US Senator Kay Hagan Visits STARworks

North Carolina's own Kay Hagan took time this week to come to STARworks Center for Creative Enterprise. She spoke to the STARworks business owners and toured our facilities including the garden, bio diesel factory, hot shop, ceramics, Comfort South and Wet Dog Glass.

Here Eddie Bernard shows Senator Hagan the properties of molten glass in our Hot Shop.

Nancy explains the STARworks Garden while Dr. David Jones, Central Park NC Chairman, and Anne Pärtna, garden coordinator, look on.

Senator Hagan checks out one of the massive Sunflowers growing in our garden. The sunflowers were planted by Star Elementary first graders in the spring.

We are grateful that Senator Hagan could find time to visit STARworks and see the cool things going on here in the center of our state. If you would like to tour our facility, we offer tours on the first and third fridays of each month at 1pm. Tours are free of charge and last about an hour. Tours can be scheduled for groups at any time by calling our office at (910) 428-9001.

And the walls come tumbling down

With help from Frank Harmon Architects our demolition plans are coming along. Architect Will Lambeth(in white) and Tim Martin, a structural engineer joined me last week for a grand tour of our beloved building. Actually we probably shouldn't call it a tour, it was pretty much a full inspection with all ares that are affected by the demolition measured to the fraction of an inch. Will had a sweet Bosch laser tape measure, I was jealous. We spent time on the roof, in the basement and all points in between.By the end of the day Tim had a comprehensive sketch as seen below. The numbers were tiny but readable and he has been plugging them in the computer this week and the planning meeting is tomorrow in Raleigh. We will be discussing the design of the courtyard area that the demolition will create, and doors and windows to plug the openings also exposed by the demolition. Our hope is to bring some natural light into our currently unlit interiors. The demolition will create a 12,000 square foot courtyard out of what is currently a rapidly deteriorating center section of the building. In the 50's and 60's this area was the dye house of the mill. In 1976 a new dye house was built, and the area changed to house the boarding operation. Wet Dog Glass and the STARworks Glass Lab now occupy the new dye house area. Watch here for updates on the ongoing rebirth of the STARworks building!