A Gainesville developer wants to build a 116-room hotel, with a bar and restaurant, behind the 169-year-old Prince Avenue antebellum mansion that has housed University of Georgia presidents since 1949. Plans are to preserve the house with some interior modifications.
Having divested itself of the houses for the University System of Georgia chancellor, and the presidents of Augusta University, Georgia Tech and Georgia State, the Board of Regents voted in 2023 to sell the President’s House, known by preservationists as the Grant-Hill-White-Bradshaw House. Charles Knapp, who left UGA in 1997, was the last president to live there full-time during his tenure.
A year later, the regents set a price of $5.1 million for the house. According to officials with the Board of Regents, “Any purchaser is required as a condition of sale to protect the historic character of the front facade and exterior of the house and the formal garden fronting Prince Avenue through a conservation easement or other recorded encumbrance.”
The building needs a new HVAC system, extensive electrical work and other delayed maintenance that will run into the millions, officials have said. Proceeds from the sale will be put toward student success initiatives, UGA has said.
In addition to the 10,000-square-foot, five-bedroom house, the price includes two outbuildings and almost five acres of trees and plants bordered by a historic neighborhood that includes single-family homes and an apartment complex. Next door to the President’s House is the campus of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, which includes a 126-year-old granite sanctuary with stained glass windows, a day school for children and a thrift house featuring donated second-hand items.
“If the university had wanted to use the house for their benefit, they could have done so, because there are a thousand things you could do with it,” said longtime Athens preservation advocate Lee Epting. “They could have formed a study committee and figured out a suitable use for it. But they didn’t. [The College of] William and Mary decided to keep their president’s house and use it. We should, too.”
Spearheading the hotel project is Capstone Development, headed by Gainesville retired ophthalmologist Jeffrey Payne. He has transformed a former bank in Gainesville into a mixed-use facility that includes a Courtyard by Marriott hotel, and he has completed other commercial and residential projects in Hall County. Should this hotel be constructed, Hilton will operate it.
“Athens has a well-documented shortage of hotel rooms, particularly to support the Classic Center, the university, and other local events and institutions,” Payne said. “The President’s House is an architectural and historic treasure that deserves to be preserved and opened up for more people to enjoy.”
The Athens Clarke County Planning Commission will consider the hotel at its September 4 meeting.
Plans show a restaurant and bar on the President’s House’s first floor, a new kitchen beside it, and an upper-floor suite. One hundred and twelve parking spaces will be constructed underground, and hotel rooms will be separate from and behind the historic house, with room for emergency access. The hotel’s height will remain lower than that of the President’s House. Two outbuildings will be relocated to the back of the property.
Payne is requesting a zoning change from the Athens Clarke County Commission, from “government” to “commercial neighborhood,” which limits a hotel to 10,000 square feet per lot. He wants a waiver in order to construct a building that would be 87,753 square feet.
“This hotel project jeopardizes the livability of the area. It is incongruous for this part of Athens,” said longtime neighborhood resident Liz DeMarco. “Yes, the UGA President’s home is important to protect, but equally our in-town historic neighborhoods are vital to preserve.”
Another waiver Payne wants is for a requirement limiting the maximum distance for offsite parking. He wants “to extend the distance for offsite shared parking from 200 to 1,200 feet to allow for offsite shared parking at 784 Prince Avenue,” a closed doctor’s office.
That lot “will provide additional parking for valet services, staff and special events,” the request reads. Under the current configuration, those exiting 784 Prince Avenue cannot turn left; drivers would be continually turning right and passing through the Boulevard neighborhood to return to the President’s House.
“This proposal is enormously out of scale with anything on this section of Prince Avenue, including the President’s House,” said Tony Eubanks, whose backyard abuts the 4.8-acre lot. In renderings of the project, the mass of the proposed hotel dwarfs that of the historic house.
A traffic study hasn’t been conducted, but Payne says it will be. The portion of Prince Avenue — from Milledge Avenue to Pulaski Street — controlled by Athens Clarke County was changed from four lanes to three lanes, to slow traffic for pedestrians and to add bike lanes. The commission voted to make the design permanent last December after conducting a pilot program.
If approved, the hotel will be the seventh largest in Athens and the biggest one outside of downtown. Rivet House, on Oneta Street, is 30,000 square feet and sits in an 18-acre development.
During a recent community meeting about the hotel, an attendee said she had reservations about the developer because he hadn’t followed the law in her neighborhood. Payne bought a house in Midtown, a historic district near the UGA campus, in 2022. Homeowners have complained to ACC Code Enforcement about ordinance violations regarding occupancy and related issues. The aftermath became contentious.
“I regret that comments I made during a difficult exchange were interpreted as anything other than frustration,” Payne said in an email. “My intention has never been to cause tension in the neighborhood — only to support my family and participate in this community in good faith.”
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Rebecca McCarthy is an Athens-based writer and the author of “Norman Maclean: A Life of Letters and Rivers.”
Thank you, Rebecca, for this well-researched and well-balanced piece.