With ultimatum over decay, is Old First Baptist Church doomed?

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - The decaying Old First Baptist Church downtown was a key focus of Tuesday’s Augusta Commission meeting.

It’s been a pillar of the garden city for more than 100 years, but for the better part of a decade, it’s been empty.

Now, the church is one of many blighted properties that could be holding Augusta back.

Standing tall for more than a century – the Old First Baptist Church is a silent witness to history.

But now, the future of this historic building is as faded as its weathered walls hang somewhere in the middle of history and progress.

At the meeting Tuesday, Dave Barbee of the Augusta Historic Preservation Commission was questioned about the process.

“We’re not in the business of demolishing,” said Dave Barbee, vice chair of the Historic Preservation Commission. “That’s what we’re here for, is to preserve the heritage of the community.”

A place filled with generations of prayers.

“More than 10. Yes, more than 10 code violations at that property,” said Carla Delaney, director of planning and development for Augusta Richmond County.

Now left saying its own Hail Mary

“When you look at the amount of investment already made to the tune of about half $1,000,000. just to somewhat stabilize the building, there is documentation that there is some activity. it may not be the overhaul that most people would expect to see or want to see.”

Recently, the owner of the building filed a certificate of appropriateness to demolish the property.

“The COA will be brought before us,” said Barbee. “The commission, the Historic Preservation Commission could either approve it or deny it. If it’s denied, then he has to go to mediation as it was stated. If we can’t resolve it in mediation, he can come before the full commission.”

“I do think that there could definitely be more effort made on the maintenance of the property and the upkeep until the market will allow for him to come in and do those renovations,” said Delaney.

Because this is far from the only decaying property in the city.

“We have quite a few blighted properties,” said Delaney. “We’re a historic city, we’re a consolidated government and we have aging architecture. Just like with any building, there’s a maintenance component to things and deferred maintenance leads us to where we are right now.”

The next steps will come when the Historic Preservation Commission meets again, where they will discuss the certificate of appropriateness for demolition.

This comes after the Augusta Historic Preservation Commission in mid-January gave the building’s owner 10 days to take action in repairing the building.

The preservation commission decided owner Joe Edge wasn’t making routine repairs and maintenance to keep the property safe. Code enforcement staff said the building is breaking several code rules, including making Augusta’s blight list dating back to 2021.

In 2020, Edge unveiled an idea to fix the outside of the building, then develop the back into office space and apartments, but the redevelopment has never happened.

Augusta Commission member Jordan Johnson asked how the preservation commission addresses blighted properties in historic districts.

“If they don’t do what they say they are going to do, we don’t have a mechanism,” Barbee said. Any building in the historic district should be mothballed and maintained, he said.

PHOTO GALLERY:

Commissioner Catherine Smith Rice said she was at the January meeting where the preservation commission addressed the matter.

“That attorney grilled the owner of that building like it was a courtroom,” she said. “What I saw that night, I felt like it was personal and I thought to myself, ‘Who else has gone through this?’”

She said the historic preservation ordinance needs to be revamped, and Mayor Garnett Johnson agreed.

“The owner pays taxes and what he decided to do to the building, he should have a right to do,” Rice said.

ABOUT THE BUILDING

Old First Baptist: An iconic landmark

1. The old First Baptist Church at 802 Greene St. with its iconic green dome is listed by Historic Augusta as an “imminently imperiled landmark.”
2. Built in 1902, it once home to a congregation that ultimately moved west. Since then, the Beaux-Arts building has been home to other fledgling churches.
3. The building originally made the endangered list in 2014 and made the “progress” category in 2017 when a rehab was planned.
4. But to this date, it remains in decay.

Like Rice, Commissioner Tina Slendak was at the January meeting of the preservation commission.

She said she was “disappointed” at how Edge was spoken to.

“Both sides probably have room for improvement as far as talking back to each other,” she said. “He was literally being interrogated.”

A lot of people are blaming the decay on Edge “when it’s just decades of neglect,” she said.

“He’s fighting a losing battle down there, unfortunately, with homeless people breaking in,” she said.

She said there needs to be some “clarity” between the city staff and the preservation commission.

She doesn’t want to see the building demolished, “but it’s going to take millions of dollars to make it functional again,” she said.

Commissioner Tony Lewis had a different perception, saying “I was also at that meeting and didn’t perceive Mr. Edge as being attacked.”

Lewis asked Barbee if there’s a precedent of a case of this magnitude, and Barbee said there isn’t.

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