This vacant factory was the former home for the Florence Knitting Mill, maker of knitwear such as skirts and jackets and then became a candy dream with Carl Miller Candymaker, who operated in the building since 1926. The Blasius Chocolate Company purchased the business in 1996 until they closed in 2016.
GM Holdings purchased the property in 2017 and started the process in December 2018. The first cloor was converted to a commercial space with 12 residential units on the upper floors. The property is gated to provide security with off-street parking.
This existing (2) story former factory building was adapted to a multi-family dwelling with artisan industrial spaces, and the process mandated an accessibility upgrade. As the first floor is located about 6’ above grade, a large ramp had to be cut into the site to provided access to the basement level where the new lobby would be located for the building. Constraints of the site layout required several iterations of design before arriving at the end solution.
Additionally, this project sought to utilize the existing rear yard to satisfy user parking requirements, which also necessitated the removal of an existing (1) story portion of the building for the provision of an exit drive aisle. This approach, however, had to be abandoned during construction to fulfill building egress needs. The resolution came after an extensive and complicated unity-of-use proposal with owned adjacent lots in order to provide an egress to a different street. As these lots were not zoned alike, complexities in interpretation delayed the project significantly.
