Lincolnton was among 27 communities statewide to have achieved accreditation from the National Main Street Program for 2013, the North Carolina Department of Commerce announced Tuesday afternoon.

Those qualifying municipalities had to meet the commercial-district-revitalization performance standards set by the National Main Street Center, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, officials with the Commerce Department's Office of Urban Development noted in a press release.

The National Main Street Center and its partners annually announce the list of accredited programs that have built strong revitalization organizations and demonstrate their ability in using the "Main Street Four Point Approach" methodology for strengthening their local economy and protecting their historic buildings.

The other recognized cities and towns included Albemarle, Brevard, Burlington, Clayton, Concord, Elizabeth City, Elkin, Fuquay-Varina, Garner, Goldsboro, Hendersonville, Hickory, Kings Mountain, Lenoir, Lexington, Marion, Monroe, Morganton, Salisbury, Shelby, Smithfield, Statesville, New Bern, Wake Forest, Waynesville and Wilson.

"Each of these communities has established a strong organizational foundation that is benefiting them in their efforts to implement complex downtown-revitalization initiatives," said Liz Parham, director of the Office of Urban Development.

The Office of Urban Development, the N.C. Main Street Center and the national center evaluate the performance of each participating local program every year to identify those that meet 10 performance standards, which measure a town or city's application of the Four Point Approach.

"Evaluation criteria determine the communities that are building comprehensive and sustainable revitalization efforts and include standards such as developing a mission, fostering strong public-private partnerships, securing an operating budget, tracking economic progress and preserving historic buildings," officials said.

Lincolnton has been nationally accredited each year since 1999, having become a Main Street organization in the mid-90s.

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(Lincoln Times-News, 5/29/13)

For decades, the historic Crabtree Jones House has been nearly invisible, hidden by trees from speeding traffic along Wake Forest Road. Only its longtime caretaker ventured up the steep gravel driveway.

That will change this weekend as the home nears its date with the movers. Preservation North Carolina is working to move the house to make way for an apartment development, but first the nonprofit is opening the doors for two days of tours Saturday and Sunday.

The house was built around 1795, making it one of Raleigh's oldest. But while the other homes of that vintage - the Mordecai House and Joel Lane House closer to downtown - welcome visitors daily as museums, the Jones House has stayed in private hands.

The house is named for its builder, early Raleigh settler Nathaniel "Crabtree" Jones, who ran a plantation that neighbored Isaac Hunter's Tavern, where plans for the state capital were first made. The property stayed in the Jones family until the 1960s, when real-estate investor Charles William Gaddy bought up tracts of land around the Beltline. Gaddy didn't have much use for the old home, but he wanted to preserve it. After Gaddy's death in 2005, his family sold thelot - one of his last undeveloped properties - to an apartment developer, who agreed to finance the house's move to nearby Hilmer Drive. "The house is unbelievably intact, with astounding architectural details," said Lauren Werner, director of education outreach for Preservation NC.

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RALEIGH - Almost 100 near and not-so-near relatives who can trace their roots to 18th-century Raleigh landowner Nathaniel "Crabtree" Jones Jr. had what likely was their last chance to walk in and around their ancestor's hilltop home off Wake Forest Road on Sunday.

By late summer, if all goes as planned, the 3,448-square-foot house will be 500 feet away on a new foundation on Hilmer Drive and will become someone's home.

Sunday, however, the two-story house with its three brick chimneys still sat amid large oaks and rambling hedges at the end of an unpaved drive off Wake Forest Road just inside the I-440 Beltline.

On the lawn, Kimbrough Jones of Raleigh said he had lived in the house briefly after getting out of the military in the early 1970s. His parents had moved into the house several years before, taking it over from another Jones relative.

"I was never interested in genealogy," Jones said, and he chuckled as he recalled how as a boy, visiting the house with his parents, he would flee family discussions to sit in the car and listen to rock music on the radio.

Jones and his wife, Evelyn, said their son, Bryan Jones, is the last to bear the family name.

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 (The Raleigh News & Observer, 5/20/13)

Hurricane Isabel ravaged the East Coast nearly a decade ago, and in Edenton, N.C., its effects are still seen at the Kadesh African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Spanning an entire block on East Gale Street, the church complex sustained such significant damage from the 2003 storm that it was deemed unsafe for parishioners to continue worshiping there.

"Now it's just kind of sitting there, an empty shell," says Sam Dixon, a local attorney and an adviser to the National Trust who has long been rallying for the restoration of the church.

Congregants moved to another venue across town, but as Dixon says, "They're ready to go home."

The Gothic Revival church has a long history in Edenton (pop. 5,000). It was built in 1897 by Hannibal Badham Sr., who himself was a member of the church. For generations, the Gothic Revival church complex was the center of religious and social life in Edenton's African-American community.

(From PreservationNation Blog, 5/13/13)

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DURHAM - County Commissioners on Monday will mull a hotel developer's request for $1 million in incentives from their government to get a long-delayed project at the corner of West Main, West Morgan and Watts streets off the ground.

But County Manager Mike Ruffin is recommending that commissioners turn down the request from the Concord Hospital Enterprises Co.

Ruffin said Concord's planned hotel isn't close enough to the Durham Convention Center and isn't saving enough of the former McPherson Hospital to be worth the county's money.

"This one, I think, [has] just a very weak argument for us to incentivize," Ruffin said, drawing an unfavorable comparison to a pair of inside-the-downtown-loop hotel projects that last year received county pledges of nearly $2.7 million in tax give-backs.

A parallel $1 million incentive request from Concord to the city government is also pending.

City Manager Tom Bonfield said the City Council, after discussing the matter in closed session, has made the company an offer. Further conversations are on hold pending the outcome of the county's deliberations.

Concord's project sits on the edge of the Trinity Park neighborhood and has been in the works since the mid-2000s. It's stalled repeatedly, first because of objections to the initial plan from some Trinity Park residents, and later because of the 2008 real-estate crash.

The project has attracted support from local preservationists because of the McPherson Hospital tie.

The building that remains has stood on the site since 1926. Contractors before the recession hit removed additions that dated from the 1940s and the 1960s.

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(The Herald-Sun, 5/4/13)