A historic mill complex in Bennington has been acquired for $5.75 million by an out-of-state real estate company whose work includes turning old mills into residential and commercial spaces.
The 28-building Vermont Mill complex, which started out as the “Big Mill” in 1865, changed hands on Wednesday. Chinburg Properties, based in Newmarket, New Hampshire, bought the complex from Jon Goodrich, a Bennington resident who had owned it since 1999.
The mill complex, which sits beside the Walloomsac River, primarily serves as a commercial property. Goodrich said it currently has about 140 tenants who use it for a wide range of purposes, such as business offices, college classrooms, exercise spaces, design studios, retail shops, manufacturing facility and storage space.
Before making any big changes to the complex, the new owners first want to get to know its current tenants and the town of Bennington to “see what ideas bubble up,” said Eric Chinburg, president and founder of Chinburg Properties.
“Definitely want to see if we can augment the river frontage,” he said in an email on Thursday. “Over time, as some tenants move out, we may take portions of the building and add apartments.”
Besides redeveloping old structures, Chinburg Properties also builds housing and manages residential and commercial properties. The company has properties in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts, including multiple former mills.
Chinburg said his firm is especially interested in redeveloping old mills because of their history, architecture and location, which is typically by the water. “They are such a potentially transformative engine to historic downtowns,” he said. “It’s the best form of ‘recycling!’”
The Vermont Mill complex, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the firm’s first property in Vermont. As the Holden-Leonard Mill Complex in the early 1900s, which manufactured woolen textiles, historians said it accounted for a quarter of total employment in Bennington, then the center of the textile industry in southern Vermont.
Chinburg Properties was drawn to purchasing the mill complex, the company president said, because of the investments they’ve seen in Bennington during recent years. “When we see municipalities making such investments, we want to do the same, and partner with them to the extent possible,” Chinburg said.
Chinburg cited the Putnam Block redevelopment project and the planned conversion of the former Bennington High School into a mixed-use property as local projects that caught his attention.
Jonathan Cooper, of the Bennington County Regional Commission, pointed out that the Vermont Mill complex is a rarity among mill investment properties in that the structure is already fully leased. He credits Goodrich for providing his tenants with flexibility in the type of businesses they brought to the complex.
Cooper expects the new ownership to drive additional interest in the mill and raise its profile, since it’s now part of a broad collection of properties. For instance, he said, if a prospective tenant of Chinburg Properties can’t find the space or financial terms that work for them at the other locations, “the Vermont Mill will be part of that conversation in ways that it wasn’t before.”
Goodrich decided to put the mill complex on the market last November because he was already contemplating retirement.
“I’m getting old,” Goodrich, 77, said in an interview. “I felt that the mill needed more and needed its next step to expand and grow, and I’m not willing to do it anymore.”
The real estate agent for the mill complex sale, Lilli West Williams of Maple Leaf Realty, said Goodrich had received three other offers for the property. He originally put only the main and north wings on the market, but decided to also sell the south wing when Chinburg Properties came along.
“He’s worked so hard on it for the last 20-some years that he really wasn’t quite ready to fully let it all go,” Williams said. “It had to be the right buyer and the right fit.”
The main and north wings sold for $3.75 million and the south wing for $2 million, the Realtor said. The complex has an interior area of 215,000 square feet and sits on 12 acres of land.
Having seen at least five of Chinburg Properties’ redeveloped old mills in New Hampshire, Goodrich said he believed the company can give the Vermont Mill complex the respect and care it deserved.
But, like any parent letting go of a grown child, Goodrich said he feels some anxiety about passing on the property that he began leasing in 1991, several years before he decided to buy it.
“You lose anything that you had that long, and, you know, there’s an adjustment to be made,” he said. “But besides that, it was a good thing.”
Correction: The spelling of Jon Goodrich’s last name has been corrected in several instances.