Historical society tries to save old mill Web-posted Aug 30, 2004 By ANN ZANIEWSKI Of The Daily Oakland Press Shattered glass sparkles on the ground under blue window frames filled with plywood.Cracked gray paint is flaking off 129-year-old red-brown brick. Lanky thistles and shrubs creep around and partly hide a small front porch.Still, Rod Wilson, past president of the Rochester-Avon Historical Society, sees beauty in the blight and wants to keep the shuttered paper mill from being replaced with condos and added to a growing list of historic buildings lost in the name of progress."It's part of our heritage," he said. "It's part of our history."Detroit-based developer Trident Properties wants to tear down the mill to build 196 stacked, three-bedroom condo units on the nearly 18 acres just southeast of Main Street. Mill Street runs under the Main Street bridge and dead-ends at the mill, which sits at the intersection of the Paint Creek and the Clinton River.The mill's 1824 rock foundation is still intact, but the original wooden structure burned down and was replaced with a brick building in 1875. A chimney that jutted from the roof was torn down and an aluminum addition was added in the 1940s or 1950s.It was a flour mill when it opened and was last occupied by a company called Fiber Mark, which manufactured paper filters.Wilson and other society members want to save the 1875 portion. They have suggested that the developer turn it into a clubhouse for residents or a restaurant.On nearby Water Street, an 1896 building that housed the Western Knitting Mills was remodeled and now houses three levels of offices and the popular Rochester Mills Brewing Co. bar and restaurant.But Tom Turnbull, Trident Properties vice president, is less enthusiastic about keeping and reusing the paper mill.A restaurant wouldn't work, he said, because "it would be in the middle of a residential community, in the middle of 200 homes."And there are no plans for a clubhouse or community building, either."It's all going to be condos," he said.The Rochester Planning Commission will decide whether to give the project a green light at a meeting at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 8. Society member Liz Golding said the meeting will be the last chance to plead to save the mill building.The city doesn't have a historic district, which could mandate that historical buildings not be torn down and their facades left largely unchanged. Owners could be eligible for tax breaks in return.As a result, several old structures have been razed to make way for new ones. The five historical Parke-Davis barns built on Lettica in 1907 - where polio vaccines were tested with horse blood - were torn down in 1999 to make way for the Older Persons Commission building. The Woodward School, built in 1926 on Woodward Avenue, came down last fall for a 16-house development.Western Knitting Mills and the Rochester Community Schools administration building on University, built in 1888 and since remodeled, are proof to society members that the paper mill doesn't have to meet a dismal fate."Rochester needs foot traffic, and this (the condo plan) is a wonderful way to get it. We applaud them for doing it. It's their right to tear it down if they want to," Golding said. "It's a piece of Rochester history, and we want to preserve it if we can."