2025 A Look Back: ‘Cautiously Optimistic’ award
When Eric Spirtas and Two Banks Development LLC bought the dormant Canton mill property in early January from global corporate supervillain Pactiv Evergreen, the reaction across town was equal parts relief and side-eye.
Relief, because communities across the country have seen too many hulking industrial sites sit shuttered for a decade or more, rotting quietly into the ground while communities wait for a miracle that never comes.
Side-eye, because miracles tend to come with fine print.
To Spirtas’ credit, the lights didn’t stay off for long. Demolition began. The site started moving again. The psychological win alone mattered — it was proof that the mill wouldn’t become a permanent monument to economic catastrophe.
For a town still defining itself after its century-long papermaking era fizzled, that counted.
And yet, caution lingers. The project remains a blank slate, capable at any moment of failing or flipping from community-scaled, ecologically responsible, mixed-use redevelopment that creates jobs and supports the tax base to any number of high-impact, low-return endeavors.
For now, the “Cautiously Optimistic” award recognizes both truths at once — progress without paralysis, and uncertainty without panic. The mill is no longer frozen in time, but its future is still being written — and that gritty little mill town that won‘t stay down knows better than to celebrate before the check clears.
