The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission voted in December to designate a 110-year-old house called the Steele Creek Presbyterian Manse as a landmark.

But city officials never put the recommendation on the city council agenda, so elected officials never had the opportunity to provide additional protection for the house.

Without a vote in the city council, demolition of the building at Charlotte Douglas International Airport began last week.

The dispute led to accusations from both sides, with the city of Charlotte and the airport saying the commission ignored previous agreements that allowed the building to be demolished.

And commission chairman Brian Clarke said the city had squashed any chance of saving the home, possibly by moving it to another location.

“My biggest frustration is that the HLC made its recommendation in 2023 and it was never presented to the City Council for further action,” Clarke said. “And (state) law says very clearly that the HLC makes its recommendation to that City Council. Not to city staff, not to the airport, not to the property owner. (We make the recommendation) to the City Council and that never happened.”

The controversy was first reported in the Charlotte Ledger.

The parsonage was a square colonial-style house built in the early 1900s. Ministers of the Steele Creek Presbyterian Church lived there, Clarke said.

“This was the parsonage, the house where the minister must have lived when, for example, Billy Graham was a child and went to church with his parents, both of whom are buried in Steele Creek Cemetery,” Clarke said.

He said the house was in good condition.

“(It had) quality materials, craftsmanship, a slate roof. It was fine,” he said.

The house is located just off Steele Creek Road and one mile south of the airport’s fourth parallel runway, which is currently under construction.

The airport wants to develop that area, possibly with warehouses. It bought the house and the historic church – which still stands – in 2017, as part of the airport’s decades-long acquisition of the surrounding land.

CLT applied for a permit to demolish the house in the fall of 2023. Shortly thereafter, the local historic preservation commission voted unanimously to save the house.

That vote delayed demolition for six months. Had the city council voted to designate the house as a historic monument, the house could have been preserved for up to a year longer—though historic designation doesn’t stop anyone from demolishing a building forever. That delay might have given the city a chance to put it somewhere else, perhaps next to the old church, which will remain.

In an email to City Council members last week, Clarke wrote that he had been “ordered to cease my efforts as Chair of the HLC and it was strong implied that I would be removed from the Historic Landmarks Commission if I continued to push for the preservation of these properties.”

He said this was based on conversations he had with Mecklenburg County officials. He later said he may have misrepresented those comments. He said he wanted to focus on the “loss of the rectory and the fact that the city council never had a chance to even comment.”

Saving the church, not the rectory

The city’s airport said it had done nothing wrong.

Officials noted that an agreement was reached in 2018 with the Federal Aviation Administration and the North Carolina Historic Preservation Office that allows the demolition of some buildings as part of a comprehensive noise reduction strategy.

The agreement called for the airport to pay the state $450,000, including $150,000 for failing to meet “its rehabilitation obligations for (three other) historic buildings” in the area.

CLT Executive Director Ted Kaplan said the city has been committed to preserving the Steele Creek Presbyterian Church, which was built in the mid-1800s. Although services are no longer held there, the city is working on a partnership with a nonprofit that can use the building.

Kaplan said the parish’s top priority was saving the sanctuary, not saving the rectory.

“They have made efforts to designate the sanctuary as a historic property, and the same step has not been taken for the rectory,” he said.

When asked why city staff did not put the Historic Preservation Commission’s recommendation on the City Council agenda, Kaplan said the airport met with the city’s planning department to express its concerns.

CLT’s main argument: The company already had approval under the 2018 agreement.

“And of course we made it clear that HLC is taking a step out of our partnership,” Kaplan said.

City spokesman Lawrence Corley said in a statement that city staff did not put the item on the City Council agenda because the Historic Preservation Commission did not follow procedure and did not first contact the landowner, in this case the city.

“Because the HLC did not follow its standard procedure, CLT was not given the opportunity to formally object to the recommendation,” he wrote.

City staff could have presented their objections to council members before they voted on additional protective measures.

City Councilwoman LaWana Mayfield wrote in an email to Clarke this week that her understanding was that “someone on staff took it upon themselves to withdraw it.”

She said: “If this is true, the council definitely needs to discuss this as staff appraisals are coming up soon.”