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During the September 21, 2021 Bainbridge City Council meeting, the Council heard and accepted a bid of $81,250.00 from Three Dog Enterprises, LLC for the Cooper House, located on Shotwell Street.

Prior to being purchased by Three Dog Enterprises, LLC, the house had been transferred to the Downtown Development Authority by the First Baptist Church in an Intergovernmental Agreement. Following the property transfer, the house was then moved to the lot adjacent to it, making way for the church’s proposed green space.

Once moved, it was put on the market for bids.

Rollins Miller of Three Dog Enterprises, LLC said he and his co-investors bid on the property because they wanted Downtown Bainbridge to be a place where people wanted to live.

“We want to give people a high quality product,” Miller said. “There’s no higher quality product than one built with timbers over 100 years ago.”

Miller is no stranger to restoring historic properties and making them a desirable place to call home.

“Ten years ago, I was restoring a house on Evans Street, when no one else was restoring,” he said. “Now, we are doing the Planter Street project, which will eventually have six houses. We are renovating basically that whole street from Downtown to Scott Street.”

With a lot of experience now under his belt, Miller has taken on the Cooper House project.

He pulled the original Blueprint maps from the Courthouse, which showed the home still has the original floorplan.

When moving the house, part of the back was taken off. However, no original feature was taken off; it was a kitchen that was later added onto the home.

Miller said he does believe they will now have to add a kitchen, along with a driveway.

“We aren’t going to use that Porte-cochere on the right side,” he said. “The cars of today aren’t built for that size.”

Other than those additions, Miller plans to keep the home’s original integrity.

“It’s going to look like it does now, with a new coat of paint on it,” he said. “We want it to look historically appropriate.”

Miller also intends to repair the roof and add a form of covered parking, although not a garage.
Miller stated the house was in surprisingly good shape.

“It needs a lot less than I was expecting,” he said. “That’s the cool thing about buying an old house; most everything is already there.”

Miller did admit that they will probably run new electrical and plumbing, along with remove walls that were put in place, when the home served as several apartments.

“It will be turned into a single family home,” he said. “It has three or four bedrooms.”

Miller is excited to see the final product and make downtown a safe and enjoyable place to live.

“We want to have more people live in existing housing, instead of tearing down things to make something new,” he said.

Miller is also thankful First Baptist was still able to get their green space.

“We want to be good neighbors to them and give them something they can be proud to say is next to their church,” he said.

The house will be marketed and sold by Premier Group Realty. At this time, there is no set day for it to go on the market.