Asbestos Removal and Abatement in Concord, NC

Concord looks like a new city on paper. The median year built for its housing is 1998, and only about 27.5 percent of the stock predates 1980. Ranked against the older mill towns of the region that percentage sits in the middle of the pack, which is why Concord is often skipped in conversations about asbestos. That is an error of arithmetic, and it is worth walking through.

Run the multiplication, not the percentage

Concord has roughly 43,142 housing units. Take 27.5 percent of that and you get about 11,865 buildings put up before 1980. For comparison, Kannapolis next door is 44.2 percent pre-1980, a far higher share, and that share works out to about 11,226 units. Concord therefore has more pre-1980 residential buildings than Kannapolis does, in absolute terms, while carrying a percentage barely over half as large. Outside Charlotte itself, this is the second largest pool of pre-1980 housing in the wider metro.

Roughly 6.4 percent of Concord housing, about 2,763 units, was built before 1940. A percentage tells you what fraction of a city is old. A count tells you how many buildings a contractor might actually be asked to survey and abate. For anyone planning capital work across a portfolio of Concord properties, the count is the operative number.

Where the older buildings are concentrated

The old stock is not spread evenly across the city. It clusters in the historic core and the mill neighborhoods. The North Union Street Historic District alone holds about 150 contributing buildings, developed from roughly 1870 onward in Greek Revival and Late Victorian styles, and it includes six churches. It was listed on the National Register in April 1986. Three further districts cover the commercial and courthouse blocks: Union Street North and Cabarrus Avenue Commercial, South Union Street Courthouse and Commercial, and South Union Street.

The industrial history is just as concentrated. The Odell-Locke-Randolph Cotton Mill began in 1839 as the Concord Steam Cotton Factory, was making yarn and shirting by 1842, employed 70 people by 1850, passed to John Milton Odell in 1877, and was reorganized as Locke Mill in 1909 and Randolph Mill in 1939. It was listed on the National Register in March 1983 and now sits within Locke Mill Plaza. The Coleman-Franklin-Cannon Mill at 625 Main Street SW was built in 1897 by Warren C. Coleman and is recognized as the nation’s first African-American owned and operated textile mill; Coleman built close to 100 houses for his workers. It was listed on the National Register in 2015 and designated a local landmark in January 2018, and an adaptive reuse project there is converting it to 152 affordable housing units under NC DEQ environmental review that includes brownfield approval. Gibson Mill has already been converted into the retail destination now known as The Depot at Gibson Mill.

Three thresholds, and why they do not add up

North Carolina sets three quantity triggers for regulated asbestos-containing material: more than 160 square feet, more than 260 linear feet, or more than 35 cubic feet. These operate independently. A job does not become regulated because square footage plus linear footage plus volume together reach some combined level. Crossing any single one of the three brings the project inside the permit regime on its own. This matters on a Concord renovation because a modest amount of pipe insulation in a church basement can trigger the linear-foot category while the floor tile upstairs stays well under the square-foot category, and the correct answer is still that a permit is required.

One filing, because of the county line

Cabarrus County has no delegated local air program. Work in Concord goes to a single authority: the state asbestos removal permit, issued by the Health Hazards Control Unit at NC DHHS under the authority of G.S. 130A Article 19. A comparable project in Mecklenburg County would require a second, separate notification to the county air quality program. In Concord it does not. That is one form and one review, and it keeps a Concord schedule simpler than a Charlotte one, though the 10-working-day lead time before the scheduled start is identical.

Surveying a large inventory

Every one of those 11,865 pre-1980 buildings has to be surveyed by a North Carolina accredited asbestos inspector before it is renovated or demolished. Sampling cannot be inferred from a neighboring property or from the year on a tax card. For owners managing several Concord buildings at once, the practical approach is to sequence surveys ahead of the construction calendar rather than after a scope is already priced, because the results routinely change both the schedule and the filing.

We coordinate the survey, the containment and the disposal manifest as one package, described in more detail on our abatement services page. Owners who hold buildings on both sides of the county line often ask us to compare a Concord schedule against the requirements that apply inside Charlotte, since the paperwork differs even when the building does not. Concord is one of the communities we work in across Cabarrus County.

Call 704-393-0303 to talk through a Concord building, or send us the details. Our office is at 913 E. Catawba St., Belmont, NC 28012.