For months, a battle has loomed over the fate of Atlanta’s Pink Palace.
No, it’s not a raucous nudie bar on Cheshire Bridge Road. It’s a sedate 12,000-square-foot Italian Baroque-style villa on West Paces Ferry Road, a grandiose classic with a long-approach driveway and an expansive front lawn.
And that's the problem — someone could build a gargantuan McMansion out front and despoil the ambience, making it less likely that you'd slow down your car and say, "Now, THAT's my dream home."
The question has, once again, surfaced in the age-old debate of unfettered property rights versus a sense that historic landmarks or architectural beauty is valuable to society as a whole.
The two main players in this Buckhead two-step are Rodney Mims Cook Jr., a local patrician who built Atlanta’s Millennium Gate Museum — a sort of local Arc de Triomphe — and Thierry Francois, a real Frenchman, who has been a Buckhead resident for 20 years.
Last year, Francois bought the 3.5 acre property for $4.3 million, which sounds like a lot until one considers it listed for $20 million before the recession.
Francois, who owns a high-end masonry installation firm, put in a request to the city to carve his property into three lots: the front yard, the house and the backyard. The request set off reverberations as if he sought to build a Jiffy Lube there.
Because Atlanta ordinances are what they are, the request to subdivide the lot rolled through and Francois would be well within his rights to flatten the 1920s dwelling designed by famed Atlanta architects Neel Reid and Philip Schutze.
A couple of weeks ago, Cook called me saying a “historic crisis” was upon us, that a local classic could be altered or destroyed. Cook hails from one of those noblesse oblige Atlanta families that go back to before the Yankees burned our fair town. The family has tried to nudge civic design and construction in a tasteful path since that rebuild.
As a young teen in the 1970s, Cook was a linchpin in the campaign to save the Fox Theatre. He grew up to be a preservationist — designer of classical properties and hater of modernity. His Millennium Gate on 17th Street and Cook Park, a statue-adorned public space being built near the Mercedes Benz Stadium, are two of his over-the-top projects. The good fellow doesn't think small.
Cook joined the fray last year when he approached Francois with an offer to place the front yard and home’s facade into a preservation easement that would include a $1 million endowment overseen by his own foundation. Francois would also get $500,000 and tax savings. Francois figures the front lot is worth $1.5 million.
There is a sentimental connection for Cook. His wife's ancestors once owned the home and he has set up a full-sized replica of Pink Palace's parlor (complete with original furniture) at the Millennium Gate.
I recently met Cook outside the home and he pointed out that an addition built on the rear of the structure had already been torn down by Francois. We then hopped into his Mercedes and I received the Rodney Mims Cook Jr. tour of Buckhead Resplendence. He pointed out grand homes that had been saved, others that had been destroyed and properties carved up to squeeze in new mansions.
It was a personal drive down Memory Lane. “I used to saddle a horse in that courtyard there,” he said at one spot.
At another, near the Governor’s Mansion, he once watched Gov. Jimmy Carter in flip-flops escort daughter Amy across the road to swim at a neighbor’s pool.
“The West Paces Ferry ensemble showcases this city,” he said. “It puts us on a world’s stage with architectural sophistication. This is world class.”
But, he added, “It’s a battleground out here.”
Cook says Francois seemed amenable to his preservation deal but suddenly wasn’t.
He contends Francois went along with his offer because the neighborhood was wary and he wanted Cook to advocate for him during the public process of subdividing the property.
“There are plenty of large, vanilla type properties in this area you could have done this kind of manipulation to,” an angry Cook wrote in an email to Francois. “Why destroy one of our landmarks?”
I visited Francois one afternoon as work crews buzzed about the abode. He said he has no designs on destruction. In fact, he’s performing $1 million in renovations and wants to live there with his family.
“I’ve been intrigued by it for a long time; I’ve wondered why it sat vacant for so long,” he said. “My goal is to protect the land, to restore it to its original form.”
Francois said he intends to sell the backyard lot and cut the property tax, which is more than $100,000 a year. He said he intends to work with the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation to create some sort of protection on the front, although it is clear that he fell out with Cook.
“I want to preserve it, but going to a private trust and having Rodney in the middle of it? I’m like, whoa,” he said, waving his hand. Having a preservation easement on the facade of the home, he said, makes it “not your home anymore. The tone I felt was I’d be a guest in my own home. I didn’t feel welcome. I felt I never would fit in” with Cook’s foundation.
Francois said he does not intend to sell the front lot. “It makes no sense; the house is more valuable with the front lot,” he said. “I’m committed to protect this.”
Mark McDonald, president of the Georgia Trust, said he wants to work out a deal with Francois, although that organization would want a commitment from Francois not to change the facade of the home — something that seems to spook Francois. McDonald said the tax savings are “sizable” for property owners who commit to such easements, although not as lucrative as selling it outright to a developer.
“These programs are for people who really have a charitable intent,” he said.
Saving history or architectural beauty for the rest of us passing by on West Paces Ferry reaches more deeply than just the bottom line.
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