Canton secures mill site future with land purchase
The Town of Canton will soon own part of the paper mill site west of the Pigeon River.
File photo
Just two days before the three-year anniversary of the announcement that the Pactiv Evergreen paper mill in Canton would close, Canton’s governing board took a decisive step toward securing both its wastewater infrastructure and its economic future by approving a complex land purchase that will place key portions of the former paper mill site under municipal control.
“This is just the next chapter in a story that we started several months ago. We went to Raleigh to seek money to purchase the west side of the property, we have been going through due diligence and it’s to the point now that we’ve got an agreement,” said Zeb Smathers, Canton’s mayor.
On March 4, Canton’s governing board approved the agreement with Two Banks Development LLC to purchase two critical parcels totaling roughly 52.1 acres from the broader 185-acre mill property. The deal includes the chip yard and distribution center immediately, with a second closing no later than 2031 for the industrial-scale wastewater treatment plant that once served the mill and still serves the town.
Together, the two transactions are intended to solve one of the community’s most pressing post-mill challenges — how to treat wastewater while also shaping the redevelopment of a massive industrial site that long defined Canton’s identity and economy.
The mill’s 2023 closure created a cascade of challenges for Canton and Haywood County.
For more than a century, the facility served as the economic heart of the town, employing hundreds of workers and supporting an entire regional supply chain tied to timber, transportation and paper manufacturing.
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But when the mill shut down, the community faced a complicated web of environmental liabilities, infrastructure needs and redevelopment questions tied to the sprawling site nestled alongside the Pigeon River.
Local officials quickly realized that solving those problems would require a deliberate strategy, built piece by piece.
Early discussions focused on the need for collaboration among local government, environmental regulators and private developers to ensure that the property could eventually be redeveloped without exposing the town to environmental or financial risk.
Since then, the strategy has gradually taken shape.
Two Banks Development purchased the former mill property from the previous owner, Pactiv Evergreen, in early 2025 and began pursuing a demolition plan intended to transform the sprawling industrial complex into a mix of development options.
The town, meanwhile, focused on ensuring that it retained control over one essential element of the site’s future — wastewater treatment.
For decades, the mill’s treatment facility processed not only industrial wastewater from paper production but also municipal sewage from the Town of Canton at nearly no cost to the town. After the mill closed, that arrangement left the town dependent on infrastructure owned by a private entity.
Local leaders concluded that building a new municipal wastewater treatment plant would be essential for both environmental protection and long-term economic development. Securing land for that facility therefore became a priority.
After a prolonged search, the chip yard emerged as the most logical site. The area offers enough space to build a modern treatment facility capable of handling both municipal sewage and other potential waste streams associated with future development. The facility will be designed to treat at least 2 million gallons of wastewater per day.
The real estate purchase isn’t nearly the first time the town has used its authority to exercise some control over what the site would look like down the road.
Within months of the mill’s closure, the town adopted an industrial development moratorium aimed at preventing large-scale projects from moving forward before local officials had time to study the site and its infrastructure limitations. The measure was widely viewed as a way to ensure that any redevelopment of the sprawling mill property would occur on terms acceptable to the community.
Town leaders made clear that they did not want the property to become a free-for-all for industrial proposals that could overwhelm local infrastructure or conflict with long-term redevelopment goals.
Last month, Canton adopted a different moratorium, this time targeting high impact development projects like large data centers, after proposals began surfacing across Western North Carolina.
Residents expressed concerns that such facilities could consume massive amounts of electricity and water and jeopardize the resurgence of the Pigeon River while providing relatively few local jobs.
Canton’s governing board heard those concerns and acted on Feb. 11; the measure sent a clear signal that the town would continue to play an active role in determining how the mill property would evolve.
The land purchase now represents the most concrete step in that strategy, giving Canton direct control over a substantial portion of the property and the wastewater infrastructure that will shape its future development.
Environmental considerations played a major role in the negotiations.
Because the mill site hosted heavy industrial operations for decades, the property is being addressed through North Carolina’s Brownfields redevelopment program. That process allows redevelopment to move forward while protecting future owners from liability for contamination that occurred before they acquired the property.
In the purchase agreement, Two Banks asserts that its operations at the site are in compliance with all environmental laws and that there are no unresolved environmental claims related to the site. Environmental liability insurance tied to the property will remain in effect until at least 2035, providing an additional layer of protection for the town.
The first closing will occur no later than March 24 and covers approximately 26 acres, including the chip yard that once stored wood fiber for the paper mill as well as a large distribution warehouse.
Jeffrey Goss, an attorney from Sylva-based Ridenour & Goss, is representing the town in the purchase as well as other matters related to wastewater.
Goss was selected in part because he’s been a board member of on the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority for seven years and currently serves as its chair — so he knows a bit more about hydrologic infrastructure than other real estate attorneys might.
He explained that the first closing carries a price tag of $12.5 million and will allow the town to begin planning construction of a new wastewater treatment plant on the former chip yard property.
The agreement also requires Two Banks to remove remaining industrial equipment from the chip yard within 120 days of the first closing. That includes conveyors, tippers and other machinery once used in mill operations.
Two Banks will continue to abide by the May 2025 agreement it signed agreeing to provide wastewater treatment to the town.
While the town has not yet announced specific redevelopment plans for the distribution center, officials have made clear that the building — approaching 150,000 square feet of space — could help attract new jobs to a community still grappling with the loss of the paper mill that once anchored its economy.
“We feel that the future of Canton should start exactly where we left off – attracting good-paying manufacturing jobs,” Smathers said, adding that leasing or even selling the parcel are options.
“The starting point,” he said, “is finding a quality partner to go in there.”
David Francis, who currently serves in prominent roles with two of the county’s economic development entities — the Haywood Chamber of Commerce and the Haywood Advancement foundation — told The Smoky Mountain News he’s been marketing the warehouse for some time now, and showed it to potential tenants 18 times in 2025 alone.
“The idea all along was to have a place to put the new wastewater treatment plant and use the warehouses to bring light manufacturing back to help quickly rebuild the tax base,” Francis said.
The second closing, for the existing wastewater treatment plant itself, cannot occur until the town’s new wastewater facility is built and fully operational, a milestone expected later this decade but no later than 2031.
The cost of the second parcel, nearly 26 acres, is $1.5 million, making the total cost of the purchase $14 million. No local taxpayer funds will be used to purchase the site, thanks to a direct appropriation from the North Carolina General Assembly last June.
At that time, Smathers commended a broad coalition of state legislators who helped secure the funds, including Sen. Kevin Corbin (R-Macon), Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell), Rep. Mark Pless (R-Haywood), Rep. Mike Clampitt (R-Swain), Rep. Karl Gillespie (R-Macon) and Rep. Dudley Greene (R-Burke), along with House Speaker Destin Hall (R-Caldwell) and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R-Rockingham).
Goss suggested that the site’s eventual future might look very different from its industrial past.
“At that time, you would be purchasing the plant for the purpose of decommissioning the [existing wastewater treatment] facility, most likely turning that into greenway space [and/or] flood storage,” he said. “As you continue to work through your design plan for what that looks like, there’s a river corridor that would play into that. But you're looking many years down the road.”
Once the land transfer is complete, engineering consultants working with the town will begin preparing design criteria for the new plant. That work will feed into a design-build process aimed at accelerating construction of the facility. Local officials hope that moving quickly will help position Canton for additional state and federal funding tied to infrastructure and economic development.
In the short term, the acquisition ensures the town can build its own wastewater treatment plant and free itself from reliance on infrastructure owned by a private company. In the long term, the move positions Canton to guide redevelopment of one of the most significant economic development opportunities in the region.
