Pierson Hall at the Methodist Church being unavailable, Vice President-President-Elect Amanda Senn called the Rotary meeting to order at North Water Brewery where our Rotarians were also participating in Tap Talks.  Club members sang “God Bless America” for their patriotic song.  With no American flag, the pledge was skipped.  To mark Juneteenth, the June 19, 1865, the day when the Union Army informed slaves in Texas who had not been told the Civil War had ended, that they were no longer slaves, Dominque Bollenbacher  led Rotarians in “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”  They hymn was composed by James Weldon Johnson and his brother, John, who wrote the lyrics.  In 1900, the National  Association for the Advancement of Colored People proclaimed the hymn at the Black National Anthem.

 

Announcements:   President-Elect Amanda announced there would be no announcements.

 

Happy Bucks:  We skipped Happy Bucks.

 

Guests & Visitors:   Although Rotarians attending numbered approximately 30 (not sure if attendance was taken), there were more than 30 non-Rotarians attending the Tap Talk.

 

Program:  President-Elect Amanda introduced fellow Rotarian Tom Hatch who introduced our speakers, Kent Council member, Heidi Shaffer Bish, and Bill  Arthur, whose family owns the historic Kent building known as the Silk Mill.   Heidi gave us the history of the building, which stands on the banks of the Cuyahoga River and on River Street opposite the Kent Free Library.  She told us the building was constructed by a group of investors who wanted to start a silk industry in Kent.  The land was purchased in 1836 from Zenas Kent who owned large swaths of Franklin Township.  Mulberry trees were brought to Kent and these trees, or their off-spring survive in the community, Shaffer-Bish said. Scrip, approved by the Ohio legislature, and purchased by members of the community who hoped for the silk mill’s success, helped fund the business.  The enterprise quickly went bust when it was discovered that silkworms could not survive Ohio’s climate.  Although a building had been started and a dam rebuilt to channel water to the property, both were abandoned to Zenas Kent whose sons, Marvin and Charles, completed the fortress like building in 1852 and turned it into a cotton mill, which never materialized.  The building sat vacant until 1878 when an industrialist from Jamestown, NY started an alpaca mill which stayed in Kent until the owners refused to pay the rent and moved to Cleveland where they founded the Cleveland Worsted Mill that eventually had 11 plants throughout the northeast of the USA.

A series of ownerships continued.  The Loeblein family, Clevelanders who moved to Kent, operated a furniture business there before moving to North Carolina for cheaper labor in 1959. The Fageol family utilized it to produced parts for its buses. The Portage Paper Box Company  owned by the Chestnutwood bought the building for production of boxes, but at the turn of the century went out of business.  At that time, Jim and Nancy Arthur who owned the Davey Investment properties in downtown Kent and properties elsewhere bought the Silk Mill building in 2002 for $250,000 according to Bill Arthur who said his family put $2 million into restoring the building for apartments and offices, retaining many of its historic features, beautifully decorating interior spaces utilizing natural light and creating the Michael Norman Gardens on the outside.  One of the commercial spaces remodeled is where Shaffer-Bish has operated her yoga business for 15 years!   The building’s brick walls are two feet thick at the base and taper off to 16 inches at the top 5^th floor, Shaffer-Bish told us.  Its footprint is 50 ft by 200 ft.  Credit the Arthur family for saving a type of 19^th century manufacturing building that in unfortunately becoming all too rare.