The push to remove the name of pre-Civil War slavery advocate John Calhoun from one of Savannah’s historic squares has stalled, just when the square renaming petition seemed ready to move forward.
A petition to rename the Abercorn Street square for celebrated Savannahian Susie King Taylor was pulled from a Historic Site and Monument Commission agenda last week after city officials learned one of the properties adjacent to the square had sold to a new owner.
The transaction renders the application invalid, as the renaming requires that 51% of the owners of neighboring properties sign off on the change.
Prior to the sale, 10 of the 19 neighbors had blessed the efforts of the group behind the renaming efforts, the Center for Jubilee, Restoration and Healing. The petitioners are now one signature short, and the new owner has declined to sign on to the application.
Pat Gunn, who founded the Center for Jubilee along with Rosalyn Rouse, first proposed the square renaming in December 2020, says the issue is with the city's renaming ordinance, which requires that 51% majority through the Savannah City Council vote. A signee could sell their home the morning of the meeting, and that action alone would take it off the city council agenda.
"Before the city council vote, we may lose an owner, so we really can't be sure until the actual day of the vote whether or not we have the votes," Gunn said.
The property sale has Gunn and her fellow activists at an impasse. The Center worked for much of 2021 to secure the signatures from 10 of the square’s neighbors, and those who declined to sign have expressed no interest in rescuing the effort, according to Gunn.
At Gunn's request, Savannah City Attorney Bates Lovett is exploring the language of the renaming ordinance. One of the square’s neighbors, Wesley Monumental Methodist Church, owns three of the 19 adjacent properties, and Lovett is seeking to determine if that changes the calculation in terms of required signatures.
Wesley’s leadership has not signed in support of the name change, but the church’s ownership of three properties could lower the number of neighbors from 19 to 17. With nine neighboring property owners still signed on to the name change, the petition would then meet requirements and could move forward in the review process, which involves approval from the Historic Site and Monument Commission and Savannah City Council.
The city attorney has told Gunn he’ll have a determination on the ordinance language by Friday, April 8.
The loss of a signature is enough to hold up the process for now, but Joe Shearouse, the city’s director of policy and external affairs, says that's the only missing piece. The other requirements have been satisfied and the petition won't have to go through the application process again.
"It doesn't have to go through staff review or anything, because other than that one signature, it already has. So they'll basically be placed on the [Historic Sites and Monuments] agenda for the next 30 days whenever they received that last signature," Shearouse said.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Calhoun Square renaming effort is one signature short, but city code could provide a loophole
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