Banking concerns
A man whose business card carries the title “preservation architect” asked Washington County commissioners to do just that: preserve features that make communities unique rather than tearing them down.
Terry A. Necciai of Monongahela, a registered architect who is also an architectural historian, addressed the commissioners minutes before the officials unanimously adopted an ordinance creating the Washington County Land Bank to acquire, hold and transfer real estate with the aim of returning property to the tax rolls.
“I hope this is not only a tool for demolition,” Necciai said Thursday. “I would like to see land banking be used to repair buildings.”
Outside the meeting, he talked of both practical and aesthetic reasons to keep what he called “a street wall in a contiguous row of buildings … The gap doesn’t look like it belongs there no matter what you do to it. You don’t start with the party wall row buildings. You start with the edges.”
His concern about contiguous buildings is based on his knowledge that bricks in a shared wall aren’t meant to be exposed to the weather, which causes them to dissolve.
“There’s a need to encourage developers to build on narrow lots,” he said.
Necciai came before the commissioners as a representative of both the Monongahela Main Street program and the Charleroi Preservation Plan. Both of those communities, plus Washington and East Bethlehem Township, are the land bank’s initial participants.
A land bank has the capacity to negotiate a sale price for property before it is placed on the auction block at the annual judicial sale, which takes place each June. At a judicial sale, properties on which the owner owes back taxes are sold without local liens – erased by court order – although unpaid state and federal obligations remain. Because intergovernmental cooperation agreements are yet to be signed, the land bank would likely be operating by 2017.
Necciai is also the past president of the Washington County History and Landmarks Foundation.
Joining him in the public comment segment of the commissioners’ meeting was John DeBord of South Strabane Township, who questioned why the land bank will share a board of directors with the Washington County Redevelopment Authority. DeBord perceives this as a conflict of interest.
Commission Chairman Larry Maggi said after the meeting that Washington County looked at a variety of set-ups of land banks in other counties before deciding to give the redevelopment board double duty.
DeBord also asked that property transactions conducted through the land bank be displayed on its website, a move he said was aimed at conferring “transparency the people of Washington County deserve” because the land bank offers financial gain to those making purchases.”
He also questioned who will oversee the land bank’s assets.
Maggi referred both Necciai and DeBord to the redevelopment authority and later said, “We’ll look at all that.”