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The news broke last August that Kisco Senior Living had bought for $9.9 million the former Pilot Life Insurance headquarters, once one of North Carolina’s architecture and landscape marvels.

Resembling a prep school, the buildings and grounds have been unused since Pilot merged with sister company, Jefferson Standard Life Insurance. The merged company is now part of Lincoln National.

Kisco, a Carlsbad, Calif., chain, whose retirement centers include Heritage Green and Abbotswood at Irving Park, said $99 million would be spent converting the old Pilot headquarters.

A year later, those assigned to park behind the Pilot buildings for the recent Wyndham Championship golf tournament at Sedgefield Country Club noticed, as they had the previous year, the once meticulously kept grounds are weedy and the buildings have broken windows.

Because of the lack of noticeable activity and the inability to reach Kisco, Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro, decided to keep the Pilot on its annual watch list of historic structures that may be threatened.

The list appears in the latest issues of PGI’s publication, Landmarks.

Other sites include the Masonic Temple, War Memorial Stadium and the UNCG dorm quad.

“I couldn’t get the confirmation I needed to take it off the watch list,” Briggs says of the Pilot property, on the list since PGI started it in 2005.

Kisco executive Mitch Brown says about the Pilot property and its inclusion on the watch list: Just watch.

A few weeks ago, the company held a get-acquainted dinner with Sedgefield members. The club’s entrance is across High Point Road from the old Pilot.

Brown says the past year has been devoted to developing a concept plan and other preliminary details. Accepting refundable deposits for units at the complex could start in early 2010.

He promises the final design will keep the Pilot’s three original buildings, dating to 1927, and incorporate them into the overall complex.

“We want to keep that vista that everyone sees from the High Point Road,” Brown says.

Kisco also has the Pilot property (the company is open to suggestions for a name) on its Web site, citing the beauty of the setting and such extras as being across the road from a PGA Tour event.

Brown says by telephone from California that new structures will be built on open land behind the three original buildings. It’s an area where some of Pilot’s additions were built in later years. It can’t be seen from High Point Road.

He says focus groups are planned for Sedgefield to give residents a chance to have a say about the project.

“We recognize the historic significance of these buildings to Greensboro. Everyone has a Pilot story,” he says, mentioning recollections of Pilot’s jingle, “Sail with the Pilot,” and its nativity scene, which thousands drove up the Pilot’s entrance to see.

Brown says that features that are distinctively Pilot will be saved in the three original buildings. Workers poking around discovered an employees’ theater covered up during a renovation. Original architectural drawings also were found.

As he did with other projects, long-ago Pilot President A.W. McAlister hired the best for what Briggs believes was the first suburban office headquarters in North Carolina.

McAlister had the Georgian-style buildings done by a prestigious Philadelphia architectural firm, which also did the Philadelphia Art Museum, whose steps Rocky climbed in the movie.

Renowned Philadelphia landscaper Robert Cridland did the grounds. Earlier, McAlister had used Cridland and another famous landscaper, John Nolen of Cambridge, Mass., to design Irving Park.

McAlister also developed Sedgefield using America’s best-known golf course architect, Donald Ross.

Told of Brown’s assurances, Briggs expressed elation that the project is alive and developers are sensitive to preservation needs.

“This could result in something unique to Greensboro and North Carolina,” he said. “If only all preservation projects were like this.”

Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or beale1@clearwire.net