Even before Hurricane Helene, the town of Canton in Haywood County was trying to figure out how to reimagine its future.
In 2023, the Pactiv Evergreen paper mill closed, leaving more than a thousand people without jobs and leaving the town without the industry that had sustained it for over a century.
Now, Canton is working to find a way forward that honors its history while also navigating the new challenges brought on by the storm.
Austin Medford and Jeff Denton grew up in Canton and were part of the same Boy Scout troop but they hadn’t seen each other since they graduated high school more than a decade ago.
They bumped into each other at a recent event at Haywood Community College, where the topic of the evening was the future of the former paper mill town.
Denton said whatever happens next, Canton has a unique identity that needs to be preserved. He described it as a town with grit and a strong sense of community, where thousands of people pack the stands for Friday night football games at Pisgah Memorial Stadium.
“There’s all of this personality and structure and ideals that have already been built over 100 years of history, right?” Denton said in an interview. “And so, we want people that want to come to Canton and develop it in a way that meets Canton where it’s at. We don’t want to be another Asheville. We don’t want to be somewhere out west. We want to be Canton 2.0.”
Medford agreed. He said everything has its season, and while the paper mill’s time has gone, he hopes any future development prioritizes the needs of the people who live in Canton and have made the town what it is.
“We don’t want Canton to be like the sidekick to whatever thing takes the void of the mill,” Medford told BPR. “We want Canton to keep its identity as a working-class town but still have the mountain charm that other towns have but maybe don’t have that blue-collar DNA, like Waynesville or Black Mountain.”
He also noted that anything that takes the mill’s place will have to contend with the Pigeon River. It sits right next to the mill site and severely flooded the area during Tropical Storms Frances and Ivan in 2004, Tropical Storm Fred in 2021 — and Helene two years ago.
“That river is undefeated,” Medford said. “So, you have to keep that in mind. It’s there. It’s always going to be there. It will let you know it’s there.”
The challenge for Canton moving forward is not how to defeat the river, but how to coexist with it.
Planning a natural flow path
A few days before the community event on Canton’s future, Luke Williams led a group of people — all wearing hard hats and safety vests — down a dark stairway in the heart of the former Pactiv Evergreen paper mill. It was one of the first public tours of the facility since its closure.
He showed the group some of the factory’s equipment and explained the paper-making process. Then, he paused midway down the staircase, about 10 feet above the basement floor.
“If you guys want to, you can come down the stairs and, kind of, look at something. But where I’m standing is where the water was,” Williams said, prompting gasps from the crowd.
White spray-painted lines on a nearby column showed how badly the mill flooded during Frances and Ivan in 2004. But Helene’s floodwaters topped them, reaching almost to the basement’s ceiling.
Both Williams and his colleague, Michael Ferguson, spent much of their lives working at the paper mill.
“35-and-a-half years trying to keep it open. Two years trying to figure out what it’s going to be next,” Ferguson said.
After the closure, both men took what Williams described as a “leap of faith” to join Two Banks Development, the local division of the company that purchased the mill site. Williams, who spent 14 years working at the mill, is director of engineering, and Ferguson is general manager.
Ferguson said the eventual demolition of the mill will give Canton more options for letting the Pigeon River have a natural place to go. That’s because the mill had a levy and dock system that helped keep water out of the facility — but also constricted the river’s flow path.
“A lot of work and a lot of coordination going on with the town of Canton, Haywood County, Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA — all those parties — they’re here in Canton, now, basically, looking at how do you make this a place that’s not as easily floodable?” Ferguson told BPR in an interview after the tour.
Williams said he could imagine a solution where half of the mill site becomes parkland or greenways that will serve as a natural buffer, similar to Asheville’s Riverside Drive.
“And then the other half, we don’t know. And that’s where we’re working with the town and the public just trying to [figure out], like, ‘Hey, what could it be?’” Williams said.
Community members have a lot of thoughts about what they wouldn’t like to see take the place of the paper mill. Several said they’re opposed to data centers, luxury apartments and more heavy industry.
One of the options for peaceful coexistence with the river that’s gained some traction is the concept of an outdoor amphitheater.
Vicki Hyatt, a former longtime newspaper editor and current Haywood County Commission candidate who also organized the paper mill tour, said she’s a fan of the outdoor concert venue idea.
“That is an amazing use for floodplain land,” she said in an interview. “You know, you put risers on, you let the flood come in if it comes, and then you just kind of go back and you’re not disruptive at all.”
‘Growth is coming’
At the Haywood Community College event, several attendees cited the possibility of the Pigeon River again overrunning its banks as a major concern.
Emily Reason and her husband, Michael Huston, said they’re interested in ideas for recreational activities around the river and they also want to make sure they offered input on managing flood risk.
“We’ve had two major floods — Fred and Helene,” Huston said. “And we would love for it to never happen again, but it seems like, logically, it might happen again. And so, we would like to make sure that the town’s doing everything in their power to make it less expensive for them next time, so there’s less destruction [and] the water goes in the right direction, or at least overflows in the right direction.”
Reason added: “And it’s not developed with something that’s just going to wash away.”
Jonathan Kearse said he and his partner are opening a business soon in Canton. They both grew up in western Pennsylvania and are well aware of the challenges facing towns where the manufacturing industry has left.
“Seeing how Canton is trying to reinvent itself now that the mill has closed, it’s a very familiar story to both of us, coming from old steel mill towns,” Kearse said in an interview. “And so many of those towns just withered on the vine and are really dilapidated and depressing now. So we’re really excited to help revitalize the town and help it reinvent itself.”
The actual decision for what to do with the former mill site is still a long way off.
Byron Hickox, Canton’s planning director, said it will take years for FEMA to update its flood maps, which will define the area’s new floodplain boundaries. There will also be lots of environmental studies to determine the safety of building on the former mill site.
“Any development on that former mill site is going to be done under the shadow of potential flood threat and abiding by all the regulations related to floodway development and flood plain development,” Hickox said in an interview.
A self-described “son of the paper industry,” Hickox grew up in a paper mill town in Georgia and said he’s familiar with both the upsides and downsides of living near a mill.
He said interest in Canton as a location for new businesses and residents has surged in the past few years, mainly because the rotten-egg smell that comes from paper production is gone.
“I’ve talked to a dozen realtors — I’m in contact constantly with realtors — they said, no exaggeration, the week after it was announced that the mill was leaving, their calls of interest in Canton, commercially and residentially, increased several fold,” he said. “Growth is coming,” Hickox said. “Whether we want it or not, growth is coming. The best we can do is plan for how we want to grow and stick to our guns on that.”
While the paper mill helped make Canton what it is, Hickox said most community members are looking to a future where the town doesn’t have to rely on a single industry as its economic cornerstone — and where it’s well-prepared for the next flood.
