Alamance County’s commissioners have narrowly approved an agreement that allows the local visitors bureau to set up shop in a historic Victorian home that previously served as a branch office for Bank of America.
This deal, which was approved in a 3-to-2 decision on Monday, authorizes the county to purchase this period dwelling at 141 South Main Street in Graham with funds that the Alamance County Visitors Bureau has squirrelled away over the years from a special 3-percent sales tax on hotels and motels.
All told, the visitors bureau will hand over $650,000 from the proceeds of this so-called “occupancy tax” to acquire the home from Bank of America, which had itself purchased the residence in 1993. The Charlotte-based bank went on to refurbish the home for use as a branch office, which it ultimately shuttered in the opening months of 2024.
A majority of the commissioners signed off on this agreement at the behest of assistant county manager Brian Baker, who has been the county’s point person in the negotiation of this real estate transaction with Bank of America. Baker informed the commissioners that, for legal reasons, the visitors bureau needed the county to conduct this transaction despite having agreed to put up all of the funds to bankroll the purchase.
“We will be holding this building for them because they are not legally able to hold property,” Baker went on to explain before Monday’s decision. “It will be their funds. But we will be holding the property…and we will essentially have a landlord-tenant agreement with them. We will be responsible for the big stuff as a landlord would be. But day-to-day maintenance will be up to them.”
Under the deal that the commissioners adopted on Monday, the county will lease the property back to the tourism authority for a nominal sum. In the meantime, the county will extend a separate five-year lease to Bank of America so that the company can continue to operate one of the drive-thru automatic teller machines that have remained active since the branch office shuttered its doors.
Baker went on to add that the visitors bureau plans to move its headquarters into this building, which the local industrialist E.M. Holt had originally constructed in 1878 to serve as a home for one of his daughters. The assistant county manager added that this historic domicile will offer several advantages over the bureau’s current base of operations, which is situated within Burlington’s historic train depot off of Webb Avenue.
“Nothing against downtown Burlington, but it’s not accessible to the people we want to attract, who come off the interstate,” he added. “This [former bank branch] is an iconic building for Graham, and it is probably the main thing you see – short of the courthouse – when you come off the interstate…This [sale] preserves that building, attracts people to it, and helps sell our community.”
According to the county’s finance department, the visitors bureau will fund this building’s purchase using a portion of the more than $2.3 million that it has accumulated from the aforementioned occupancy tax.
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Grace VandeVisser, the tourism authority’s executive director, assured the commissioners that there’s no movement afoot to increase this 3-percent levy in spite of the significant hit to its savings.
VandeVisser observed that a change in the occupancy tax not only requires state authorization but is subject to a state-imposed ceiling of 6 percent that, in Alamance County’s case, was effectively reached a year ago when the General Assembly gave four of the county’s municipalities permission to impose another 3-percent occupancy tax of their own. VandeVisser also minimized a recommendation in her agency’s strategic plan to hold onto a portion of the occupancy tax’s proceeds that the tourism bureau presently splits with Alamance County’s government.
These assurances aside, the cost of the proposed transaction nevertheless got some pushback from commissioner Ed Priola.
“I don’t understand the wisdom of investing more than a half a million dollars in this building to promote tourism,” he said ahead of Monday’s decision. “Why not a storefront? Why not something that’s a whole lot more inexpensive but just as accessible?”
Priola continued to voice these cost-related concerns despite the repeated assertions of Baker and others that the proposed transaction wouldn’t involve any of the county’s own funds. He was later joined in objections by commissioner Pam Thompson, who raised some misgivings about the potential costs that the county might incur by accepting ownership of a nearly 150-year-old home.
“The only concern I have is the age of that building,” she insisted. “If things start breaking, that’s on our dime.”
Baker’s proposal went over better with commissioner John Paisley, Jr., the board’s vice chairman Steve Carter, and Kelly Allen, the newly-named chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners.
In arguing for the transaction’s approval, Carter explicitly characterized the building’s advanced age as an asset rather than the drawback that Thompson construed.
“I think that’s one of the things that will attract people to it,” he declared.
Meanwhile, VandeVisser assured the commissioners that a potential uptick in sales tax receipts from out-of-county visitors ought to make up for the loss of more than $5,400 in property tax proceeds that will follow this property’s removal from the tax rolls.
“I do think it’s a win-win for the tourism development authority as well as the county,” she added before the board’s 3-to-2 vote. “We have been looking for a facility for a long time that puts us closer to the interstate for visibility…We’re looking for a place to anchor. And what a great opportunity [for us] to be in a historic building.”
“And it’s your money,” Carter went on to chime in.
Carter, Allen, and Paisley went on to approve the transaction 3-2 over the objections of Priola and Thompson.
