The Demopolis City Council voted to rezone the historic Foscue House property on Highway 80 for a hotel at their June 4 meeting.
The property was already zoned for a hotel of more than 10 rooms with a connected lobby. The new zoning will allow the owners to construct four new high-end cottage buildings with eight suites (two per building) that will operate as hotel-stye accommodations. The Foscue House itself will be converted into a small hotel.
“This project is designed as a boutique hotel experience that will complement The Cedars while preserving the historic integrity of the Foscue House,” owner Tiffany Ground-Naisbett said in an email to the Black Belt News Network.
According to the historical marker on the property, the Foscue House was built in 1840 for Augustus Foscue, a North Carolina native who owned more than 3,000 acres in Marengo County by 1850. Foscue’s daughter married the son of Gen. Nathan Bryan Whitfield of nearby Gaineswood Plantation.
The Foscue House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. You can read more about the property here.
A restaurant operated in the house until recently.
In other business, the council was told that citizen volunteers will be collecting data on air, light and noise pollution in Demopolis.
Portia Shepherd of Black Belt Women Rising told the council that her organization is working with Brown University in Rhode Island to collect pollution information that will serve as a historical baseline.
The research is funded by the Dogwood Alliance through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, according to Shepherd.
Shepherd said she was informing the council of the project “out of respect, so you’ll know what’s going on in your community.”
This story was edited to correct an earlier version that said the Focue property would be used for short-term rentals rather than a hotel.
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