The Liddell-McNinch House at 511 N. Church St., the Queen Anne Shingle house that holds the McNinch House restaurant, has been a Charlotte historic landmark for 50 years. On Monday, Sept. 28, Charlotte City Council voted to make that designation cover the whole property.
For the owners, it brings a property tax deferral they told council will go back into the house. No one spoke against it.
According to the city's agenda, the new designation includes the interior and exterior of the house and the land on its tax parcel. The ordinance it amends, adopted May 17, 1976, designated "a building known as the Liddell-McNinch House."
Why the city did it twice
When council scheduled Monday's hearing in August, the agenda called it a historic landmark designation and did not explain how it related to the 1976 one.
On Monday, Stewart Gray, director of the Mecklenburg County Historic Landmarks Department, explained.
"The request is to amend this ordinance, which has been in place for decades, but only designates a small portion of the property," Gray told council. "And quite frankly, I do not believe we would have recommended that type of designation if this property was coming to us today."
Council Member LaWana Mayfield said that explanation should have come sooner. "That information would have been helpful because it was a bit confusing to say that we had a designation previously many decades ago without clarifying that this is an extension," she said.
What it means for the tax bill
Landmark status lets an owner defer part of the property tax bill, postponing it rather than erasing it. Mayfield said a letter from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources states that the owner may receive an annual deferral of up to 50 percent of the property taxes for as long as the property stays designated and retains its significance and integrity. Gray said the letter is "exactly in line" with what council was asked to approve.
The city's August agenda put the potential deferrable taxes under the new designation, based on the property's current value, at about $5,104 in city taxes, $9,175 in county taxes, and $238 in Special District 1 taxes, the uptown municipal service district, or roughly $14,500 combined. The agenda does not say how much, if any, was being deferred under the 1976 designation.
What the owners told council
The agenda lists the owners as Mitchell Van Clark and Delores Clark, and says they agreed to the designation.
Mitchell Clark told council he inherited the house after his aunt died in January 2023. "It is massive. It is a lot of work," he said. "I had no idea how much my aunt worked on this house."
The windows were his example. He said he has a bid of $564,000 to replace 78 windows 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 said the tax savings would go back into the house. "Every bit of the money that we put in that house will come from all the tax money we save," he said.
D.D. Clark told council she and her husband inherited the house almost four years ago. She said the restaurant has operated for almost 40 years and that the house is transformed "into a Victorian wonderland by November 1st of each year" for the holidays.
"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."
What council heard in 1976
The minutes of the May 17, 1976 meeting record the case the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission made to a council led by Mayor John Belk.
The commission's executive director told council the house had been the home of S.S. McNinch, who was mayor of Charlotte, and that President William Howard Taft visited it in 1909. "Architecturally speaking, it is the most significant dwelling in Fourth Ward," the minutes record, adding that it "retains its interior integrity in great detail and in great lavishness" and is "the finest example of the Queen Anne shingle style in the City."
"No opposition was expressed to the designation," the minutes say. Councilman Gantt moved to adopt it, Councilwoman Chafin seconded, and the motion carried unanimously.
The house, with its fish-scale and diamond patterns of slate roof shingles, is stop 39 on the Friends of Fourth Ward walking tour. Fifty years after the first vote, the designation covers the ground it stands on.
Mitchell and D.D. Clark told council more about what it takes to keep the house going. Read that story.