Heather LaGarde moved back to North Carolina eight years ago because she fell in love with a barn.
She had spotted a real estate listing online for the cathedral-like 1930s barn, house and seven acres near Saxapahaw. LaGarde, who grew up in Chapel Hill and was living in New York City, remembered the small Alamance County village on the Haw River from teenage driving lessons in the countryside. "I thought it was a beautiful, mysterious mill town," she said.
When LaGarde returned, the shuttered cotton mill and the surrounding area were on the verge of revitalization.
Developer Mac Jordan - grandson of the late U.S. Sen. B. Everett Jordan, who once owned the mill - had purchased the property and was remaking parts of the mill into apartments, retail and a school. Saxapahaw was built around the mill, which opened in 1848. But when it closed in 1994, the industry died and the community started to fade.
Jordan set out to transform the mill and revive his hometown. LaGarde became an integral player in that transformation, pitching a farmers market with live music on Saturdays in the summer as a way to promote the project and the community.
Saturdays in Saxapahaw enters its seventh year this Saturday. It has grown from an event lucky to attract 100 people to one with a regular crowd of 1,500. Later this month, LaGarde will open the Haw River Ballroom - a live music venue - event space and coffee shop inside the former mill, creating one more reason for visitors to make Saxapahaw a destination.
Jordan says LaGarde has great insight, instincts and an ability to envision the best way to redevelop the mill to benefit the surrounding area. Plus, she has passion for creating community.
"We're both passionate about it, which makes it a wonderful partnership," he said. "It's great to have folks you can rely on to help you carry out a vision."
Out of New York
When LaGarde left Chapel Hill at 17 to attend prestigious Bard College in upstate New York, she never expected to return.
After graduating with a literature degree, she forged a thriving career, first as a filmmaker, then as an organizer of Human Rights Watch's film festival and finally opening the U.S. offices for War Child International. She lived in Switzerland and London and settled in New York City, where she met her future husband, Tom LaGarde, who played professional basketball after a standout career at UNC.
They had been considering a move to the country when LaGarde happened upon that barn online. The couple were living on Manhattan's Lower East Side on Sept. 11, 2001. LaGarde recalls the jolt when the first tower was hit and running up to a rooftop with her 1-year-old to see the devastation. While New Yorkers' reaction to the attack made her love the city even more, the attack itself made her want to leave.
So in 2003, the LaGardes bought the old farmhouse. A year later, they moved in for good.
Tom LaGarde met Jordan and his father, John Jordan. The elder Jordan urged Tom LaGarde to open a steakhouse or sports bar in the renovated mill. He had no interest in that but asked his wife to join them on a walk through the project.
The LaGardes proposed a farmers market and live music series for a meadow near the mill complex. The event started in the summer of 2005. Jordan eventually hired LaGarde part-time to run Saturdays in Saxapahaw and design his company's website. (She also works as an adviser for IntraHealth International, a Chapel Hill-based nonprofit.)
Jordan credits her with taking on a much larger role in the mill's revitalization. She is helping to create a strategic vision, including vetting and recruiting business owners.
Jeff Barney and Cameron Ratliff used to work at Chatham Marketplace, a cooperative grocery in Pittsboro. LaGarde wanted them to take over a convenience store and gas station that anchored one end of a mill building.
The store had a grill, where the couple imagined turning out such local specialties as veal shanks served with mashed potatoes and spinach or crab cakes with duck-fat fries.
Opened in 2008 as the Saxapahaw General Store, it retains its convenience store roots while serving up fine dining.
LaGarde's pitch was so compelling that the deal was sealed after cocktails in a treehouse on the LaGardes' property.
"She's a storyteller, I think, at heart," Barney said. "She just happens to like to tell the story of Saxapahaw ... and rejuvenating a village from the ground up." Barney and Ratliff have gone on to partner with another couple to open The Eddy, a pub in another newly renovated section of the mill.
A new ballroom
The next part of LaGarde's vision is the Haw River Ballroom, which opens this month.
It's not just a live music venue with an adjacent room for baby-sitting, or an event space for weddings, or a coffee shop. It will also be home to the Saxapahaw Show Choir, which includes folks from ages 4 to 70 who sing selections from gospel to Lady Gaga. It will be practice space for a women's accordion group and a place to take barefoot ballroom dance lessons.
As LaGarde strolled through the ballroom, still under construction, she noted that the sound system was cleverly concealed inside a large old fabric-dying vat recovered from the mill. Just like the barn that drew her back to North Carolina, she loves the idea of restoring this old space and reusing items from the mill's past.
"I love old stuff," she said. "I love that there's a team trying to save it. It's such a special feeling to be with a whole team of people who believe in that."
Only in this case, it's not just an old mill being restored. It's a community.
