MACON, Ga. — The Big House Foundation is getting ready to go back before Bibb County Planning and Zoning later this month, hoping to get their next project approved.
They want to build an event space next to the Big House on Vineville Avenue, but they'd have to knock down a house some call historic.
"I don't trust what they say they're going to do. They just sort of blow off our concerns," one neighbor said of the Big House.
Seven people spoke in opposition to the group's proposal at a Monday planning and zoning meeting. Many are worried about the Big House's footprint and about the history of the house they are hoping to tear down.
"The house is contributing in the national register nomination for Vineville because of its significance for Catherine Brewer Benson," said Caitlin Mee, an architectural historian who lives in Vineville.
Mee believes the house is Brewer Benson's family home. She says Brewer Benson was the first woman ever to receive a college degree from an accredited university: Wesleyan.
"That history can coexist with the history of the Allman Brothers," Mee told the zoning board.
The Big House says their own research proves the house was not Brewer Benson's home. They say it's made out of outbuildings from the original property, fit together like a puzzle.
"None of it matches up. It was scabbed together, and covered with plaster and siding. Nobody knew it until we took the plaster off," Big House Treasurer Jim Wells said.
Wells says they planned to restore the house, but he says it's now in disrepair and beyond saving. He says they have a letter from the county saying the house is, "in imminent danger of collapse."
He says the county later issued a stop work order, and the house has now sat vacant for more than two years.
Now, the Big House plans to knock it down and build a green area centered around a nearly 2,200-square-foot event space designed to look like a house.
"[That] will become our event space for recitals, for receptions and reunions," Wells explained.
This is not the first time the Big House went to the county zoning board asking to knock down the house.
Last year, they proposed a green space, but the board voted it down. They asked the Big House Foundation to come back with a new plan that included a building.
The president of the Vineville Neighborhood Association spoke in favor of the new proposal, but neighbors like Christine Guard questioned it. Guard told the board about her own experiences trying to get her mother's house up to code. It's also in the Vineville neighborhood.
"It needs a full gut, a full remodel, and full electrical and water, and full substructure on it. You've asked me to keep the wood windows in that house, and yet you're going to allow a venue like this?" she asked.
The board voted 2-1 to deny the Big House Foundation's application. There are normally five commissioners at each meeting, with three votes needed to pass a motion.
Since there were only three board members at Monday's meeting, all votes needed to be unanimous to be binding. The Big House will need to take their application before the board again Oct. 23.