008, “Would warehouse project link West Side, downtown?”

June 20, 2008, “Developer eyes warehouse for mixed-use project.”