‘You’ve got to prune a few dead limbs.’ Historic Macon to demolish homes in Beall’s Hill

Jared Wilayto moved to the Beall’s Hill neighborhood in Macon with his wife in 2015.

The house they moved into had at least three blighted houses near it, but over the last few years, the Historic Macon Foundation has slowly rehabilitated the houses for new people to move to the neighborhood.

This year, Historic Macon will demolish the house at 1347 Calhoun Street, the last blighted house near Wilayto’s home.

“It’s been kind of a hotel for stray dogs at times,” Wilayto said with a laugh. “I think everything they’re doing with the houses in the neighborhood is going to improve things, and just kind of hopefully lift up the whole neighborhood as well as bring some new people in.”

Historic Macon received approval from the Macon-Bibb Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday to demolish the house on Calhoun Street and three structures in the 1000 block of Maple Street in the Beall’s Hill neighborhood due to severe rotting and termite damage.

Ethiel Garlington, executive director of Historic Macon, said the foundation isn’t typically in the business of demolishing houses, but these structures simply couldn’t be saved.

“It’s sort of counterintuitive for us to be taking down houses in Beall’s Hill, but one of our board members said it pretty succinctly. He said, ‘Sometimes to have a healthy tree, you’ve got to prune a few dead limbs,’” Garlington said. “In this case, to remove these blighted houses from the neighborhood not only enhances the property values for the neighbors around it, but it improves the crime and other issues like that.”

The demolition is part of Historic Macon’s Beall’s Hill neighborhood Revitalization project. Garlington said Historic Macon has demolished around 10 houses in the neighborhood since 2007.

A few years ago, Historic Macon considered rehabilitating the houses on Maple Street, but determined they would lose around $150,000 on the project, Garlington said.

It will cost $15,000 to $20,000 to demolish the houses at the Maple Street location and another $15,000 to $20,000 for the Calhoun Street site, which will come out of the budget reserved for the Beall’s Hill neighborhood, Garlington said.

Historic Macon has either rehabilitated or built around 50 houses in the neighborhood, he said.

“We’re not so purist, or preservation is not so precious that we can’t recognize pragmatically when buildings have to come down,” Garlington said. “I hope that’s a reminder that when we do publicly oppose demolitions in other parts of the community that it means that we have genuinely looked at that building, we’ve looked at the business model, the economic viability of something, so when we come out and oppose the demolition, it means we’ve done our homework, and we know that that building can be saved.”

After the houses are demolished, Historic Macon plans to build new single family homes on the property, according to the Planning and Zoning application, but Garlington said they haven’t officially chosen a plan for the new houses.

They plan to salvage as much as they can from the old houses to use for future projects, Garlington said.

Wilayto said when they moved from Baltimore, Historic Macon showed them two houses in Beall’s Hill because they needed to be close to his wife’s work at Mercer University.

“I think it’s a great neighborhood with everything going on downtown. I mean just in the last five years we’ve seen a lot of change in Macon since we’ve moved here, so it’s an exciting time,” he said.