Instead of being redeveloped as luxury rowhouses with whirlpool baths, roof decks and granite countertops, a troubled East Baltimore block that city officials say has "the highest concentration of blight in the city" will be leveled and replaced with a vacant lot until a new plan is proposed.
The city plans today to begin demolishing 67 houses on the 1900 block of Perlman Place, once the site of a proposed $18 million redevelopment plan that the city encouraged by having the block declared a historic district.
But Charles T. Jeffries, the Baltimore developer who pitched the project to the city, falsified documents and never had the funds to complete it, according to documents prepared by Baltimore housing officials and obtained by The Baltimore Sun.
It was the final straw for the city, which after 10 years of dealing with delays and other problems with the project sought permission late last year to demolish most of the block, a major reversal from the decision eight years before to preserve it.
"The unanimous opinion, excluding perhaps Mr. Jeffries, was that it's just not feasible to renovate these properties under any economic model," said Baltimore Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano.
Investigators hired by the city concluded last month that Jeffries had invented a fictitious Alabama-based venture capital firm and signed a letter to the city pledging funds for the project with a made-up name —pairing his own first name with his mother's maiden name, Pollard.
The city owns 51 of the 67 properties it plans to knock down. Eleven properties on the block were once owned by companies controlled by Jeffries. According to city officials, the city had planned to sell dozens of properties to Jeffries if his redevelopment plan had moved forward.
But in January, tired of waiting for the project to progress, Baltimore housing officials asked the city's Commission for Historical & Architectural Preservation for permission to demolish almost the entire block, in spite of the historic designation.
The preservation commission has the power to grant exceptions for historic properties that it says have lost their "historic integrity," according Kathleen Kotarba, the commission's executive director. She said it had become no longer important to preserve Perlman Place — which was originally protected because it "met the criteria" for historic designation, including being more than 100 years old — because of mounting safety concerns reported by Baltimore housing officials, including vermin, drug use in the vacant homes and illegal trash dumping.
"Since [the area was made a historic district], there's been more abandonment in the block. A lot of the properties have been opened to casual entry. There has a been a lot of crime," she said. "Because of these unusual circumstances, we decided that it was the best interest of the community to approve this demolition."
Michael Braverman, the Department of Housing and Community Development's director of code enforcement, said that the city had decided to demolish the block after meeting with architect Donald Kann, chair of the preservation commission, about a year ago. Their priority, he said, was to solve the blight problem on Perlman Place in a way that did not set a precedent by revoking the area's historic status — which has never been done in the state.
Jeffries, who runs a company called Center Development Corp., presented a plan to Baltimore's Commission for Historical & Architectural Preservation at a hearing in March after hearing about the demolition plan.
Among other documents, Jeffries provided the commission with a copy of a financing letter dated Jan. 29 from Phoenix Venture Capital, which pledged more than $18 million to the project for acquisition and construction, as well as a breakdown of the project's costs per unit. It was signed by "Charles Pollard."
But Braverman said Baltimore housing officials were not able to verify the letter as authentic, and after an investigation found that the address used by Phoenix referred to a vacant building in Birmingham, Ala., and the name "Pollard" referred to Emma Pollard, Jefferies's mother.
Jeffries could be reached for comment. A phone call to the number listed for Phoenix Venture Capital was not answered.
On Thursday, the 1900 block of Perlman Place was mostly vacant, with 69 houses either boarded up or gutted and awaiting the wrecking ball, and six well-maintained, inhabited houses.
Sherina Gerringer, 24, pays $650 per month to rent a house in the 1900 block of Perlman Place with her six children and her boyfriend, Raymond Moyd, 29. She said that squatters in neighboring houses had broken into her house and stolen a television, a toilet and a shower head, and that rats had eaten through parts of the house's ceiling.
But Moyd said that the neighborhood, despite the vacant properties, is "very peaceful." Still, he said, his previous rental home a block away on Patterson Park Avenue was a "better" place to live because there were more neighbors.
Sherrie T. Howell, a Baltimore family law attorney, owns a double-wide house in the same block of Perlman Place, which was renovated by Jeffries' company before she bought it in 1999. She said her house qualified for historic tax credits but that the demolition of the block will hurt her.
"Quite frankly, I believe that the city has, for whatever reason, determined that they don't want Center Development or Mr. Jeffries to do the development," she said Thursday. "I don't know what their ax is to grind with Mr. Jeffries, but they have one. … If the city continues with their plan [to demolish the houses], I'm going to end up being instead of in a completely renovated community, I'm going to end up living next to more blight."
Others think the demolition is a good idea.
Angela S. Epps, a city employee who owns a home around the corner from the block on East North Avenue, said she first began to be concerned about the safety of the block in 2002, when she caught two of her sons playing in vacant houses.
"I don't think it takes any renovation or redevelopment plan eight years to complete a first phase," she said of Jeffries' plan. "The whole vision, I thought, was beautiful, but for it to remain stagnant for so long, it speaks for itself. We have to stabilize the community first."
Lottie Sneed, a senior organizer with BUILD Baltimore, a community group that supports the city's plan to level the block, said her organization had been working with the communities surrounding Perlman Place for three years trying to fight blight and clean up the streets.
"They've faced a lot of devastation. A lot of illegal dumping, safety concerns all around," she said. "We're trying to look at a way that we could try to help the neighborhood for the better, and sometimes you have to start all over again."