Oakwood neighbors want to buy city parking lot to preserve historic homes
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A downtown Raleigh neighborhood wants to buy a city-owned parking lot at a discounted price to protect historic homes facing demolition.
The Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood made a $300,000 offer on the parking lot at 411 Morson St., located across from Raleigh Fire Station 3 and catty-corner to the City Cemetery. The Raleigh City Council voted to sell the property as surplus last year, with the proceeds going toward the city’s affordable housing efforts.
The minimum bid for the lot is $400,000, and the tax value is over $500,000. After formally submitting their bid, representatives from the nonprofit took their case directly to the city’s leaders.
“Please help us preserve Raleigh’s beautiful historic treasures,” said Matthew Brown, speaking to the Raleigh City Council Tuesday.
The nonprofit has identified two historic houses facing mounting development pressures and potential demolition. One of them was the home of the late Dr. Hubert Royster, the longtime surgeon in chief at St. Agnes Hospital.
Developers have agreed to let the nonprofit move the homes, but they need a place to move the homes to. The nonprofit hopes that one or both of the homes could be moved to the parking lot, if they are able to purchase it.
Ralph Recchie, real estate manager for the city of Raleigh, said the situation presents the city with “competing priorities” in considering the bid.
“Historic preservation is clearly a noble cause, and one of the many priorities that the city has,” Recchie said. “But so is affordable housing. So the question really is, where are the resources going to be applied?”
History of Oakwood neighborhood
Oakwood, a neighborhood near downtown Raleigh, is on the National Register of Historic Places and the city’s first local historic district. The Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood was formed in the 1970s to ward off the demolition of the neighborhood for a potential highway.
Since then, the nonprofit has launched other preservation efforts, including moving to a home at risk of demolition to the neighborhood, purchasing and renovating homes and providing “non-traditional financing” to help restore historic homes in the neighborhood.
There are 11 parking lots within the neighborhood. All used to have homes on them, said Chris Crew, who serves on the nonprofit’s board of directors. Now the nonprofit wants to move homes back on to those lots.
The Royster House, located at 121 S. Boylan St., was just rezoned to allow up to 20 stories. And the other house, 615 Willard Place, is in the process of being rezoned to allow up to 40 stories.
“We have been in constant contact with the owners of these parking lots, trying to get them to the point where they would accept an offer from us for the properties,” he said. “And we’ve had our eye on this one on Morson for probably three or four years now.”
When the City Council put it up as surplus, the nonprofit voted to make an offer.
“We would really like to move forward,” said Dee Penven-Crew, the incoming president of the nonprofit and who is married to Chris Crew. “There are a couple of houses that are at serious risk of being demolished because of development happening on their lots.”
What happens next?
Raleigh is still moving forward with selling the property to the highest bidder unless otherwise instructed, Recchie said. The city is able to sell property without an upset bid process if it is for preservation.
“If we sell a property for below market value, where the revenue was supposed to go into affordable housing but we discount it for the sake of preservation, and then the preservation group makes money on this historic home near downtown, has affordable housing subsidized preservation in that instance? It’s kind of what it feels like,” he said.
The nonprofit has an amount it can go above its current bid, Penven-Crew said, but she declined to say how much. They plan to reach out to members of the Raleigh City Council, especially its four new members who may be unfamiliar with the group’s work.
The group makes a “modest” profit through preservation efforts and that money goes back into their preservation funds.
“It’s all well and good for the City Council to say that money raised from the sale of this lot is going to go toward affordable housing,” Penven-Crew said. “But even if they got the appraised value, that is a drop in the bucket toward affordable housing. It’s not going to make or break their affordable housing program.”
And there is hope, she said, that the homes could serve as affordable housing but that’s a future consideration and would require another partner. Right now, the goal is to save the homes.
“The only criteria that he Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood has, at this point, is to try to rescue a property that is going to be torn down,” she said. “And so we need to make sure that we get that done. And then we need to explore whether we can make it into some kind of affordable housing space.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
