Criminal Defense Attorney inConestee, SC

GREENVILLE — For decades, the former Conestee Mill on the outskirts of Greenville has stood empty, falling into disrepair.

The once-thriving textile factory was an economic engine for more than a century, serving as the hub of a bustling mill village and a major source of employment. But the operation there closed permanently in the 1970s, leaving the industrial campus to languish.

As development has continued to boom in Greenville and the surrounding area, questions about the historic building’s future have swirled in recent years. But concerns about the condition of the nearby Lake Conestee Dam and the specter of a looming environmental disaster should it fail, have long held back efforts to revitalize the site.

Those concerns were dispelled earlier this year, when construction of a new dam was completed — and now a major transformation is coming.

“You have the whole Conestee community, which is so well-positioned, but yet really needs a catalyst,” said John Pazdan, principal for Kanasta LLC, the development group planning to repurpose the site. “I think this project can be a catalyst in a really positive way.”

Plans submitted to the city of Greenville show a mixed-use development with roughly a dozen buildings, including up to 268 residential units and 8,000 square feet of commercial space at the roughly seven-acre site off Conestee Road near Mauldin’s city limits.

The existing mill building will be renovated and repurposed as multi-family housing, the centerpiece of the planned project, Pazdan said. The still-standing company store will also be preserved and incorporated into the redevelopment, the plans show.

Under the current plan, new, multi-family residential buildings will be constructed in the style of a mill village, Pazdan said. The site is directly next to the Conestee Nature Preserve, and Pazdan said the coming development would have direct connectivity to the regional amenity.

“I enjoy real estate as long as it is something that really is impactful and is not just a cookie-cutter easy thing,” he said. “This project is something that checked a lot of those boxes.”

But planning for the new project remains in its early stages and is subject to change.

Conestee Mill was once an important contributor to Greenville County’s booming textile industry. Built in 1876, the structure that now stands on the site was originally known as the Reedy River Manufacturing Company, and is the second mill constructed on the property, according to the National Registry of Historic Places.

It operated continuously until its closure in 1939, then reopened in 1946. It operated for about 25 years before shuttering again in 1971.

The Conestee dam, which spans the Reedy River just a stone’s throw from the mill, was built to provide hydroelectric power to the textile factory in the late 1800s.

Conestee Lake formed upriver of the dam and, over the next several decades, was filled with toxic chemicals industrial operations dumped into the waterway. Those toxins were buried in the river bed after passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act cracked down on the pollution of waterways.

But their continued presence, combined with the condition of the dam — which was designed only to stand for about 50 years — gave rise to grave concerns that a structural failure could send contaminated sediment flooding down the river and into Lake Greenwood, a major source of drinking water.

After years of advocacy, planning, and searching for funds, an effort to stabilize the dam began gaining significant momentum in 2023, with the state and other stakeholders contributing more than $40 million to the project.

Pazdan said that investment signaled to him it was time to move on the property in which he had long seen potential, so he purchased the site that year.

Work on a new dam in front of the old one — intended to create a hydrostatic equilibrium to stabilize the aging structure — began in December 2024. In September, Lake Conestee Dam Restoration Fund President Kelly Lowry announced the work was all but complete, and a long-feared environmental disaster had been averted.

That opened the door for Pazdan and Kanasta LLC to move forward with its plans to redevelop the mill site. Plans for the property are on the agenda for a Nov. 18 project review meeting with the city of Greenville. Pazdan said a portion of the site also sits outside Greenville city limits and will need to be annexed for the project to move forward.

At this point, he said early design and engineering work is underway, and he hopes to begin construction by late 2026.