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The project’s developers at Envolve Communities LLC intend to display some historic documents, photos and perhaps furnishings from the factory’s past, but it’s unclear whether they’ll address slavery or race, said Ashley Stoddart, community manager for The Mill at Prattville.

Prattville’s namesake, Daniel Pratt, became Alabama’s first major industrialist against this backdrop, moving South from New Hampshire and starting a business to produce gins several years later.

Slavery was always part of the operation, according to “Daniel Pratt of Prattville: A Northern Industrialist and a Southern Town,” a definitive history written by Curt John Evans.

Bill Gillespie Jr., 64, is both a lifelong resident of Prattville and the mayor, but it took a Discovery Television show that aired a few years ago called “Mysteries of the Abandoned” for him to grasp the link between the gin factory and slavery, which the show laid out using video of the abandoned plant.

The Prattville mayor is among those who believe the story of the factory needs to be told, even if it’s tricky politically.