Need Help Trying to Save Historic Home

[Jeremy S.]

Hello all,

I wanted to run a situation by you guys to see if anyone has any experience with saving historic properties or ideas on creative financing for this property. I will try to give a short run down on the situation.

I am from Elizabeth, PA which is south of Pittsburgh. I have a great passion for history in general, but especially for my hometown. I recently got into contact with another young guy who works for a nonprofit organization that saves historic properties in the Mon Valley Area (Pittsburgh area). He has been working for years to try to save an historic house on the riverfront of the town from being demolished to be made a gravel parking lot for a local business owner’s fleet of plumbing vans. The current owner is open to selling it because he is deeply rooted in the town and knows the house’s history. However he also needs the parking space. Here is a quick rundown on some of the history of the house from an email:

“OK, so the house on Water Street.Built circa 1840 in a vernacular Greek Revival style.Classic brick construction and simple rooms.Water Street was home to many promininant early Elizabethians - many with ties to the boat building industry.This was the home of Colonel James Ekin.He is the grandson of the founder of Elizabeth - Stephen Bayard. He at one point took over the boat company from the Walkers.He served in the Civil War and was involved with Lincoln's burial.”

The current owner agreed to not demo it for a year to give the agency time to come up with plans and funds for the property. He is only looking to get his initial investment back out of it which is around $32,000. However this has been more than a few years- the house is still standing, but needs a lot of work and can be demolished any day. It was sold in 2010 I think and was not lived in for a few years prior to that.

The man I have been working with to come with ideas for saving the property has already done a huge amount of the leg work including getting a detailed plan created by students at Carnegie Mellon University to look into options to make it a café, bed and breakfast, and local museum. The most feasible they concluded would to turn it into a café. While I am not against this plan, because it would save the building, I do not see an investor spending the money to turn it into one. The population of the town isn’t that large and I do not think it would overly thrive as a café business.

It basically leaves me with the idea of someone, at least for the meantime, buying it as a personal residence to save it from demo. He is very familiar with different grants, but I shot him the idea of owner financing or private financing for the time being and to cash out refi later down the road. It would make a beautiful house once the renovations were done. It is on a large plot of land (for downtown in the boro) and is overlooking the Mon river. I believe the other older houses on this street (one of which my uncle owns) are probably only in the 50- 70k range if I were to guess. I have a full report including pictures of the house and history if anyone is interested or could take a look at it to give me some ideas I could feed to him. Or if anyone knows of investors in the area that appreciate and deal with these kinds of properties. I would even love to own this home, but the amount of money it would take to make it livable is out of the question for me right now. He has also looked into buying it himself.

While I am all for progress this house is very important to our town’s history and the property is not going to be used in any way that benefits the town. Making it into a gravel parking lot would be a shame. I am just seeing if I can help out this guy who has put a lot of energy into saving this house. Once it is gone it’s gone for good! I am willing to put a good chunk of my own savings (that I have been saving for my first property) towards saving the home because I believe saving history like this is that important. Who knows, the owner may not be willing to sell even if the funds were raised. Anyways, there is a few pictures to show the house. The one with people in it is obviously a rendered picture if it was turned into a café. I just wanted to show the view next to the river.