The Miller Manufacturing Building: Redevelopment Begins

Kicking off our ongoing coverage of The Carillion Group’s redevelopment of the historic Miller Manufacturing Building just off South Main into 15 loft apartments, here are some recent photos from inside the structure, where work is now underway. A general cleanup effort has been ongoing and the building’s interior is now much more free of clutter and open. In addition, work has been underway putting a new roof on the building.

This small office is one of only a couple of parts of the building with any sort of interior walls.

I like that sign – not just “no smoking,” but “POSITIVELY no smoking.”

Inside the office area.

This old document was pinned to one of the office walls. It details the creation of potassium oxalate.

The door beyond is the old elevator shaft.

The stairway to the basement, a part of the building I am not ashamed to admit I have not been into yet for reasons of creepiness. When work began, the basement was revealed to be a still-stocked fallout shelter, complete with Cold War era foodstuffs and water barrels.

The arched doorway which opens onto Bryan Avenue.

Some of these old industrial-strength doors resemble something from an old ’30s monster movie – you can picture Frankenstein’s monster or the wolf man crashing through these.

Let’s head upstairs. In contrast to the darker, almost cave-like quality the building’s ground floor has, the second floor is light and open, thanks to an almost complete encirclement of huge windows and several impressive skylights.

The second floor looks to be the focus of a lot of work right now. Besides the new roof that is going on, it looks to me like there has been some cleaning of the concrete on the second floor. It is already looking noticeably improved compared to my first visits to the building.

This shot shows off the tall ceilings and large skylights.

The wired safety glass in the windows is being replaced with clear glass, but as much of the old glass as possible is being saved for reuse in other parts of the project.

The view from the second floor looking across South Main towards Downtown. All of the buildings on the block on South Main we’re looking across are now restored and in use again – the red building is part of two buildings now used as office space, and the lighter buildings are the Sawyer Grocery buildings, the Carillion Group’s previous project now open as apartments over retail spaces.

Well, that’s it for now. Look for more updates to come. I hope to next get photos of the new roof and other bits of new work.