A Gainesville developer wants to build a 116-room hotel, with a bar and restaurant, behind the 169-year-old Prince Avenue antebellum mansion that has housed University of Georgia presidents since 1949. Plans are to preserve the house with some interior modifications.

Having divested itself of the houses for the University System of Georgia chancellor, and the presidents of Augusta University, Georgia Tech and Georgia State, the Board of Regents voted in 2023 to sell the President’s House, known by preservationists as the Grant-Hill-White-Bradshaw House. Charles Knapp, who left UGA in 1997, was the last president to live there full-time during his tenure.

A year later, the regents set a price of $5.1 million for the house. According to officials with the Board of Regents, “Any purchaser i

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