Preservation North Carolina

Descendants visit Raleigh's Crabtree Jones House before it's moved

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:41:40 +0000

RALEIGH - Almost 100 near and not-so-near relatives who can trace their roots to 18th-century Raleigh landowner Nathaniel "Crabtree" Jones Jr. had what likely was their last chance to walk in and around their ancestor's hilltop home off Wake Forest Road on Sunday.

By late summer, if all goes as planned, the 3,448-square-foot house will be 500 feet away on a new foundation on Hilmer Drive and will become someone's home.

Sunday, however, the two-story house with its three brick chimneys still sat amid large oaks and rambling hedges at the end of an unpaved drive off Wake Forest Road just inside the I-440 Beltline.

On the lawn, Kimbrough Jones of Raleigh said he had lived in the house briefly after getting out of the military in the early 1970s. His parents had moved into the house several years before, taking it over from another Jones relative.

"I was never interested in genealogy," Jones said, and he chuckled as he recalled how as a boy, visiting the house with his parents, he would flee family discussions to sit in the car and listen to rock music on the radio.

Jones and his wife, Evelyn, said their son, Bryan Jones, is the last to bear the family name.

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�(The Raleigh News & Observer, 5/20/13)

Hurricane-Battered Church still in need of repairs

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:00:45 +0000

Hurricane Isabel ravaged the East Coast nearly a decade ago, and in Edenton, N.C., its effects are still seen at the Kadesh African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Spanning an entire block on East Gale Street, the church complex sustained such significant damage from the 2003 storm that it was deemed unsafe for parishioners to continue worshiping there.

"Now it's just kind of sitting there, an empty shell," says Sam Dixon, a local attorney and an adviser to the National Trust who has long been rallying for the restoration of the church.

Congregants moved to another venue across town, but as Dixon says, "They're ready to go home."

The Gothic Revival church has a long history in Edenton (pop. 5,000). It was built in 1897 by Hannibal Badham Sr., who himself was a member of the church. For generations, the Gothic Revival church complex was the center of religious and social life in Edenton's African-American community.

(From PreservationNation Blog, 5/13/13)

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In North Carolina, a Historic Textile Mill Undergoes Conversion

Wed, 08 May 2013 14:12:26 +0000

After a complicated 20-year effort to save a redbrick mill in North Carolina that was once considered the largest in the world for textiles and that played a significant role in the South's textile history, the plant is finally moving toward a new life as a multiuse complex.

The Loray Mill, which for decades produced fabric for car tires, last month began a $40 million conversion project that will create 190 apartments in its six stories, as well as several floors of shops and restaurants. The mill, which was the site of an famous labor strike in the 1920s, is in the city of Gastonia, a former industrial hub outside of Charlotte.

To the delight of preservationists, the development team of JBS Ventures, of Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., and Camden Management Partners, of Atlanta, will retain much of the original 600,000-square-feet structure of the complex. This first phase of the redevelopment will reinvent about 450,000 square feet of the mill, including the main section, which dates to 1902.

Gastonia officials, too, say there's a lot to like about a project that continues decades of effort to remake a longtime industrial center as a bedroom community of Charlotte, which is just 30 minutes away. At the very least, they say that a redeveloped Loray (pronounced LOW-ray) could revitalize its immediate neighborhood, whose sidewalk-lined blocks once bustled with mill workers but have long since grown quiet. The mill is on the west side of town in a primarily residential area where boarded-up buildings dot the main commercial drag.

"When you put this many apartments and businesses in an area where there's been so much disinvestment, it's enough to create its own weather," said Jack Kiser, Gastonia's senior executive for special projects. "It will have a catalytic effect."

In many ways, the project, which is to be completed in 2014, is lucky even to be under way. Dozens of other mills, which went up in the central part of the state around the turn of the last century, as textile businesses relocated to North Carolina from New England, have fallen into ruin or been razed.

Loray Mill has seen several development proposals come and go since 1994, when Firestone, which had owned it since the Great Depression, shut the mill down and left for a more modern plant in a nearby community. Firestone has, however, continued some operations in a smaller building toward the rear of the property.

An early condo plan for the mill failed, and in the late 1990s, Firestone was poised to demolish the building, which features a 140-foot tower that is the tallest in Gastonia. But the company ultimately donated it to Preservation North Carolina, a nonprofit group, which paid its power bills and hired security guards while marketing the property, according to Myrick Howard, president of the preservation group.

"This was by far the most time-consuming project I have ever worked on," added Mr. Howard, who estimated his group had helped save 700 buildings across the state since the 1970s.

In 2003, the current developers approached Preservation North Carolina about buying the property, with its arched windows and open floors lined with columns, but the team struggled to line up financing. Then, the recession hit, sapping public financing for the project and derailing efforts once again.

Today, Berkadia, a lender, is providing a $22 million loan backed by the Federal Housing Administration. Most of the balance is coming from two investors: Chevron, through federal preservation tax credits, and the health care provider Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which is taking advantage of state tax credits that encourage mill conversions.

The developers are also supplying equity, said Billy Hughes, a JBS principal, though he declined to specify the amount. The sale price of the mill was $660,000.

While the building's industrial legacy may be part of its draw, it has also stoked some local opposition. In 1929, Loray was the site of a violent labor strike that lasted for months and resulted in two deaths, including that of Orville Aderholt, Gastonia's police chief, and Ella Mae Wiggins, a union organizer and protest singer.

(The New York Times, 5/3/13)

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County opposes incentives for McPherson Hospital project

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:59:54 +0000

DURHAM - County Commissioners on Monday will mull a hotel developer's request for $1 million in incentives from their government to get a long-delayed project at the corner of West Main, West Morgan and Watts streets off the ground.

But County Manager Mike Ruffin is recommending that commissioners turn down the request from the Concord Hospital Enterprises Co.

Ruffin said Concord's planned hotel isn't close enough to the Durham Convention Center and isn't saving enough of the former McPherson Hospital to be worth the county's money.

"This one, I think, [has] just a very weak argument for us to incentivize," Ruffin said, drawing an unfavorable comparison to a pair of inside-the-downtown-loop hotel projects that last year received county pledges of nearly $2.7 million in tax give-backs.

A parallel $1 million incentive request from Concord to the city government is also pending.

City Manager Tom Bonfield said the City Council, after discussing the matter in closed session, has made the company an offer. Further conversations are on hold pending the outcome of the county's deliberations.

Concord's project sits on the edge of the Trinity Park neighborhood and has been in the works since the mid-2000s. It's stalled repeatedly, first because of objections to the initial plan from some Trinity Park residents, and later because of the 2008 real-estate crash.

The project has attracted support from local preservationists because of the McPherson Hospital tie.

The building that remains has stood on the site since 1926. Contractors before the recession hit removed additions that dated from the 1940s and the 1960s.

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(The Herald-Sun, 5/4/13)

Pepper Building

Thu, 02 May 2013 16:06:47 +0000

Winston-Salem - When the Davis McCollum Department Store first opened its doors in late October 1928, more than three thousand people crowded the streets at Fourth and Liberty.

"Everybody had heard about this fabulous new place and they just wanted to see it," said Fam Brownlee, a local historian. "Everything upstairs was really upscale, it was aimed at the high end, but they put a lot of emphasis on the basement, the bargain basement. And it had terrific prospects. Who wouldn't have wanted to invest in it, with everything booming? But it didn't last very long."

Just a year after that grand opening, the stock market crashed, and the writing was on the wall. The store changed hands in 1929, but by 1932 the new company couldn't make its lease payments, and landowner Thomas Pepper took possession of the building.

Since then, the Pepper Building has been home to lots of businesses -- for a while in the 1940s a furniture store occupied four of its six floors. But by 1953, that was gone, and it was mostly offices. The last tenant - the Winston-Salem Transit Authority - moved out in 2000, and the grand old building in the sweet spot for downtown revitalization sat empty again.

For years the Pepper Building has been at the center of downtown Winston-Salem revitalization plans, some of which called for its demolition. Now a $5 million renovation is in the works to turn the city's first department store into apartments and commercial space. The new owners said they have signed a lease with a Brazilian steakhouse company for the first floor and basement. And on the five floors above, there will be a total of 54 apartments.

(WFDD, 5/2/13)

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Scaffolding comes down, revealing restoration of historic Raleigh building

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:32:22 +0000

RALEIGH - Like someone unwrapping a gift, workers on Tuesday dismantled the scaffolding that has shrouded two downtown buildings since last fall, revealing restored fa�ades that date to the early 20th century.

The building at 200 S. Salisbury St. and its smaller adjoining neighbor at 105 W. Hargett had been covered in a stucco skin that was applied in the early 1970s when the old buildings had fallen out of fashion. The larger building's restored roofline cornice and tall windows capped in stone are visible now for the first time in more than 40 years.

The scaffolding remains around the ground floor, where there's more work to be done.

The building's owner, James A. Goodnight, hopes to lease the building's ground floor to a restaurant, with office tenants upstairs. Like many people in Raleigh, Goodnight had no idea what was under the building's stucco fa�ade until someone suggest he take a look.

(Raleigh News & Observer, 5/1/13)

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Downtown apartments, condos, featured on home tour

Wed, 01 May 2013 12:52:38 +0000

DURHAM - Looking down at the city from the seventh-story patio of the penthouse apartment in a Main Street building downtown, Amanda Mancuso could see the now-vacant cigarette factory where her mother once worked.

Mancuso, a Raleigh resident who said she was born and raised in Durham, said she also worked as a summer intern at the former Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. factory on the corner of Duke and Main streets.

She took in the view as part of the 17th Annual Old Durham Home Tour, which included stops at 11 downtown apartments and condos. The tour is held as a fundraiser for Preservation Durham, an organization that promotes the restoration of historic homes and commercial properties. It was held on Saturday and continues Sunday.

Wendy Hillis, Preservation Durham's executive director, said the home tour has been held downtown three times, the last time in 2005. She said it was held downtown this year because there have been a lot of changes.

"I love downtown and I'm so excited that it's being revitalized," said Mancuso. She had watched downtown's revitalization from the outside, and now wanted to see it from the inside as well.

She could see the former cigarette factory from the penthouse of what's known as the Snow Building. According to Preservation Durham, the building at 331 W. Main Street was built as an office building in 1930.

(Durham Herald Sun, 4/27/13)

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The case for building on a city's historic assets

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:00:38 +0000

t's ridiculously easy to think about the benefits of historic preservation in immensely walkable Providence, Rhode Island. I'm not sure I've seen a better collection of downtown historic architecture this side of New Orleans. Elsewhere there are fine smaller historic downtowns, of course, such as in Annapolis, and wonderful urban historic districts (frequently close to downtowns) such as Old Salem in North Carolina and Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. But in Providence, it's the downtown itself that practically oozes with dignified charm.

I have a feeling that, as was the case with many fine older buildings in my hometown, Providence's splendid architectural legacy remains intact because, when people were tearing down historic properties a few decades ago and putting up newer but mediocre buildings in their places, Providence's economy simply couldn't support the new stuff. So the splendid older buildings remain today, available to be given new life by creative-class businesses.

Providence may be a particularly fine example, but it is hardly the only city with underutilized historic assets that could become a cornerstone of future economic development. Information has largely replaced manufacturing as America's economic engine, and young, talented workers today are seeking walkable districts with character in which to work and live. (Just ask suburban Dublin, Ohio about that.) From Pasadena to Portland, from Paducah to Providence, saving and sprucing up these assets is the way to go.

(Switchboard, the NRDC blog, 4/29/13)

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New apartments on the way

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:13:39 +0000

May 1 will be a red-letter day for two historic redevelopment projects on the verge of providing new housing in Gastonia.

Just a couple of years ago, both the former Gaston Memorial Hospital on Highland Street, and the Armstrong Apartments at Marietta Street and Second Avenue downtown, were staring down a wrecking ball. The historic buildings had been vacant for years and had deteriorated beyond the apparent point of rescue.

Their restoration has proven to be a coup. And with both ready for occupancy in a little more than a week, city leaders and developers are taking note of what's been achieved.

"For me, it's a very fulfilling thing," said Blackpine Development President Dewey Anderson, whose firm handled the Armstrong Apartments overhaul.

Officials say interest from prospective tenants has been rampant, and applications are now being accepted. The old hospital, now known as the Highland Memorial Apartments, will be rented at affordable housing rates to seniors and people with severe disabilities.

The Armstrong Apartments, in contrast, will be rented at market rates.

The work was achieved through several complex layers of financing. Gastonia secured a $950,000 grant through the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program, then loaned $300,000 of it to the Highland apartments project, and $650,000 to the Armstrong venture. The city also loaned the Highland project another $300,000 in program income from a former NSP grant it had received.

(The Gaston Gazette, 4/22/13)

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UNCG IAR team takes 1st place at historic Woodlawn

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:11:24 +0000

Historic Woodlawn, on land gifted by George Washington, was the first site operated by the prestigious National Trust. The MADE: in America Student Design Project is the first modern showcase for the storied home near Mount Vernon.

Another first? When the inaugural winners of this design competition were announced April 18, the UNCG Interior Architecture team came in First Place.

The All American House is a collaboration between MADE: in America and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

This unique showcase is "a reinterpretation of Woodlawn for a 21st century family," explained Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll, professor of interior architecture at UNCG.

A team of UNCG Interior Architecture students led by Leimenstoll were invited to create a design for six of the rooms. Sixteen UNCG students participated last fall, creating "narratives" and designs and making their presentation at the end of the semester. Seven have continued through this semester, bringing it to fruition this week.

(UNCG Now, 4/19/13)

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