FAIRHOPE, Ala. - If the proponents of a Fairhope historic preservation law wanted to avoid the kind of firestorm that erupted the last time the city tried to pass one, they got started on the wrong foot this time with the draft ordinance introduced last month.

In order to allay concerns raised in the late 1990s when a prior law was introduced and defeated, Councilwoman Debbie Quinn and Gary Gover, chairman of the Historic Preservation Committee, stated recently that the law was “deliberately softened” and drafted to have “no teeth,” and that historic districts had to originate with residents and the community.

But that’s not what the draft ordinance sponsored by Quinn on April 25 states, which is scheduled for a possible vote May 9.

It states just the opposite.

The draft ordinance provides misdemeanor penalties for violations of its provisions, uses mandatory language throughout, and gives the council the power to establish districts on its own initiative.

That’s what some vocal critics have claimed since it was introduced, although they too have got some facts wrong about the proposed law.

But their misstatements might get lost in the aftermath of how the proposed ordinance was introduced and characterized.

After The Fairhope Courier reviewed the draft law, then sent email questions to Quinn and Gover on Wednesday, stating it seemed to read differently than they were saying publicly, the law’s drafters had an impromptu meeting that night.

By Thursday morning, Quinn had sent this email to several city officials and staff.

“We realized that a section of the ordinance that had been deleted in drafts one, two and three, somehow reappeared in draft five,” she wrote just after 8 a.m. on May 5. “We have looked at this ordinance so many times. I’m going to assume that some people will think this was intentional, when in no way was it ever meant to be that way.”

Quinn also stated they did not intend the language that created enforcement powers, and that it would be removed at the council meeting Monday night.

“This was left in inadvertently but we have deleted it,” she added about the language giving overriding authority to the council.

Contributing to the proponents’ perception problems is that even the name of the ordinance has inflamed some residents, who have been mobilizing opposition to it and are expected to turn out in force at Monday’s public hearing on the proposed law.

But there, the name creates a problem that does not exist. The ordinance title can be read to mean that the law would establish historic districts, instead of a "Historic Districts and Landmark Commission."

It was the immediate creation of historic districts by the proposed ordinance that fanned the flames of the controversy the last time the issue came up.

But the proposed law does not do that, despite having a title that suggests it might.

The proposed law does establish a historic commission, but not historic districts.

‘Bloodbath’ in the '90s

That kind of proposed law created what Donnie Barrett, the city’s museum director, characterized Thursday as a “bloodbath” in the late 1990s, when the proposed law was defeated.

“I was supposed to speak at that meeting but never got to the podium because people were throwing chairs at each other,” he said of that meeting. “They were trying to set up the ordinance with historic districts defined, but without first getting a community’s permission, and that’s where the problem came from.”

Although the proponents may well face criticism for how the proposal has been handled thus far, the opponents are not free of questions about their statements regarding the proposed law, as well as their motives in opposing it.

Several opponents have stated that the law would immediately empower the commission to begin making decisions about architectural features of local houses and buildings, but that would come only after a district is created. In the revised law presumably introduced Monday by Quinn, the power to enforce such decisions would be removed from the language.

Revising the ordinance that way could change the position of current opponents like developer Mike Bernhardt, he said Thursday morning.

He received permission at Monday’s Planning Commission meeting to proceed with an expansion of his Founder’s Square hotel project on South Section Street that would involve putting a parking lot where what Barrett called the historic “Mannich House” is now located.

Despite possibly changing his position on the proposed law, Bernhardt called it generally a horrible mess for the city of Fairhope.

“It allows the council and new commission to create historic districts where to paint your house you might have to get somebody to pick our your color,” he said.

At that May 2 planning commission meeting, he was asked by commission member and Public Works Director Jennifer Fidler if there was a historic house on the property.

He responded by saying that it was planned for demolition once he acquired the property, but that if someone wanted to come move it, he would donate it to them.

John Bethea, another vocal opponent of the proposed law, has taken a strong and emotional stand against the proposed law.

“This is very important for the citizens of Fairhope and my children and my children’s children,” he said. “The main reason is freedom of expression and to have future vision to do things for themselves that they won’t be able to do if we have a historical town where they can’t have their dreams.”

He owns Fairhope Real Estate Co. and recently constructed a building where a restaurant opened that was once the Tumble Inn.

Bethea is also part owner in the adjacent Village Square building that burned last year, and once housed the city’s old movie theater.

In an interview with The Courier, Bethea said there are only about a half dozen true historical buildings in downtown Fairhope.

“This town’s not old enough to have any history,” he said. “The town’s not that old, and the things they did here were just thrown up, and there’s not any real architectural value for most of them.”

Barrett took issue with Bethea’s statements about historic properties in the city, stating that federal and state standards define historic buildings as 50 and 40 years old respectively.

“For somebody like John, whom I grew up with, for him to define (historic) for his own self-benefit to me is a little unethical,” he said.

Bethea said it was not unethical for him to oppose the law because the Village Square building which he does plan to demolish and redevelop has already been condemned following the fire, which consumed and gutted it last year.

Barrett also criticized Bethea for his handling of the Tumble Inn building.

“The Tumble Inn was a historic building and showed the early architecture and style and was there when history was being made in Fairhope,” Barrett said. “When he tore it down, we all threw our hands in the air and said gosh we’re losing another building.”

Bethea said that building was structurally unsound and riddled with termites and unsafe.

“I’ve only taken down one building,” he said. “I’ve fixed up 12 buildings and took down one.”

Bethea said he would be at the Monday public hearing to make his case against the proposed law.

“We lose at least one historic house or building a year,” Barrett said. “They’re definitely historic buildings and important to the history of Fairhope.”

Read letters to the editor about the proposed ordinance in the May 6 edition of The Fairhope Courier.