A last-minute appeal by Athens band Drive-By Truckers' frontman Patterson Hood to local real estate development firm Landmark Properties to extend a Tuesday deadline for moving his early-1900s house on East Broad Street has failed.

Hood sold the house to the company prior to his family's recent move to Portland, Oregon.

Landmark Properties President and CEO Wes Rogers has, however, offered to sell the house and its quarter-acre lot at 920 E. Broad St. back to Hood for the $800,000 the company paid for the property a few months ago.

"You can then do whatever you would like with the house," Rogers told Hood in a Tuesday afternoon email.

In that same email, Rogers says that while Landmark's immediate plan, through its subsidiary Pottery Town LLC, is to use the house as rental property, if Landmark should ever decide to develop the property "we would gladly allow someone ... to move the house. In fact, we would make any reasonable accommodations to make that happen rather than merely tearing down the house. I believe this is the outcome we all want."

Rogers' email came in response to a widely distributed early Tuesday email in which Hood and his wife, Rebecca, asked Rogers and Landmark Vice President and Chief Operating Officer James Whitley to "show your support of the moving of the house by granting Orange Twin [a local conservation community that had hoped to move the house to its property in northern Athens-Clarke County and preserve it there] an inclement weather extension in order to get the house moved."

Rogers' email contends "an extension is impracticable at this time," and says Landmark "incurred significant costs and efforts to accommodate the move within the negotiated window" and further noted "no action was taken to move the house for almost a month following the sale." Rogers also wrote Landmark "cannot continue to divert our resources to monitoring the move and managing our risk here (including ensuring that licensed and insured contractors are being employed, making sure everyone who enters the Property has signed the properties Access & Indemnity Agreements, etc.)."

Laura Carter of Orange Twin said Tuesday that representatives of the community presented Landmark with a plan to have the house moved by Jan. 22, but got nowhere with requests for an extension of the Jan. 5 deadline.

"We kept asking for extensions, and they kept refusing," she said.

The recent days of heavy rains forced Orange Twin to delay its plans for moving the house, for a couple of reasons. First, moving the house requires removing the roof, which would expose the plaster inside the structure to water damage from falling rain. Also, wet ground makes it difficult for the heavy equipment needed to move the house to access both the East Broad Street site it occupies and the site being prepared for the house at Orange Twin.

In rebuffing the Hoods' plea for an extension of the deadline for getting the house moved, Rogers writes in his email that Landmark "fulfilled all our contractual obligations" with regard to the sale "including paying you $800,000 for a house that was assessed for $180,000 and that you paid $78,000 for, according to public records."

Landmark Properties is the developer of The Mark, a mixed-use project that will include student housing along with retail and office space, now rising on nine acres in the eastern edge of downtown Athens. Landmark's Pottery Town subsidiary has recently bought a number of residential properties in the immediate area, including the Hood house, with plans to use them as rental properties, Rogers said Tuesday.

In their email to Rogers and Whitley, the Hoods wrote their "top priority ... is the preservation of this house that my wife and I have renovated and lovingly restored and protected for the last sixteen years. ... Getting the house moved was the intention and basis for agreeing to sell our property in the first place. We have stated this as our utmost concern at every point in the process ever since you first came to us nearly a year ago."

While the house is approximately a century old, it is not designated as historic, nor is it in a historic district, but it is in an area the county's current comprehensive plan identifies as a potential local historic district.

Carter said Tuesday "Orange Twin doesn't feel tricked" by Landmark Properties in connection with the deal for getting the house off the quarter-acre 920 E. Broad St. lot. Orange Twin knew it was dealing with a very short deadline, and that time pressure was further complicated by the many recent days of heavy rain, Carter explained.

But, Carter added, Landmark Properties "could have been nice if they wanted to" in connection with extending the deadline for moving the house.

"Athens has certainly been nice to them," Carter said.