For decades, Dan River Mills executives went to work in a two-story brick building in the Schoolfield neighborhood of Danville, where they could look out their windows and oversee mill operations and the company town. Today, those windows look out over a drastically different view.
The Schoolfield neighborhood has transformed from a mill site into a historic district and the home of the Caesars Virginia casino resort. And the company office building is transforming with it.
The same stone steps and double doors that led mill executives into their workplace every day will soon lead visitors into the lobby of the Laurel Hotel, the city’s newest boutique lodging option.
Renovations are wrapping up on the 123-year-old building, which is slated to open in February with 36 rooms, each with its own unique layout.
A sister property to the Bee and Holbrook hotels, which are also in renovated historic buildings, the Laurel will be the first hotel in the collection to be located in a former Dan River Mills building.
The hotel’s art and decor will include references to the building’s mill history, encouraging guests to connect with the historical significance of the space, said Schoolfield historian Ina Dixon, who helped with the interior design of the hotel.
“We want to make the history cohesive with the hotel,” Dixon said. “It’s not a full museum, but we wanted pieces that will speak to the corporate history.”
This rehabilitation project is part of a larger preservation effort in the Schoolfield neighborhood, Dixon said.
At the same time, the Laurel will expand the offerings of the established Bee and Holbrook properties as lodging demand and visitation in Danville increase.
The three boutique hotels together will be labeled the Danville Hotel Collection, said Madison Eades, area general manager of the collection.
“The tourism market overall is growing so significantly, and so many people who never saw Danville as a destination on the map are coming for the first time,” Eades said. “Hotel products in the area need to be able to keep up with what all different types of tourists are looking for.”
A new addition to an old story
Built in 1903, the company office building served as a headquarters for Dan River Mills executives for over 100 years until the mill’s closure in 2006. Now, it’s one of the few mill buildings left in Schoolfield.
Dan River Mills was the largest textile firm in the South for many decades, employing about 14,000 people in Danville. When it closed, the city was plunged into a period of economic distress that it has been working to bounce back from.
Part of that work has included rehabilitating and redeveloping historic buildings — including former mill buildings — for new uses.
Ed Walker, a Roanoke developer who specializes in adaptive reuse and is also Dixon’s husband, bought the Dan River company office building and spearheaded the hotel project. Walker also owns both the Bee and Holbrook hotels.
In 2019, Walker and Dixon also bought a building across the street, the Schoolfield Museum and Preservation Foundation, which had closed for financial reasons.
“We said we would store all of their stuff, all the archives, all the materials from the museum … with the understanding that some day it would be put together as an exhibit or displayed in the renovated buildings within Schoolfield,” Dixon said.
The Laurel, as a former office building, will be able to tell the corporate history of Dan River, she said.
“Executives usually leave a lot of paperwork behind and mill workers do not,” Dixon said. “We were able to tell that story from that perspective and have a lot of fun with it.”
The first floor of the hotel will showcase Dan River’s story and background, with a streamlined timeline of the company history, she said.
“We want to make sure that when people come into the building they know that it’s one, not part of Caesars, and two, that it had a history before it was a hotel,” she said.
Dixon, along with interior designers and consultants, especially wanted to reference patterns and fabrics from the bedsheets that Dan River Mills produced, since the purpose of a hotel is an overnight stay, she said.
“People are sleeping, that’s what they’re doing there,” she said. “The patterns of the carpet, the matting of the photos that we have, all of them derive from what we have in the [Dan River Museum] collection.”
Some of the company’s ads also conveyed the idea that travelers could pack as much as they wanted in their suitcases, because Dan River fabrics didn’t wrinkle. That sentiment also fits well with the hospitality and travel themes of a hotel, Dixon said.
“We merged that idea with hospitality and sophistication,” she said. “It’ll showcase something offsite from Caesars but at the same level of luxury and hospitality.”
Dan River was a massive figure in the city’s history, but especially in the history of the Schoolfield neighborhood, Dixon said.
A few local historians have been responsible for preserving the neighborhood’s history through the years, as Dan River closed, the finishing plant was demolished and the casino was built. Dixon said the rehabilitation of the Laurel is a continuation of the work of these folks: Dana and Barry Reagan, Judy Edmonds, Cheryl and Lee Hall, Gary Grant, Clara Fountain, Randy Hedrick and Gary Knick.
“It’s very important that we continue the work they did and integrate it into the redevelopment at every opportunity,” Dixon said.
She was part of the work to get Schoolfield added to the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.
The neighborhood is already “a wonderful place,” she said, with a great community, a vibrant elementary school and a lot of beloved establishments like the Schoolfield Restaurant and Foxglove Clothing.
“That’s been organic,” she said. “That hasn’t happened because Ed and I started anything there. The Laurel will be great because it will highlight the people and community that already make Schoolfield amazing.”
Historic features, modern function
Restoring a building as old as the Dan River Company Office takes a lot of intentionality and meticulous work, said Chris Taylor, superintendent for Blair Construction, the general contractor for the project.
Because the construction is being done with the use of historic tax credits, original features must be repaired when possible. If repair isn’t possible due to deterioration, all doorways, windows and even the bricks and mortar must match the historic features in material, design, color and texture, according to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
Those stipulations create unique challenges, Taylor said.
“A lot of it is recreating these 100-year-old products that you can’t buy anymore,” he said. “So many things have to look original, but work like they’re brand new. It can be hard to find vendors to create things that look like the original product.”
For example, new wainscoting, or decorative wall paneling, on the first floor of the Laurel was custom-made in a mill in Salem to match its former look, Taylor said.
The entire foundation of the building was stabilized at the beginning of the project, Taylor said. Construction teams lowered the foundation 5 feet and lowered the floors 3 feet so that rooms could be placed in the basement of the building.
The original elevator shaft has been preserved and is one of the historic features of the property. The windows are also original and were taken out of their panes, refurbished and reinstalled.
“These buildings don’t happen magically,” Dixon said. “Their history is important, but they are also a beast to take care of. … There’s a lot of remediation and effort put in. Now, it’s got a great roof, a great foundation, and another 100 good years ahead of it.”
Eades said the total project cost was over $15 million, though she was unable to share an exact figure.
The other two properties in the Danville Hotel Collection are also in historic buildings.
The Bee Hotel is in the former Danville Register & Bee newsroom. The Holbrook Hotel is in a former doctor’s building.
All three properties are located along the same road, which runs from Danville’s River District to the Old West End and Holbrook-Ross historic district, to the Schoolfield neighborhood.
“Ed would say it’s a string of pearls,” Dixon said. “From West Main Street to Main Street to North Main Street, Danville is just one historic neighborhood after another. [The Laurel] will continue that tradition of highlighting some of the loveliest parts of Danville.”
Bringing Dan River’s history into the hotel collection will be meaningful to locals and guests alike, Eades said.
“Dan River represented the livelihoods of thousands of people in the region,” Eades said. “To see the Schoolfield neighborhood come back to life has been really exciting. It’s so important for people to be able to drive by and see that these aren’t just empty buildings anymore.”
Meeting increasing lodging demand
The Danville-Pittsylvania County region was the fastest-growing tourism destination in Virginia in 2024, according to data from the Virginia Tourism Company that was released in the fall.
Visitor spending across the two localities was over $275 million in 2024, a 23.5% increase from the year before. Tourism also supported over 2,200 local jobs and brought in over $11 million in local tax revenue in Danville and Pittsylvania, according to VTC.
Eades said she’s seen tourism and visitation increase dramatically since she began working at the Bee Hotel in 2022.
“Every little corner of Danville is growing,” she said.
Lodging demand for all kinds of stays — in boutique and chain hotels alike — is continuing to increase in the city, she said. While boutique hotels draw a niche type of traveler who is usually interested in a luxury and upscale experience, “there are guests for every single type of hotel in this town,” Eades said.
There are around 1,200 hotel rooms in Danville today, according to information provided by Lisa Meriwether, Danville’s tourism director.
Since 2020, the Bee Hotel, Holbrook Hotel and Caesars Virginia hotel have opened, adding over 400 rooms to Danville’s lodging supply.
“We all have to work together to be able to accommodate everybody coming, whether that’s for business, leisure, construction or tourism,” Eades said. “I think there’s a piece of the pie for everyone. It might be new for Danville, but it’s pretty typical when you look at other towns to see so many different types of hotel offerings.”
Even though the Laurel will be immediately adjacent to the Caesars Virginia resort, which has a hotel attached, Eades said she doesn’t anticipate competition because the properties are so different.
The two companies also have a good relationship, she said, and Caesars often sends guests or VIPs to the Bee and Holbrooks for stays during high-demand dates.
When the 36 rooms at the Laurel come online, the Danville Hotel Collection will have a total of 129 rooms across all three properties.
“The umbrella of the Danville Hotel Collection will tie all the properties together, and you can expect the same excellent hospitality and service across the collection, but each one has their own unique characteristics, offering and amenities,” she said.
The Laurel is expected to open by the middle of February, though no official date has been announced.
