How Capitol Broadcasting used tax credits for $50M redevelopment of Mock Judson Voehringer Mill in Greensboro

By Elizabeth ‘Lilly’ Egan, Reporter, Triad Business Journal

A $50 million project in Greensboro from a major developer shows the power of tax credits to revitalize former industrial areas.

Benjamin Briggs, president and CEO of Preservation North Carolina, said the redevelopment of the former Mock Judson Voehringer Hosiery Mill into over 100 apartments was a “team effort,” between multiple groups.

A project of the real estate arm of Capital Broadcasting Co., the MoJud Lofts is a two-story building located at 2610 Oakland Ave. in Greensboro, just west of the UNC-Greensboro campus and less than a mile from Greensboro Coliseum.

Role of tax credits in redevelopment

Preservation Greensboro navigated the process of adding the property to the National Register of Historic Places and designating it as a Guilford County Landmark Property, Briggs said. Meanwhile, Preservation North Carolina advocated for historic preservation tax credits on a statewide level. Briggs said state historic preservation tax credits piggyback off of federal tax credits, so they can be coupled together.

“Tax credits are a way to recapture money that’s already been spent as a percentage of the total building project cost,” he said. “So a company can take a tax credit on a percentage of the cost that they have already spent to restore the building, and that can be quite lucrative and valuable for larger companies.”

Another way for real estate developers to leverage historic preservation is through the Mill Rehabilitation Tax Credit. Briggs said the “mill bill” adds additional credits for certain industrial properties that are associated with North Carolina’s heritage.

“They’re all tools that developers need for some of these really challenging projects and in other states, the buildings would just be bulldozed and this would be vacant land that maybe somebody would maybe build on one day, maybe not,” he said. “So this is a smart way and it makes Greensboro a unique place — they don’t have these kind of buildings in every city around the country.”

Working around a historic building

The complex has 173 apartment units, with rents ranging from $1,315 to $2,065, according to property manager Carisa Jeffries. The apartments includes 109 studio and one-bedroom units, 62 two-bedroom units and only two three-bedroom units.

Amenities include a saltwater pool, multiple outdoor lounge areas, several fire pits and a 24-hour fitness center. Leasing began in December and the first residents moved into units in January. Jeffries said the complex is currently 46% leased.

Capitol Broadcasting Co. paid $7.6 million for the 8.7-acre property in April of 2022.

Matt Honeycutt, Capitol’s director of real estate development, said in historical preservation projects, the developer is bound by the already-existing structure of the building, which is why there are only two three-bedroom units in the complex. However, he said the majority of the tenants in the building are young professionals without families, leading to a lesser demand for three-bedroom units anyway.

The complex has around 30 different floor plans in total, Honeycutt said, which was driven by what would best fit in the building. He said in historical preservation projects, the developer is required to keep certain aspects of the building the same as when it was used for its original purpose, especially the windows and columns of the building. He noted that in traditional ground-up arguments, developers would strive not have as many unit types. However, in redevelopment projects like the MoJud Lofts, they have to make it work the best they can given the already existing building structure.

Honeycutt said the developer would be interested in future projects in the Triad if the opportunity arose.

“There were a lot of things we liked about Greensboro — we love these types of historic preservation projects, so, yes, if there are more opportunities, we’d love to take a look at them,” he said.

Recent popularity of industrial redevelopment projects

The general contractor for the MoJud Lofts is C.T. Wilson of Durham, which completed a similar project at Revolution Mill in Greensboro. The team for the Mock Judson redevelopment also included Belk Architecture of Durham and the Timmons Group, the Greensboro civil engineering firm.

The $38 million second phase of Revolution Mill, the mixed-use development by nonprofit community development organization Self-Help Ventures Fund, opened at the beginning of May. The redevelopment of the 145,000-square-foot, five-story building has been in the works since 2018 and includes retail, office, apartment and restaurant space. The first phase of the development was $91 million and featured 150 loft apartments, three restaurants and more than 100 commercial tenants.

Just two blocks away, the Alexander company of Madison, Wisconsin, converted the the former Proximity Printworks textile dye facility into more than 200 apartments that opened in 2020.

That same year, D3 Development’s $40M Granite Mill project in Haw River opened with 175 apartments and two restaurants.

Capitol, based in Raleigh, owns television, radio and digital media brands across North Carolina. It also owns multiple minor league baseball teams in the state and operates areal estate division. The real estate arm of the company developed the American Tobacco Campus in Durham, a major mixed-use project in the city’s downtown that includes the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the Durham Performing Arts Center, apartments, restaurants, retail and meeting and events spaces.

C.T. Wilson also worked with Capitol at Rocky Mount Mill, the renovation of a cotton mill built in 1816.

The Triad has seen other similar industrial redevelopment projects recently.

Norfolk, Virginia-based developer Fryer Properties has been making progress on the Lofts at Whitaker Park, the transformation of a historic 80-year-old R.J. Reynolds tobacco factory into apartments near Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.

In May, two Triad businessmen completed a multimillion dollar effort to save a historic smokestack in the heart of Asheboro. Jerry Neal and Dustie Gregson turned the former hosiery and furniture mill into a preserved shell ready for redevelopment. The duo has hired NAI Piedmont Triad to market the site to potential buyers.