Seth McDowell Architect, pllc

Located on 51 acres in Albemarle County and built in 1944, the Scottsville Tire Plant was built by the Defense Plant Corporation to help the United States’ war effort. It was designed to provide tire fabric and produced rayon tire cord required in heavy duty tires. Since then, the plant has benefited from periodic expansion and modernization programs including the 1968 enlargement of the weaving department and air conditioning of the entire plant. In 1972 the plant began production for The People’s Republic of China and the costumer list expanded to include clients on five continents. In 2002 the plant was sold to the Hyosung America,inc which employed about 100 workers until its close in 2009.

The Town of Scottsville commissioned Seth McDowell (mcdowellespinosa architects and University of Virginia’s School of Architecture) to envision how the 185,000 square feet of unused manufacturing space and adjoining 61 acres can be transformed into a community asset—sparking smart, healthy development for the town. The design team translated data from a market study by Arnett Muldrow & Associates, Ltd. and imagined programs and spatial possibilities for inhabiting the property in the future.

The design scheme looks at adapting the abandoned plant with four programmatic anchors: Education, Healthcare, Production, and Senior Housing. Each of these anchor programs is positioned at strategic perimeter locations around the plant, giving them access to natural light. Connecting these anchors is a flexible, public space called “The Gallery” that cuts through the center of the plant. The Gallery is envisioned as a “civic living room” for the town. Natural light from above is introduced to the large, mat building with the introduction of a saw-tooth roof profile that spreads northern light throughout the public space and senior housing. New entrances are designed to allow public access on three sides of the facility.

In addition to adaptive reuse of the tire plant, the design team developed an affordable housing strategy for the northern portion of the site, an area that is higher than the floodplain. This scheme looks at providing 75 single family houses that range from 800sf to 1600sf in size—a price point and density suggested by the market study. The housing is positioned on the site to be a hinge between the town’s grid and the factory’s orientation. This allows one block of housing to frame views to the on-site pond and another block of housing to frame views to the town and James River.

A key principle in this design proposal is incremental development. The logic of development through 4 anchor programs and modular housing blocks is that the construction could occur in phases over longer periods of time. This makes the development feasible for a collection of smaller stakeholders rather than one single entity.

The town is now looking to foster partnerships with potential investors and developers capable of moving the project forward.