SENECA, S.C. (AP) — The Oconee County village of Newry owes its existence to a former mayor of Charleston who opened a cotton fabric factory on a bend in the Little River in 1894.
Like other textile barons of the era, William Ashmead Courtenay and his partners erected affordable housing for their workers - and other infrastructure to support the village — carving community out of the wilderness in an effort to ensure a reliable work force.
When the mill closed in 1975 after eight decades, Newry lost its original reason for being — and virtually all of its jobs.
"The heart that had pumped life into the village for 80 years was dead," author Mike Hembree, a former Greenville News reporter, wrote in a 2003 history of the village.
To this day, Newry remains an isolated community on the northeastern edge of Seneca ? a place where people live, but don't work anymore.
There is no commercial activity of any consequence in Newry — not even a convenience store.
The only employer is the U.S. Postal Service, and it needs just one worker to keep the window of the tiny post office open for two hours a day.
This may soon change, however, now that an entrepreneur with business ties to China has begun redeveloping an old school property along Newry Road with plans to launch an industrial coatings factory and hire more than 30 people over time.
County officials hope the arrival of U.S. Building Innovations Inc. will spark additional commercial activity - maybe even lead to redevelopment of the old mill, which still stands at the edge of the village, an imposing ghost of brick and timber, vines growing on its walls and tower.
China connection
Erin Roussey, the founder of Building Innovations, grew up in Florida and South Carolina and lived in Seneca in the 1970s.
After finishing high school in North Charleston, he joined the Marine Corps, serving as an aircraft power plant mechanic.
Later, he constructed steel buildings and ran a business that provided equipment for cat shows.
Roussey enrolled in chiropractic school in Georgia at age 33, but never finished.
Later, he worked as a chef at restaurants in Florida, including the well-known Blue Heaven in Key West.
He also ran a cigar shop in Key West called Paradise Cigars before moving it to Clemson.
When the Great Recession hit in 2008, Roussey found it hard to make a living selling cigars, so he left to teach English in China.
He taught in Chengdu, where he met his wife, Kun.
Later, he taught in Chongqing, an industrial center along the Yangtze River with a population of more than 30 million. Ford Motor Co. is among the companies with factories in Chongqing.
In Chongqing, the owner of a business that distributes industrial products, Chongqing Dishan Technology Co. Ltd., asked Roussey to help him search abroad for a better source for one of the products he was distributing, a coating that repels water.
Roussey threw himself into the world of industrial coatings and found a better product for the Chinese company. He was in China when he founded U.S. Building Innovations in 2011 to sell coatings.
Currently, the company's core business is re-selling a water-repelling coating made by another U.S. company to Dishan Technology, which in turns sells it to manufacturers of glass shower cabinets and other customers in China.
The U.S. Building Innovations work force at the moment consists of Roussey, his wife, a market consultant in China and a materials scientist from North Carolina. Roussey, 49, runs the business from his house in Newry.
Helen Zhong, Dishan Technology's general manager, said the coating Roussey found is the best in the world for her company's purposes, as far as she knows, and she has sampled coatings around the globe. It makes glass easy to clean and resistant to mold and mildew, besides having other desirable qualities, she said.
Zhong worked with Roussey to develop an even better water-repelling coating that U.S. Building Innovations controls and that her company is getting ready to market in China. She was in Newry recently to meet with Roussey.
Zhong also wants Roussey to figure out how to apply the coating to acrylic bathtubs, which would open up a whole new market.
Roussey relocated from China to the United States after buying his house in Newry in 2013. It used to be the home of the Newry mill's last director of human resources.
Roussey said a business based in the United States makes more of an impression on the Chinese.
"They trust our products more," he said. "And as a foreigner, it's very difficult to set up companies in China. There's very few places that a foreigner can own more than a 49 percent interest in a business."
Roussey said he noticed the former school property as he drove by it every day. The site is a half mile from his house.
He found it a good opportunity for redevelopment "and also a chance to try to clean up our neighborhood a little bit."
Roussey is building a 5,000-square-foot building atop the former school's concrete pad and hopes U.S. Building Innovations can launch operations at the site this summer.
He's not sure how many of Newry's residents he can employ, but he figures his business can "bring more people and attract some more attention to our little village and hopefully have some positive effect."
He's developing the company with the help of Trey Simendinger, a materials scientist with a doctorate from North Carolina State University.
Simendinger operates a small business that makes specialty coatings at a factory and lab near Wilmington, North Carolina.
Simendinger said he came to know Roussey while working with him to develop a better water-repelling coating and eventually decided to be part of the team at U.S. Building Innovations.
Simendinger said he'll focus on product development, while Roussey concentrates on sales and managing the product line.
"Erin, he's good at sales," Simendinger said. "He knows this market we're going after very, very well. He's been working at it for a while."
Simendinger said he prefers to "stay hidden in my lab and make things and develop things."
Potential in Newry
Newry was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as an "outstanding example of a turn-of-the-century South Carolina textile mill village."
The U.S. Census Bureau found 172 residents in the village in 2010. It counted 108 housing units, 83 of them occupied, and 25 of those rented.
Longtime residents remember a time when nearly everybody in Newry worked at the mill and bought groceries at the company store. Villagers knew it was time to report to work when a bell rang out from the mill tower.
Back then, "I could tell you everybody in every house," recalled 83-year-old John Taylor, who's lived in Newry since 1945 and worked in the mill for more than a decade during the 1950s and 60s. "I could tell you how many kids they had and all of their names. Now, I can't tell you my next door neighbor."
The son of a sharecropper, Taylor went to work in the mill when he was 19. Framed on his garage wall is a 55-year-old weekly paycheck from the mill for $38.71.
Taylor said he's happy to see the arrival of U.S. Building Innovations because, "We need something to go on down here."
Carolyn Welborn, Newry's acting postmaster, said she also thinks the new company will be good for the village.
"More people might want to move in here," she said. "They've got some empty houses for sale. It may build the community back up" and boost membership at Newry's two churches.
Oconee County Council Chairman Paul Cain said he looks forward to the day when U.S. Building Innovations exports its products all over the world from Newry.
At the very least, he said, the new company should bring some positive attention to the village he represents.
"Many people may drive through Oconee County and not realize that Newry exists," said Cain, a Seneca lawyer. "But with a new business opening, it brings attention to Newry. It's positive press for Newry, so it's a benefit even if it's only from a positive press standpoint. It makes people aware."
Cain said he'd like to see Newry's mill redeveloped as other former textile mills have been around the Upstate and South Carolina.
"I would love to see apartments or condos or something go there," he said. "I would hate to see it become further and further dilapidated and eventually have to be torn down, or fall down."
Richard Blackwell, Oconee County's economic development director, said U.S. Building Innovations has five years to spend at least $1 million on its Newry facility and create at least 31 jobs under a property tax abatement deal it struck with County Council.
Blackwell said he hopes the company becomes a "shot of caffeine into the blood system of that area of Oconee County."
Newry, he noted, is less than six miles from where a developer is building a new shopping center with a theater and hotel at the intersection of U.S. 123 and State 93 in Seneca, just across the Seneca River bridge from Clemson. Just beyond that is Clemson University, with more than 21,000 students.
"We hope that the trend continues in the Newry area of people seeing its potential because it does have potential," Blackwell said.
___
Information from: The Greenville News, http://www.greenvillenews.com