By JEN DEGREGORIO
Daily Record Business Writer
http://daily-record-baltimore.vlex.com/vid/baltimore-neighborhood-set-demolition-68702991
Clarence “Tony” Brown will pack up his belongings next year and move from the home he has lived in for more than the 40 years on Carrollton Avenue in Poppleton, a West Baltimore neighborhood long associated with crime and disinvestment. Brown’s home is one of about 500 properties set for demolition in the neighborhood as part of a $100 million campaign by the Baltimore Department of Housing and Community Development to replace Poppleton’s blighted housing with a vibrant neighborhood full of shops and homeowners.
“I think in order for the neighborhood to get better, some changes have to take place. So being relocated is not a problem,” Brown said. “Fixing a house here, a house there, it’s not as good as taking entire blocks that can be changed and rebuilt.” Brown believes drastic changes are needed to shock people into a new vision of Poppleton, which is separated from Baltimore’s much-heralded West Side renaissance by Martin Luther King Boulevard, a heavily traveled highway that has prevented development from crossing over.
Such change is already under way. Spurred in part by the city’s $100 million redevelopment plan, the University of Maryland, Baltimore is spending $300 million to construct a six-building biotech campus in the neighborhood. Maryland’s main campus is on the opposite side of MLK Boulevard. With so much money being spent in Poppleton, developers, who have long dismissed it as just another Baltimore slum, are giving the neighborhood a second look. “People who wouldn’t speak to me three years ago are ringing my number,” said Doris Hall, a volunteer for Poppleton Village Community Development Corp. “Now you see people that want to come in and do things in the neighborhood,” said Brown, who is vice chairman of the Poppleton association.
Spotting potential
Chyla Evans, a managing member of Dix Street LLC, is one developer who recently discovered Poppleton’s potential to be the next city hotspot. “We read about the biotech center and all the development coming into that area, so that became a targeted area for us to look at,” Evans said. “It’s totally a transitional area, and when you really look, it’s like an onion.” Dix Street plans to begin construction next year on 50 to 60 market-rate condominiums on the 1100 block of West Baltimore Street in Poppleton. The development will include 35,000 square feet of ground-level retail. “When you see projects like Camden Crossing, where they’re doing townhomes for $450,000 to $500,000, you know that there’s a market,” Evans said of the 150-unit housing development just south of Poppleton. “We feel as though that is what is needed because of the type of jobs that are coming into the biotech center.”
Beyond the boarded townhouses and store fronts, Evans sees a renaissance waiting to happen on the other side of the MLK. Evans and others are realizing that neighborhoods such as Poppleton have virtually the same amenities that spurred investment downtown.
“We’re so close to Camden Yards, the [Baltimore and Ohio] railroad museum,” she said. “We’re right in the thick of things,” including Interstate 95, she said. “When you see Hollins Market and the amount of commerce that goes on there, it’s amazing to see that development hasn’t taken place already,” she said.
Dix Street is not the only company looking to capitalize on Poppleton’s future development. “We’ve had a couple of developers in here looking to discuss the neighborhood in a number of ways,” said Robert Pipik, director of asset management for the city housing department. “They were trying to read the tea leaves about the future of the community.” Pipik said Consolidated Investment and Management Group LLC is interested in building homes on West Pratt Street. Other developments likely will be announced in the coming months, he said, all of which are inspired by investments by the city and the University of Maryland. The city’s $100 million initiative will be built in phases over the course of five to eight years by New York-based developer La Cité.
“When you see $100 million coming into the community, that’s so big people can see it,” said Darin Hall, executive director of Poppleton Village Community Development.
Poppleton had no difficulty convincing a developer from Washington to transform 1 N. Carey St., an abandoned Young Women’s Christian Association building that the group recently purchased. The developer likely will convert the building into a school, Hall said. But the interest would not have come without the visibility of projects such as the biopark. “I think what’s making it happen now is that the timing is right. The politicians want to see this happen. The investors have the capital … the community has worked together and it’s all coming together,” he said. “It’s got everybody fired up again … it has increased the speed in which things are happening,” he said.
The Displaced
But Poppleton’s revitalization does not come without sacrifice. Brown is one of about 130 homeowners and renters who will lose their homes to facilitate La Cité’s development. Yet, according to Brown and Doris Hall, most neighbors due not rue the loss. “Poppleton’s Village Center board has worked since 1995 to help correct large amounts of abandoned property,” Doris Hall said. Now “they see some light at the end of the tunnel.” “I think most people, if they lived there for a while, they would want to see change,” Brown said. “They want to see the community get better.”
While new development might kick some people out of their long-time homes, it will hopefully revitalize the 132 vacant buildings and 475 vacant lots the housing department says plague Poppleton. Darin Hall thinks real estate deals are so far being done the right way. “People who are coming from outside the community are talking to people in the community to do deals, not just to get rich but to do something that will be good for the community,” he said.
Pipik said the housing department plans to make about 20 percent the La Cité homes affordable to renters and homeowners who are making 80 percent or less of the area’s median income. Relocated residents will be given first consideration to move into new affordable units, Pipik said. New investment is also expected to add value back to Poppleton’s housing stock. The median home price of a Poppleton home was $59,000 last year and plummeted to about $47,900 in the first quarter of 2005, according to statistics by Live Baltimore, a nonprofit that promotes city living. Meanwhile, the city’s average home price has increased by about 65 percent since 2000, standing at about $131,000 during the first quarter of this year. “In a lot of ways your homeowners in the neighborhood are very strongly buffered from gentrification,” he said. “Even though your house may triple in value over night, because the University of Maryland came into your neighborhood, doesn’t mean your tax bill will triple,” Pipik said, explaining the city law that caps the amount of tax escalation homeowners can receive on their properties each year. “What you’re really left with are the market-rate renters … and those folks are the ones who bear the brunt of exposure to the market,” Pipik said. “In our planning we’re hoping to bring … some mix of affordability that we think will help to buffer the loss of affordable units on the market-rate side,” he said.
More importantly, the biotech park is expected to bring jobs which will be walkable to those in the Poppleton neighborhood. Springboard retail and other investment in the neighborhood will also create jobs, Pipik said. “We want to see improved housing, jobs. We want schools. We want recreation facilities, things for elderly people – the same thing that any other healthy community wants,” Darin Hall said. “What we’re trying to create is an environment that is good for everyone,” he said. “We want to make it so the people there can enjoy the resurgence of the neighborhood,” he said. “I think that it’s a good thing,” Brown said. “I think Poppleton’s time has come.”