The City Council will meet on Monday to decide whether to make four homes built by the deceased founder of Leaguetown Theo Belmont and owned by Larry Paul Manley historical landmarks.
“Homes of this type are not rare in this town, and in their present condition are not exemplary,” Manley said. “If every home Belmont made were made historic, there would be a lot of historic homes.”
Manley who bought the houses from Belmont in 1985, plans to demolish the houses and build the town’s first apartment complex on the site. According to him, most of the homes are starting to deteriorate and are almost unlivable. When Manley bought the land from Belmont, he signed an agreement to allow the superintendent, assistant superintendent, principal of the middle school/ high school, and the director of maintenance for the district to stay in the houses until they retired or move from the district. All four are retiring at the end of this school year.
“All of the people living in the houses have kept them up and none of them are as run down as Mr.Manley claims,” president of the Leaguetown Historic Association Stan Smith said. “Each of the people living in the homes has properly maintained their home and made sure it is safe to inhabit it. We just don’t want to throw away that history because someone wants to build apartments.”
Manley said he doesn’t even have to demolish the house and that he will give them to anyone who wants to relocate them on their lot.
“Leaguetown is on the cusp of growth and we need to prepare the town for the future,” Manley said.
According to city council member Amanda Morgan, Belmont was not sentimental about old things. Belmont was responsible for demolishing the old school building and building a new one.
“He had no use for old things and he was quite vocal about it,” Morgan said. “But he’s gone now, and we want people that live well into the 21st century to remember who built this town, why he did it and how he did it.”
During his lifetime, Belmont built many homes and sold them to the townspeople. These particular four houses are very well known according to vice chairman of the Leaguetown Historical Commission Jim Fowler. Fowler said that the historic preservation staff should conduct an investigation of the houses before a decision is made.
“Demolition makes things go away,” Fowler said. “We need to make sure before we do that. I’m going to ask the city council to postpone their decision two months so we have more time to study the situation. Even though we are talking about four old houses, I don’t think Mr. Manley wants us to make a hasty decision without thoroughly investigating it.”