Mitchell Clark was born at Presbyterian Hospital in 1961. "Been here my whole life, never gone anywhere else," he told Charlotte City Council on Monday.
He was there as an owner of the Liddell-McNinch House at 511 N. Church St., the Queen Anne Shingle house with the patterned slate roof that holds the McNinch House restaurant. He and D.D. Clark asked council to extend the house's landmark status, which since 1976 had covered only the building, to the whole property. Council approved it. Landmark status lets an owner defer up to half the property taxes as long as the house keeps its historic character.
Clark inherited the house after his aunt died in January 2023. "So I ended up inheriting this entire house," he said. "It is massive. It is a lot of work. I had no idea how much my aunt worked on this house."
The house came with a restaurant
D.D. Clark told council she and her husband inherited the house almost four years ago. "We are both native Charlotteans, graduates of West Mecklenburg and Harding High School," she said. "We inherited the house, but the house came with a restaurant."
McNinch House Restaurant has served dinner in the house since 1989, according to its website.
Since the inheritance, she said, the goal has been to preserve the property and make it self-sustaining. She was plain about why that is hard. "It's a very thin profit margin," she said. "It's hard to keep a restaurant going and keep up a 140-year-old house and pay your employees a living wage."
The windows
Mitchell Clark's example of the upkeep was the windows. He said he has a bid of $564,000 to replace 78 of them, and an alternative bid of $40,000 for storm windows.
"But if I put storm windows on it, it's not going to look the same," he said. "And I want it to continue to look like it does."
He told council he hoped the designation would eventually reduce the taxes, and that the savings would go back into the building. "Every bit of the money that we put in that house will come from all the tax money we save," he said. "I want the house to be beautiful. I want it to be an asset to the community."
What the house does beyond dinner
D.D. Clark listed the ways the house reaches past the dining room. It has opened for tours during the May home and garden tour. It supports the Friends of Fourth Ward sip and stroll. The restaurant runs internships with local culinary programs and university marketing programs, donates dinner certificates to charity silent auctions, and buys from more than 40 local farms and creameries, she said.
For the holidays, she said, the house is transformed "into a Victorian wonderland by November 1st of each year."
She also described a quieter side of the business: private meetings. "We are a very discreet building, and we provide a very safe environment for discussions to be held that cannot be held in other public restaurants or venues in town," she said.
Kathy Henry, who spoke in support, said she arranges executive meetings as a lead executive administrator at Honeywell. The house, she said, "provides us a setting where executives, our board members, our customers, our investors, community leaders can have confidential, meaningful discussions."
Mitchell Clark's pitch for dinner there was shorter. "It's like going back in time," he said.
If you go
McNinch House Restaurant is at 511 N. Church St. Reservations are taken Tuesday through Saturday, with seatings from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., for parties of two to eight, according to the restaurant's website. Private events are booked seven days a week. Parking is behind the restaurant. The phone number is (704) 332-6159.
The Victorian wonderland arrives by Nov. 1.