City approves historic landmark designation for century-old house; Post voices tax concerns

SALISBURY — The Salisbury City Council approved a landmark designation for a century-old house on Tuesday, although Council Member David Post raised concerns about whether the tax credit best serves the city’s residents.

The city council approved a landmark designation for the McKenzie-Grimes House, located in the 200 block of West Bank Street and built in 1902 in the Queen Anne Free Classic style. The owners of the house, Randall Cernohorsky and John Causby, applied for designation under two separate criterion, criterion A for special significance as a piece of the city’s historic preservation movement as the first property purchased by the Salisbury Historic Foundation’s revolving fund and criterion C for embodying the distinctive characteristics of the Queen Anne Free Classic style.

The staff report presented to the city council states that the house shows the Queen Anne Free Classic style through elements such as substantial porch columns and classical columns, an asymmetrical design characterized by distinctive cornice and eaves detail, large front porches and multi-sashed windows.

“As a new organization, the foundation believed that this property was not only important to save for its architecture, but that saving this property would also be pivotal to the efforts to save the West Square as a desirable residential area. The members of the foundation felt so strongly about saving this property that as individuals they put up their personal money to make it happen,” said Karen Lilly-Bowyer, Cernohorsky and Causby’s agent for the application.

Kimberly Stieg, executive director of HSF, spoke during the public hearing on Tuesday and shared some of the history of the house and the situation surrounding the HSF’s purchase. The house had been under the threat of demolition by BellSouth, who hoped to turn the property into a parking facility for their heavy equipment. By the time the HSF stepped in and purchased the property, the house had been so close to demolition that the stained glass windows had already been removed, said Stieg.

The owners applied for designation of the exterior of the property and the original plot of land along with several interior features including six stained glass windows, two wooden libraries and two fireplace mantels. With the designation of those features, the property owners are required to keep those features in their historically significant state as well as receive HPC approval before any changes are made to the features.

The 50-percent tax deferment is based on the designated portions remaining within historically significant status, and if that is lost the city has the ability to claw back the last three years of deferred taxes.

After the public hearing, the members of the city council voted unanimously to approve the landmark designation for the home, which comes with a tax credit deferring 50 percent of the bill for the property.

Council Member David Post, however, took the opportunity to voice his displeasure with the city’s implementation of the state ordinance allowing and regulating the tax credit.

“It’s an incredible house, there is no doubt about it. This would be an incredible house anywhere and not necessarily just on a block in the city of Salisbury where it’s the only remaining residence. My ongoing objection is to our ordinance, which gives a 50-percent reduction in taxes and is now costing the taxpayer about a quarter of a million bucks,” said Post.

The revenue figure that Post was referring to comes from the staff report submitted by Planner Emily Vanek, which lists out the properties that have been given landmark designation status and the loss of revenue the tax credit poses to the city over a 10-year period. Over that period, the city will lose $212,259 of tax revenue from 10 designated properties, according to the report, or approximately $21,000 every year.

“I have this feeling that the tax incentive is what’s causing this and I think we’ll see a whole lot more (applications), because there are a lot of incredible houses in that area of the city,” said Post.

The city provides the tax deferment because it adopted the state’s General Statute 105-278 as a local ordinance, which mandates that the city provide the 50 percent. In essence, the state law means that cities can either provide a 50 percent tax deferment to historic landmark properties or not provide any designations or tax deferments at all, it cannot provide something in between.

City Manager Jim Greene Jr. said that city staff has previously evaluated the state law, local ordinance and how other municipalities have handled historic landmarks and would continue that process, bringing the results before the city council at a future meeting.

Post has previously raised concerns about the tax deferment, including in 2021 when the city instituted an informal moratorium on applications to provide clarification on the project requirements. At the time, he raised the same concerns, saying that he did not like that the only incentive was the tax incentive and stating that there were an “unimaginable” amount of houses in the city that could be considered eligible.

“I don’t like the statute, but I love every one of those houses on the list. They’re magnificent houses. We’re lucky as a city to have the architectural diversity and integrity that we have. And the fact that we have private homeowners that are willing to maintain it is a blessing to our city. I just don’t like the statute,” said Post on Tuesday.

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