Housing planned for former mill across from Kuss Middle School

FALL RIVER — Efforts are underway to convert the former Ashworth Brothers Mill building on Globe Mills Avenue into a housing complex.

Representatives of Caragh Development, the Boston-based company trying to renovate the building, declined to comment on the project’s progress, but an engineer working for the company provided details to Conservation Commission members during their most recent meeting.

The roughly 47,000-square-foot building sits on 3 acres and, according to a site plan submitted to the Conservation Commission, could host as many as 80 housing units when renovations are completed.

Alexander Trakimas, an engineer working on the project, told commission members that a steel-frame building that covers about 7,500 square feet of the mill’s total footprint would be removed and replaced with parking spaces. The project’s site plan shows over 100 new parking spaces around the building’s perimeter.

Plans also show new patios and green spaces being built in the courtyard area where the mill’s brick chimney stands and around the edges of the property, which is adjacent to Kuss Middle School.

“Overall, there would be more green space than currently exists there,” said Trakimas.

City property records indicate the building was constructed in 1905 and that it had been used by the Ashworth Brothers Mill company as a facility for textile card machinery manufacturing.

Based on Trakimas’ presentation, city officials appeared in support of Caragh Development’s plan.

“I was looking at the property and it’s in sad shape, so what you’re going to do is a win-win,” said Conservation Commission Chairman John Brandt. “The area is overgrown and the building is an eyesore.”

Commission member Rev. James Hornsby also spoke in support of rehabilitating the property.

 “I’ve been down in that area many times. We have parishioners in my church that live near there so I’m delighted with the cleanup,” he said.

Caragh Development describes itself on its website as a real estate development company “with a focus on re-purposing underutilized properties.”