Westervelt Mill opened in 1912 as the first fine goods textile mill in the South. The name only lasted one year before it was changed to Judson Mill, after the mill president’s mentor, D. Charles Judson. Deering Milliken Co. (now Milliken & Company) bought the mill in 1960 and actively operated and expanded the mill into an eventual 800,000 sq. ft. campus comprised of 6 distinct buildings. The mill ceased operations in 2015 as one of the last two operational mills in Greenville – closing with only 200 employees, a substantially lesser number than the thousands of employees working at the mill during its heyday. Located in a severely distressed area designated as a Appalachian Regional Commission Distressed Area, the mill would only remain vacant for a couple of years until it was purchased in 2017 by a joint venture between Taft Family Ventures of Greenville, NC and Belmont Sayre Holdings of Chapel Hill, NC who immediately began planning to redevelop the site, which includes the first commercial phase of a 107,269 sq. ft. warehouse building renovation into a mixed-use building to include nonprofit, health and wellness, and retail uses.