Just outside of the heart of downtown Johnson City, Tennessee, sits the historic Model Mill. Once used to process flour, the mill will be home to several businesses, including the offices of Summers-Taylor, the owner of the refurbished building, an artisan bakery and a boutique hotel.
On the second floor will sit the offices of the ETSU National Alumni Association and University Advancement, alongside a new art gallery for the university. Finally, after four years of renovation, a project prolonged by a 2016 fire that damaged the building, the Model Mill sets its sights on opening in the near future.
The Mill project will help realize a major milestone in Johnson City’s downtown revitalization. Yet as the pandemic rages on, leaving thousands of East Tennesseeans unemployed and struggling to pay their rent, many wonder how the project will advance and whether the university will continue to fund the project.
It is a difficult question with no clear cut answers. Breathing life back into the dilapidated structure in the middle of town is an unquestionable positive for our community. Unlike other construction projects taken on by the university, the Model Mill is near completion and construction is under the command of an outside agency. It is hard to fault the university in this specific instance for wanting to see the project through to completion.
However, as the university signals toward budget cuts to various departments, stagnant wages for campus workers and halted construction on other major projects, the budgetary priorities of ETSU must be called into question. Over the next few years, as we face health and economic crises, the university will be forced to reckon with the difficult question of what matters most to them.
Continued funding to the Model Mill construction should be the exception, not the rule, of ETSU’s future financial endeavours. In this time of crisis, it is paramount that the university tends to its own by ensuring that all employees are able to make it through the tough road ahead.
