Also let’s say hello to the Uptown paper of record’s sudden interest in the ongoing Mecklenburg Historical Commission scandal. The commission has been throwing money around like crazy in recent years. Today we learn they are plowing another $30,000 into a house that will likely never be sold for more than $275,000.
As we noted back in September 2005:
The commission bought the property, located in the middle of a 190-unit townhome development, for $100,000 in September 2002. The graceful, small home – the commission called it “an excellent example of a pyramidal cottage” – had a tax value of $255,000, primarily due to the large lot it sat upon. The commission then hired Copeland Architects to revamp the 2,900 square foot home with plans of reselling it.
Reselling properties is supposed to help refill the commission’s publicly-supported revolving fund, which voters funded to the tune of $7.5 million worth of bonds in 1999, making it one of largest such historic preservation funds in the country.
Right away, however, the Grier Farm project hit snags. Bids for the work the commission wanted done came in with the lowest bid $78,000 over budget. So in October 2003 the commission simply increased the renovation budget by 75 percent from $227,000 to $300,000 and hired D.E. Brown construction to do $286,000 worth of work on the house.
Along the way the commission won a buffer/access easement from townhome developer Portrait Homes and got the city council to rezone the parcel. When the renovations were completed in 2004 the commission estimated that it had put some $450,000 in the property, so it opted to put the house on the market for $500,000.
After several months of inactivity it was left to realtor Catherine Browning of First Charlotte Properties to explain to the commission that the price was too high for a house that sits surrounded by townhomes valued at less than half of the $500,000 asking price. Townhomes in the development start at $130,000 and single-family homes at around $180,000.
The upshot of all this spending and no resales is that the commission is down to $400,000 in its fund. If history (!?) is any guide, there will soon be a push from Uptown to stuff yet more money into the fund.
Good money after bad. Charlotte is very good at that.
