New hope for Brigham City’s crumbling legacies?

Aug. 23--BRIGHAM CITY -- The city's three burned-out landmarks are starting to earn nicknames around town.

The June 29 fire at the 135-year-old Baron Woolen Mills building placed it in the company of the city's two other torched relics. The 145-year-old Old Grist Mill and the 139-year-old Merrell Planing Mill bookend the newcomer in the what-do-we-do-now club.

The trio sit within two blocks of each other, between Second North and Forest Street.

"Yes, the historic ruins of Brigham City," said City Attorney Kirk Morgan. "Someone recently came up with my favorite: 'pioneer ghetto.'"

The three were built along Box Elder Creek by Mormon settlers to operate off water-wheel power. They were centerpieces in the short-lived, socialistic United Order experiment, the church's Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association, also called simply the Brigham co-op.

Now?

With the woolen mill blaze, some citizens are becoming concerned about the ongoing hazard, since nothing has been done with the planing mill and the grist mill -- both of which burned down six years ago. Boarded up and fenced off, they still look as freshly charred as the woolen mill site.

The frustration bubbled shortly after the woolen mill blaze when the owners -- who also own the planing mill remnants -- said they didn't have the funds handy to fence off and secure the property.

So the city had to do it.

"That, to me, says something about how committed they are to restoring it," Morgan said.

"The owners are responsible for the costs associated with the work and, if the debt isn't paid, the city will recover the costs as allowed by law," City Manager Bruce Leonard said.

Jaren Davis, one of the partners among the group of Salt Lake developers who own both sites, plus the wooded area that connects the two, admitted they told the city to place a lien on the property for the fencing and security costs, estimated at about $10,000.

But he insists they could have come up with the funds within a week, just not in the day or two the city was demanding.

"We wanted to be meticulous, they were in a hurry." The bill to Davis' group is still being finalized.

But Davis said the partnership still talks about hopes and dreams for both sites, bristling at skeptics, as well as the claims the group sold off the aging equipment, spindles and looms and so on, inside the woolen mill.

"Donated," he stressed. "It was donated. Donated." To museums around the West. "It's ridiculous to think we were going to make our money off dilapidated equipment, some of it more than a century old."

With the woolen mill site, and the planing mill, the latter a major lumberyard during pioneer times and purchased just after its 2008 fire, Davis said restoration plans were derailed by the economy's collapse.

But that's starting to change, he said, the ongoing recovery having him and partners Jim Davis, no relation, and Soren Simonsen hopeful of attracting investors.

Plus a savior of sorts has come forward.

"There's a serendipity there," Jaren Davis said. "He got to thinking about us just after seeing the news coverage on the woolen mill fire."

Dennis Allen is a former Brigham resident, now a Heber-area financial planner with hoped-for major connections to potential investors. Davis said Allen is already tinkering with the partnership's incorporation bylaws to ensure tax breaks for investors.

"We had reached that point -- we were discussing selling the properties and walking away after the woolen mill fire," Davis said. "Then Dennis fell out of the sky."

Davis also claimed ties to the community. The nonprofit corporation they created that owns the two mill sites is named after the Brigham co-op: Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association LLC.

And partner Simonsen is a member of the Merrell family, which operated the planing mill for a century, Davis said. His grandfather worked at the mill, and also grew up in the house next door to it on the west.

"Soren promised him he would take care of it."

They still have hopes of some $2 million to $3 million invested in turning the woolen mill into a haven for small businesses and craftsmen, an "artisan industries" center, and the planing mill into a meeting hall and wedding reception site.

D.J. Bott is less hopeful of a rebirth of the Old Grist Mill, owned by his family for many decades, purchased from Lorenzo Snow in 1892. Snow was essentially Brigham City's founder, taking over a struggling settlement in 1853 begun by explorer William Davis in 1850. Snow designed and headed the Brigham co-op.

Bott is pessimistic about investors. "It will probably sit there in perpetuity until we can find grants to restore it."

"We've been lumped in with the other two as a problem," he said. "They are in the same boat we are. No bank is going to loan on those buildings, because they are so hard to insure because they are so old."

The grist mill was uninsured when it burned in August 2008, he said. "The only company that even made an offer was Lloyd's of London. It was astronomical, like $1,500 a month. We couldn't afford it."

Bott was elected to the city council in January. "I expect I will have to be abstaining on some votes coming up."

All three monuments in the city's pioneer ghetto succumbed to arson, the grist mill's unsolved.

The planing mill's arsonist confessed and was sentenced to two years in jail. The woolen mill's was an accidental arson, a 17-year-old visiting from out of state confessing and charged with trespassing and reckless burning -- essentially playing with matches.

"I understand they are historical sites," says Morgan. "But what we've got now is burned-out wrecks ... There are people that want them restored. But that's been the case for 30 years."

Morgan said enacting the city's nuisance ordinance to enforce action on the sites, something yet to be tried, is one of the options being considered.

The Merrell site is considered the worst threat since it sits at the edge of two busy city streets, while the other two are set well back from roadways.

City Manager Leonard noted the owners of the planing mill hired a contractor to structurally stabilize the ruins.

"There have been concerns expressed at council meetings, from callers and from walk-ins, on both sides of the issue" regarding all three sites, he said. "But right now we are encouraging the private property owners to mitigate the problem. We've held multiple meetings with them and will continue to do so in an effort to resolve concerns ... so patience is better served in my opinion, at least for the time being."

Morgan added, "We are no longer concerned about things falling off from the top of the Merrell planing mill."

Contact reporter Tim Gurrister at 801-625-4238 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @tgurrister

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