The city ordered work halted on demolition on the site of a planned apartment project in Baltimore’s Woodberry neighborhood and the developer and the architect quit the job because they said they were not warned the owner would raze a pair of 1840s-era stone houses that had been incorporated into the design.
A bright orange legal notice was duct-taped to a “no trespassing” sign at 3511 Clipper Road by Wednesday night. It read “STOP WORK” with three reasons: no proper water source, no proper signage and no first day of demolition.
Councilman Leon F. Pinkett III, who represents the area, found out Wednesday afternoon that the notice had been posted.
The councilman has been pushing to get answers since a neighbor called him Tuesday about the demolition. Pinkett visited the site immediately and called city inspectors and said the property owners will be held accountable for any possible violations.
“It doesn’t bring back the two buildings that were demolished, but at least it stops the process,” the councilman said about the notice. “And it gives inspectors the opportunity to figure out what process was or was not in place when demolition occurred.”
Now that the stop work notice has been posted, Pinkett said, inspectors will be on site to meet with the demolition contractor to determine if the proper protocol was implemented.
City inspectors issued citations against the property owner and the demolition contractor Wednesday for not posting notice, not getting an on-site inspection before starting and having an insufficient water supply. The owner was fined $3,000 and the contractor was fined $1,000.
Citations, however, won’t make up for the loss of the houses or trust with the community, said Pinkett, who arranged and attended several meetings with developers in Woodberry and had talked regularly with developer Christopher Mfume and owner Katherine Jennings about the apartment project.
Pinkett learned from a Sun reporter that Mfume left the project and said clearly someone else “had a bigger say” on demolition.
Now, Pinkett says, owners and new developers will have to start over.
“They might want to reach out to me,” he said. “I’m quite sure there are some issues that have to be taken care of to move forward. I hope they don’t think the city will just now allow them to arbitrarily change these plans and move on as if nothing happened. Absolutely, the community will have some input.”
The abrupt demolition of the two houses on Clipper Road surprised the local councilman and infuriated neighbors, who had waged an ostensibly successful yearlong fight to save the historic houses — until a crew with bulldozers began tearing them down without warning Tuesday morning.
In a statement, Mfume, who owns CLD Partners, initially framed the decision to knock down the houses as a financial one. But in a follow-up statement later that night, he said the call had been made “without my prior knowledge or my consent,” and his company was leaving the project.
“I was not aware that a decision had been made,” Mfume said. “Had I been aware, I would have gone through the proper channels and spoken directly with the Woodberry Community Association, as I have done previously.