$1.25M Magnet Mills tract to see upgrades, but not redevelopment
The new owner of this lot and building, part of the former Magnet Mills hosiery mill in Clinton, has been restoring the building with new paint, roof and other improvements. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Ted Duke, who operates Production Components Inc., a Knoxville industrial company, said last week that he has been renting the prefabricated building on the Magnet Mills site for several years, and decided to buy it.
“We have no plans to build anything,” he said in response to a question about rumors that a housing complex might be in the works for the site. “I have no interest in building any housing on the site.”
It’s on one of two tracts on Charles G. Seivers Boulevard along the Clinch River that once held the Magnet Mills hosiery plant.
Property records available online show that Duke on Dec. 15 purchased the 3.38-acre site which includes a 20,000-square-foot metal building, for $1.25 million.
Duke, who moved to the Knoxville area from Ohio in 1994, said he has recently been restoring the building, which he uses for storage.
“I’ve leased it for years,” he told The Courier News. “I plan to keep improving it. We’ve painted it and put new gutters on it.
“I’m trying to get it back to where when people drive by, it’s not an eyesore,” he said.
It’s not the site that holds the iconic water tower, which is on a separate 3.59-acre tract next door, between Duke’s property and the CVS Pharmacy.
That tract, which has no structures other than the water tower, also reportedly has been sold, but no information on the buyer has yet been made public.
It once held the two large brick buildings that housed the hosiery mill.
Those buildings were heavily damaged by fire in 2016, and the lot has since been cleared – except for the water tower, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The owner of the property at the time obtained a demolition permit for the water tower from the city of Clinton in March 2018, but after blowback from residents and some members of the City Council, it was never taken down.
According to information from the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University, the plant opened its doors in 1906 as Magnet Knitting Mills.
“In 1929, the Mill was incorporated as Magnet Mills, Inc., a locally owned and operated hosiery mill,” the report says. “In 1965, the mill was sold to Messrs. Frank and Samuel Burd of San Francisco, California. After the sale, the local management of the mill remained largely unchanged.
“In March 1967, a prolonged strike with Local 2125, Textile Workers Union of America, resulted in a management decision to close the mill down permanently.”
At its height of operations, the mill reportedly had more than 1,000 workers.
The city has said that a complete environmental assessment of the property would be necessary before anything new could be built on the site, as various potentially dangerous chemicals had been used in the manufacture of the women’s hosiery at the plant.
