The Special Projects Committee is responsible for supporting special projects for HCF
5/22/25 - President's House Project
As promised here is an update on the President’s House hotel project. It was sparsely attended likely because of summer break and Memorial Day holiday.
As a summary, the architects have made the best of a difficult project but the attendees were not supportive of the project in general. Lee Epting tried to impress upon the group that while it’s not his preference either, the neighborhood could get something worse. I think the group said that a decision to create something so out of scale should not be accepted because of fear of the unknown. The attendees were not moved by that sentiment.
The project doesn’t sell it self and the developer does not intend to budge on room counts. In fact they went from 100 to 106 to pay for the underground parking because of community push back on parking concerns.
Anyways, here are the renderings. Happy to answer questions. Maggie Taylor, June Ball, Ruth Darden and I were representatives for Cobbham. I’m sure any of us would happily give you our two cents.
Project address: 570 Prince Avenue
5/5/25 - Old Jail Grant
Historic Cobbham Foundation is pleased to share that in partnership with The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and the 1772 Foundation, we have purchased 23-windows to replace the existing deteriorating windows. With this grant and matching funds, we were able to realize $20,000 of the $23,274 purchase order. We could not have made this purchase without them! We look forward to partnerships like these as we continue preservation efforts at Cobbham's Historic Old Jail property.
Project address: 380 Meigs St Athens, GA
Grant website: https://www.1772foundation.org/georgia
Historic Cobbham Foundation: https://www.historiccobbhamfoundation.org/home