By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
Mill Hill has become Salisbury’s forgotten neighborhood.
What remained of the Cone Mills textile operation closed a decade ago, putting the final 625 people out of work.
The need for a company store or union hall has long since vanished.
A few small businesses are renting spaces along the edges of the mill property, but the main plant itself is being assaulted by vegetation ó trees, weeds, wild flowers and kudzu.
The same can be said of the massive parking lot extending from Hill to Crawford streets. It’s abandoned now, turning into a true asphalt jungle.
The original Friendly Pub, a bar off Crawford Street that catered to the mill workers and the small neighborhood around the plant, is empty and slowly disintegrating into the ground next to the railroad tracks.
Even getting to the old tavern would be difficult today for Mill Hill residents because the Crawford Street crossing has been permanently closed as part of a rail corridor safety initiative.
It further isolates this section of town.
Mill Hill has definitive boundaries ó the Salisbury National Cemetery to the north, the railroad tracks to the west, Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue to the east and Ryan Street southward.
A collection of eight streets make up the neighborhood, including Ryan, Crawford, Hill, Knox, Kirk, Shives, Cooper and Parrish.
Mill Hill has seen better days, especially when the mill was running three shifts and most of the residents around the plant worked there, too.
“There’s not many of them left,” Ethel Foster says of the former mill workers who have died or moved away. “… I can remember when it was really, really great and everybody knew everybody.
“Now it’s just a different story. They come and go.”
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Phil Leonard, a former Salisbury Police officer who runs his own towing service on Hill Street, says he has “asked and asked” the city to install a street light along the mill’s eastern boundary, where Cooper Street curves toward Knox Street.
“It gets a little discouraging when you’re trying to run a business or live here,” Leonard says. “Sometimes it feels like the city doesn’t want to help certain areas.”
Leonard stops his tow truck on Cooper Street where five houses in a row are vacant and boarded up, some with eviction notices posted on the front doors.
The empty houses in Mill Hill often have jagged windows, rotting porches, mangled fences and worn roofs.
Leonard says the section where he has stopped his truck has been a place for drug transactions, stabbings and robberies during the five years he has been in business.
The simple installation of a street light would help, he says.
At his own business, which used to be part of the mill, Leonard has installed motion sensors, lights, alarms and cameras after having some vandalism and theft problems ó “piddly stuff,” he says.
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Norman Hill has seen plenty of things change in the 38-plus years he has lived on Shives Street.
His is one of the nicer, well-kept homes in Mill Hill. The front porch displays several of his woodworking creations, including the painted bench he sits on.
He grew up in this neighborhood ó his family lived on Knox Street when he was born in 1943. “I didn’t move too far, did I?” he says.
Retired from Food Lion, Hill likes his corner of Mill Hill. He has his woodworking shop and a garden, and he appreciates the improvements the property owners across from him have made to their houses.
But he knows other parts of Mill Hill have challenges.
“It’s more or less forgotten back here,” Hill says of the entire neighborhood.
Some houses need to be condemned and torn down, he says. Others could stand to have significant repairs, and maybe the city could help in that regard, Hill adds.
“There are some around here that need a lot of attention,” Hill says. “A lot could be done if the right people got a hold of it.”
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Salisbury Police Chief Mark Wilhelm says when the mill was still in operation, it gave more stability to the residential area adjacent to it.
He remembers its being a quiet neighborhood some 30 years ago.
Now his officers pay more attention to Mill Hill, trying to make themselves visible.
“That’s really appreciated,” says Ethel Foster, who owns 11 rental properties in Mill Hill. “They actually get out and walk it, and if there’s bad weather, they ride through.”
Over the past five years, statistics show, Salisbury Police received 1,047 calls connected to Mill Hill.
The nature of the calls reflect a neighborhood with challenges. Some predominant categories include various disturbances, such as fights, loud noise and shots fired; loose animals; vandalism; domestic violence; burglaries; suspicious people; traffic stops; parking violations; and the serving of warrants.
On average, police have responded to Mill Hill 209 times a year, including 135 times so far in 2009.
“I don’t think it’s as bad as it was at one time,” Wilhelm says, “but it could be better.”
The chief says Mill Hill has a lot of rental properties and “absentee landlord issues.”
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Realtor Margaret Kirby parks her car next to a two-story, boarded-up house on Knox Street that she just sold to an investor in California for $7,800.
The house has a Rowan County tax value of $34,000, but “in this market, no one was buying,” Kirby says.
Banks also are reluctant to loan money on troubled properties.
“You have to have cash,” Kirby says.
The investor plans to fix this particular house and make it a rental property.
While he purchased it for a song, Kirby acknowledges, the investor will spend considerable money on the inside, which is gutted and in need of bathrooms and a kitchen.
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Frances Sorocki has lived on Hill Street for about nine years.
She likes her location and says it’s better now that some drug dealers have been driven out.
“It’s a quiet neighborhood,” she says.
Sorocki takes advantage of her close proximity to the Rufty-Holmes Senior Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
In two minutes, she can be at her aerobics class, she says.
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Wendy Chase also likes her corner rental house at Shives and Crawford streets.
Where else could she rent a two-story, three-bedroom home with plenty of room for her grandchildren at $500 a month?
“It is awesome, it’s a good neighborhood,” Chase says.
Chase has made friends up and down the street. Her next-door neighbor supplies her eggs from chickens in his backyard. In her own backyard, she has tomato plants that yielded seven tomatoes the day before.
Chase’s only complaint is how fast cars will travel through the wide intersection next to her house.
“They’ll do 50, 60 miles an hour down this road,” she says.
Chase used to live on Knox Street, and she says things are a little tougher in that section of Mill Hill.
“That is the hood,” she says.
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Roosevelt “Rosie” Graham lives at the end of Ryan Street near Kirk Street.
It’s true, he says, that Mill Hill is a neglected part of Salisbury.
“I guess people forget about the back streets,” Graham says.
But overall Graham is not complaining, and he has had no problems with crime.
“It was nice when the mill was here, it really was,” Graham said. “… And it still is.”
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Ronnie Eidson’s parents have lived in Mill Hill since the 1930s and in this particular house on Crawford Street since the 1960s.
“There’s not too many of the older people still around,” Eidson says.
Eidson is not always comfortable these days that his parents live in Mill Hill.
“It’s a whole lot more action at night,” Eidson says. “… There’s very few nights you don’t hear gunshots in this area.”
Eidson personally has had two four-wheelers stolen from here. Once, the thief brought his own shovel and dug out the pole to which the ATV was chained.
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The city of Salisbury has a presence in Mill Hill.
Besides visible police patrols, public service crews are in the neighborhood regularly with garbage, recycling and yard debris pickups.
Code enforcement officers respond routinely to this area.
The city recently built a long retaining wall along Crawford Street and has repaired a few sections of sidewalk.
In recent years, Salisbury city staff and City Council have targeted specific neighborhoods for revitalization efforts, but Mill Hill has not yet been one of them.
The Salisbury Community Development Corp. has concentrated, for example, on building houses for first-time homeowners in areas such as Park Avenue, Jersey City and the West End.
Chanaka Yatawara, executive director of the CDC, says Mill Hill actually has few vacant lots for that kind of initiative, but it is a compact area in which a city-led revitalization might have a positive impact.
“I’ve seen that the neighborhood is kind of declining,” he says.
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Ethel Foster wishes she no longer owned her rental houses in Mill Hill.
She and her husband have had properties here for at least 35 years, but most of the upkeep has fallen to her and her maintenance man, James Bailey.
They have been working on an empty 100-year-old home on Shives Street for several months, trying to make it ready for tenants again. It has three separate apartments.
“When the mill was running, even the trees were happy,” Foster says.
Now kids come from other parts of the city, walk across the tracks and pick up rocks as they go. Those rocks end up breaking windows on many of the neglected homes.
“It’s just so sad,” Foster says. She points toward houses down the street where a longtime resident recently died and another woman entered a nursing home.
“There’s just a few people left in this area,” Foster laments.
Bailey says even though the city recently refurbished the Salisbury Sports Complex by providing new softball fields and a walking trail, more should be done.
“The park is part of this neighborhood,” Bailey says, “but still the kids should be able to have some other kind of recreation. … That would really eliminate a lot of things.”
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Millon Smith has lived on Parrish Street since last December and says it’s a great neighborhood.
He often sees police officers come through.
“They’re visible and nice guys,” Smith says.
Many houses in Mill Hill have “Private Property” or “No Trespassing” signs attached to their siding or fences. Dogs in the back yards and on porches also react loudly to any strangers.
“As you can hear, all the dogs get along,” Smith says.
And so it goes in Mill Hill.