NC Cultural Resources Department has plans for Heck-Andrews House
Officials with the state Department of Cultural Resources have plans for the historic Heck-Andrews House on North Blount Street, but they admit they haven’t done a good job of publicizing them.
The department wants to turn the 145-year-old home into an extension of the nearby Executive Mansion, where state officials can host special meetings and woo corporate executives. Cultural Resources Secretary Susan Kluttz says the house would help the state create jobs by providing a fitting venue for recruiting businesses.
The challenge is finding the money to pay for the renovations. The state has spent $256,000 in the past year renovating the outside of the three-story Second Empire home, restoring the ornate woodwork to its 19th century condition.
But the inside remains a ruin – vacant and essentially untouched since the state acquired full ownership in 1987. Making the space suitable as a showplace meeting space would cost an estimated $1.88 million, not including furnishings, which Kluttz says would be bought with private money.
Gov. Pat McCrory included the renovation money in his proposal to issue bonds to generate $2.85 billion for building and road projects across the state. But the House stripped the money from its version of the bond package, which it approved this month.
The Senate, in turn, sent the House bill to the Ways and Means Committee, which seldom meets, and hasn’t come up with a version of its own.
The idea of using the Heck-Andrews House as a state government conference center also must overcome calls to sell the property.
Preservationists and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, whose office is across the street from the house, have said the state will never spend the money needed to make the house usable again and should sell it to a preservation-minded buyer. In June, the house was among 17 properties that the General Assembly’s Program Evaluation Division identified as underused and good candidates to sell.
Meanwhile, the Cultural Resources Department’s vision for the Heck-Andrews House hasn’t been widely promoted. Last month, a department spokeswomen mistakenly told The News & Observer that it didn’t have any plans for it, and a governor’s spokesman initially said McCrory didn’t have a position on the house.
“That made us realize that we needed to do more work,” Kluttz said. “It goes back to awareness, and the public needs to be aware of what the needs are.”
Cultural Resources officials say the large, open rooms of the Heck-Andrews House provide the perfect set-up for a small conference center a block from the Executive Mansion.
“We need to take the pressure off the governor’s mansion,” said Kevin Cherry. “It is the residence of the governor, but it is also a museum setting, and it’s hard to hold public meetings in a museum setting around all those fine antiques and fine furnishings on the first floor.”
Kluttz says she and former Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker agreed the Heck-Andrews House would be an excellent place to recruit business. Decker’s successor, John Skvarla, agrees. He said he often meets with corporate executives in his office on North Wilmington Street, but that it isn’t the best environment for having a cup of coffee or dinner meeting with them.
“It would be advantageous to have a smaller meeting place more conducive to business conversations and relationship building,” he said.
Kluttz and Cherry make the case for the Heck-Andrews House in the context of a broader campaign for using historic preservation as an economic development tool.
They, along with Skvarla and McCrory, have been pressing to restore the state’s historic preservation tax credits, highlighting how they’ve been used for projects that have helped revitalize downtowns and neighborhoods across the state.
“So as we’ve been traveling around the state making this argument, and having local communities show how true it is,” Cherry said, “right here at our own building we have a perfect example of how that kind of investment can also be used in state government.”
Richard Stradling: 919-829-4739, @RStradling
The Heck-Andrews House
Industrialist Jonathan McGee Heck’s home on North Blount Street was completed in 1870 and was among the first mansions that would make the street Raleigh’s most fashionable in the years between the Civil War and World War I. The Heck family owned the house until 1921, when prominent attorney A.B. Andrews Jr. bought it. By the time Andrews died in 1946, the street’s fortunes were waning. After Julia Russell bought the mansion in 1948, she turned it into a rooming house, installing sinks in the upstairs bedrooms that remain there today.
In the late 1960s, the state saw Blount Street as a place for parking lots for workers at the growing State Government Complex north of the Legislative Building. As other homes began to disappear along Blount Street, preservationists fought back. Among other things, they persuaded the federal government to list the Heck-Andrews House on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and persuaded the city to establish the Blount Street Historic District in 1976.
After years of trying to buy the house, the state acquired half interest in 1984, then bought the remaining share by eminent domain in 1987.
This story was originally published August 14, 2015 at 2:46 PM with the headline "NC Cultural Resources Department has plans for Heck-Andrews House."