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Community | 15
JUNE 2019 ■ www.ReporterNewspapers.net
Holy Spirit offers to sell
150-year-old house for $1
SPECIAL
The 150-year-old “Sims House” at 844 Mount Paran Road
as it appears on a Google Maps image.
BYJOHNRUCH
johnruch@reportemewspapers.net
Proposing the demolition of a 150-year-
old farmhouse once deemed historic by
Sandy Springs preservationists would be
the hot spot in many a redevelopment dis
pute. In the expansion plan by Holy Spirit
Catholic Church and Preparatory School,
however, it’s just another example of trust
issues that are fueling neighborhood con
troversy.
Some residents say it’s another case of
Holy Spirit breaking old agreements, going
back on a pledge to former nature-loving
owner Ben Sims - the founder of a prom
inent Atlanta History Center garden - to
save the house and its surrounding wood
land. To Holy Spirit, which says there nev
er was such a permanent deal, it’s anoth
er chance to make a new agreement. In
response to Reporter questions about the
house, Holy Spirit offered a new bargain.
“Since there seems to be interest in pre
serving this cottage, the church would be
more than happy to sell the cottage to some
one for Si, on condition that they move it
from the parish property within a specified
period,” a Holy Spirit spokesperson said.
Holy Spirit was scheduled to host a June
6 community meeting at Sandy Springs
City Hall about its proposal to expand its
Buckhead campus at Mount Paran Road
and Northside Drive onto an adjacent San
dy Springs site. The proposal includes re
locating the Lower School from elsewhere
in Sandy Springs, as well as a parking deck
and church-related buildings.
The old Sims property - about 13 acres
of woods - is the expansion site and ground
zero for the debate. The local Northside/
Chastain/Mt Paran Neighborhood Preser
vation Association wants the trees to stay
and says a 2003 legal agreement with Holy
Spirit blocks the expansion. Holy Spirit says
that agreement is no longer valid for tech
nical reasons due to the NPA’s failure to file
state paperwork.
The dispute about the letter and spirit of
agreements goes back to Sims himself, who
sold the property to Holy Spirit. There’s no
question that Holy Spirit once spoke strong
ly about preserving the house and woods,
but there is no sign of a written agreement
to that effect, and community and family
memories differ regarding Sims’s expecta
tions.
Randy Cherry, Sims’s stepson, only re
called a stipulation that the site remain un
developed during Sims’s lifetime. Sims died
in 2006 at the age of 99, according to news
paper obituaries.
“He just didn’t want anything to hap
pen to the house while he was alive,” Cher
ry said.
The history of the house at 844 Mount
Paran is detailed in old newspaper articles
and in a Georgia Historic Resources survey
conducted by the state in the mid-1990s and
now on file at Heritage Sandy Springs.
Sims, who bought the property in 1945,
estimated the house to date to 1868, part
ly based on old newspapers stuffed into its
walls. Local lore said it was built by a fami
ly named Cates as a home for a tenant farm
er, and that its location was chosen by fate
when wagons loaded with construction
lumber got stuck in the mud there. The
house was remodeled in the 1920s by an at
torney who named the nearby Highcourt
Road.
Despite the alterations, the state sur
vey in the 1990s said the house appeared to
meet the criteria for listing on the Nation
al Register of Historic Places. It appear the
house never got any form of official his
toric designation. But it did get a modest,
informal one - a sign dubbing it the Sims
House, erected in the mid-1990s by the His
toric Preservation Committee of the Sandy
Springs Foundation.
Cherry calls it a “cute house” and re
called it as old-fashioned. “It was not mod
ernized whatsoever,” Cherry said. “[It had]
mostly original fixtures. Squeaky wood
floors and hardwood doors.”
Sims lived in the house until his mar
riage in 1987 to Cherry’s mother, Rebec
ca. The couple’s main home was Rebec
ca’s house on Buckhead’s West Paces Ferry
Road. “She had a whole house surrounded
by gardens... She wasn’t going to move into
a little hut with Ben,” Cherry said.
Rebecca Cherry Sims was killed by a gar
dener in a notorious 1989 crime in which
Ben Sims was severely injured.
In 1996, Sims sold the Mount Paran
property to Holy Spirit under terms that
essentially let him remain living there for
the rest of his life. In 2003, he gave over all
rights to the property and moved to Flori
da. The exact sales amount is unclear from
available records, but Holy Spirit says it be
lieves it paid Sims $1.9 million. It’s clear that
both sides talked about the deal in terms of
preservations, but there is no sign of a legal
agreement requiring it.
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