Gristmill town maintains original look with retail shops
Associated Press
AP: Tourists and shoppers walk down Main Street in Volant in this recent photograph.
A restaurateur’s $8,000 investment to refurbish a dilapidated gristmill gave a tiny town just south of the Mercer and Lawrence county line a second chance at economic growth.
“I didn’t even know what to do with it at first,” said Bill Kingery of Mercer, who bought the long-empty Volant mill in 1984. “I just thought I’d fix it up and it could be worth something. Then people just started coming, boom boom boom.”
What had turned into a retirement community after the mill shut down in 1960 has become a retail attraction for shoppers and tourists who crave small-town charm rather than bustling malls and streets with speed limits higher than 25.
The town of 152 people has about 100 buildings, and half are shops or restaurants along state Route 208, its main strip. But despite the retail influx, Volant still looks much as it did 100 years ago.
A hitching post sits in front of its bank and the main strip is lined with century-old Victorian homes. The only difference is many of them are now shops, rather than residences.
“We’ve encouraged that, but the borough council did not have any real control outside typical zoning issues,” said Morris Greene, 68, who went to Volant to retire 17 years ago and opened a bed-and-breakfast two years after the mill was refurbished. “People have kept the quaint look pretty much, and nobody’s abused it so far. We have a few more signs than we’d like, but that’s just part of it.”
Volant has relied on the mill for its economic health before.
Built in 1812, the mill was the magnet in rural western Pennsylvania. Families came to town to get their grain milled and patronized Volant’s shops and services. The New Castle-Franklin railway also brought business into town.
But Volant suffered when the economy collapsed during the Great Depression. The mill closed in 1960, the trains stopped running through town in 1975, and Volant became a small rural town of mostly older residents.
“The mill closing was kind of the demise of the town with the exception of the bank, the post office and the carpet company,” Greene said. “They pretty much kept the town alive as far as the name was concerned, but we didn’t even show up on many maps.”
Kingery, a native of New Wilmington, owns six restaurants in Mercer County and Ohio. In 1984, he lived on a farm in Volant and thought it a shame that the once-mighty mill had turned into an eyesore.
Its roof was missing, windows were broken and rain had long since ruined the original machinery still inside. The Volant Borough Council was about to have it condemned and demolished, and Kingery wanted to save it.
He hired a house moving company to shore it up because its main beams had cracked and the mill was “imploding on itself,” Kingery said. Most of the ruined machinery was destroyed and he replaced rotted floors with old pine planks.
“We left anything we could leave to give it the flavor of the mill,” he said. ” The grinding stone is still there.”
Kingery said he considered the refurbished mill a better match for a store than a restaurant, and within a few months it opened. Greene said a resident across the street from the mill who enjoyed blacksmithing as a hobby converted his garage into a brass and iron shop.
Then as older residents along the main strip either died or moved, retailers bought the homes and turned them into shops peddling gifts, gourmet candies, furniture and other specialties. Greene joined the trend when he opened the bed-and-breakfast.
Eugene Miller, 70, a constable who has lived in Volant for half a century, refused offers from retailers to buy his house along Route 208.
“I could have gotten big bucks for my property,” Miller said. “This used to be a quiet little community with older folks. But a lot of people sold their houses for big bucks and moved. I’ve got a nice place and I’ll keep it.”
Greene said Volant sees less constant traffic since the Prime Outlets at Grove City, 20 minutes from Volant, opened several years ago.
Published Monday, December 26, 1999
