Canton's Paper Mill Closure: What Mayor Zeb Smathers Told Asheville Real Estate Investors

AVLmeetup decided to put on this event at its Spring Chickens meetup on March 14, 2023, and pulled it together in about ten days so real estate professionals could hear directly from Canton's leadership. Joining Forces for Canton's Success happened on March 28, 2023, at the Hilltop Event Center, where Mayor Zeb Smathers took questions after Zac Ruiz ran a Haywood County market update.

Key Takeaways

This was AVLmeetup's first pop-up event, decided on at the group's Spring Chickens meetup on March 14 and assembled in about ten days.
Mayor Zeb Smathers put the baseline impact at 1,100 mill workers and their families, not counting contractors and truck drivers, and said the closure blew a $3,000,000 hole in Canton's $11,000,000 town budget.
A live poll that drew 79 responses found most respondents had not been directly impacted by the closure themselves, yet the room overwhelmingly expected property values to increase and saw real estate opportunity ahead: nobody in the room answered that the closure would create no opportunities.
69% of respondents initially said yes to collaborating with town leaders on Canton's recovery; a live refresh of the poll brought the yes count to 72.
The Ruiz Report's Haywood County update showed months of supply at a month or less across the board, new listings down 10% year over year and 14% month over month, and a median home price of $350,000.

The Room's Sentiment Before the Mayor Spoke

Before Mayor Smathers took the stage, AVLmeetup ran a live poll that drew 79 responses from the room. Most respondents had not been directly affected by the closure themselves, and the room's concern about its impact on the local real estate market landed around 5 on a 10-point scale. Asked whether the closure would create opportunities for real estate investors, the room split between "yes, there will be some" and "yes, it will be a lot," with, in Zac Ruiz's words, "literally no one" answering no. Asked whether it would affect property values, the majority answer was that values would increase significantly. Most attendees did not yet own real estate in Canton, and asked if they planned to invest there, the most common answer was "I'm not sure yet."

What Mayor Zeb Smathers Told the Room

Zeb Smathers opened by calling the closure "a death in the family," a real loss the town was still grieving. "This is the turning of a page, not the closing of a book," he said. He gave the baseline numbers directly: 1,100 mill workers, which means 1,100 families, not counting the contractors and truck drivers tied into pulp and chip production. He said Governor Cooper called him the morning after the announcement and used the word "supply chain," because the ripple effects reached toward Wilmington, South Carolina, and Tennessee. On the town's own books, he said the closure left "a $3,000,000 hole in my $11,000,000 budget," not counting county-level effects.

He framed the path forward as building "the hometown of tomorrow" rather than waiting for a replacement factory. On the roughly 150-plus-acre mill site, he said he could not yet say what comes next, mentioning pitches ranging from Top Golf to civic centers to breweries and joking that Dolly Parton has not actually called about Canton. The property belongs to Evergreen, the private company, and cleanup is on Canton's leadership to watch closely.

He also pointed to two natural assets: Chestnut Mountain Bike Park, 450 acres straddling the Buncombe and Haywood county line and already a world-class draw, and the Pigeon River, whose water quality across the whole county should improve once the mill stops operating. On workforce recovery, he cited Haywood Community College's retraining programs, a donation fund called Haywood Strong, and a mortgage-assistance account Champion Credit Union set up for affected workers, adding that job fairs intentionally included mental health providers because factory closures carry real suicide risk: "we have all been traumatized by this," he said, on top of flooding the region had already been through.

What the Haywood County Market Looked Like That Month

Zac Ruiz opened the night with an abridged Ruiz Report focused on Haywood County, which he said he had been tracking for 36 months. The headline was tight supply: months of inventory sat at a month or less across essentially every price range, with new listings down 10% year over year and 14% month over month. Homes going under contract fell almost a third from the previous month, and closed sales, a lagging figure, ran 20% below the same month a year prior. The median home price in Haywood County that month was $350,000, below the average, which Ruiz attributed to a small number of expensive homes pulling the average up.

Questions

How can real estate professionals meet Canton where it is right now, without the town feeling descended upon? Mayor Smathers said to trust your gut and remember this is unlike flood recovery: there is no mud to clean up, just raw loss, so be respectful and understand there is a time and a place. He pointed people toward Haywood Community College's workforce donation fund and the mortgage-assistance account Champion Credit Union set up for mill families, and described an 80-year-old man who mailed $25 to town hall asking if it could buy a mill worker dinner.
What is the plan for the mill property itself, and how involved will government be? Smathers said the roughly 150-plus-acre site sits on a river with rail, natural gas, and fiber already in place. The property legally belongs to Evergreen, and cleanup is the company's responsibility, one he is watching closely, and he named Durham, Greenville, Kannapolis, and Chattanooga as redevelopment models he is studying.
Will the Pigeon River open up for recreation now that the mill is gone? Smathers said the river's flow at the headwaters would become constant across the whole county once the mill stops pulling from it, and pointed to improved water quality supporting fishing, camping, and eventually breweries and distilleries.
Could rail service ever reconnect Canton to Asheville? An attendee asked about retrofitting the Blue Ridge Southern Railroad into a passenger hub, eventually linking to Amtrak and Asheville. Smathers floated what he called a "Milltown moonshot," uniting the region by rail from the River Arts District through Canton, Clyde, and Waynesville to Sylva and Bryson City, tied to keeping industrial users like Giles Chemical in Waynesville viable.

Mayor Smathers closed by putting a number on the human scale of the closure: a baseline of 1,100 workers and 1,100 families, not counting the contractors and truck drivers layered on top, a ripple he said would be felt "for decades, somehow, some way."