Luther Spruill bends over the gutter in front of his Remington home, scooping up litter with a broom and snow shovel as cars speed past on a steamy recent morning.
In three decades on this well-traveled block, the 74-year-old retired machinist has watched the neighborhood fall in and out of blight.
"I've seen them move in and I've seen them move out," says Spruill. "It boiled down that there weren't but three families left up and down this street, but now everybody's building it back up."
With that growth has come conflict: Crisscrossed by railroad tracks and thoroughfares, the former mill town now is divided by ideology.
Differences over a proposed Walmart store have revealed a rift between rival community organizations and their competing visions for the up-and-coming neighborhood.
The Remington Neighborhood Association and the Greater Remington Improvement Association share concerns about traffic, but they differ in their approach to dealing with the developers. A coalition of businesses and residents, meanwhile, is leading the fight against the project, saying that the neighborhood needs more small businesses.
A complex, sprawling community, Remington lacks the eclectic shopping and dining attractions of neighboring Hampden, or the Victorian charm of nearby Charles Village. But it boasts one of the city's most racially and socioeconomically diverse populations, drawing youthful artists, working-class families and college professors.
Within a few blocks of Spruill's home sits the stone building where the reality show "Ace of Cakes" is filmed and the rowhouse known as "The Zoo," where local and national musicians play shows in the basement.
But the most talked-about building in Remington is one that exists only in architectural drawings: the Walmart store that has been proposed for the current site of Anderson Automotive. It is the subject of a zoning hearing this evening.
While some residents say they welcome a convenient place to shop, other fear the store — and the influx of traffic it is likely to bring — will upend the neighborhood's delicate balance and stymie efforts to build a cohesive community.
For a decade, the Remington Neighborhood Alliance, headed by the wife-and-husband team of Joan Floyd and Doug Armstrong, has advocated passionately for maintaining the community's character.
But a group of younger activists has formed a rival organization — the Greater Remington Improvement Association — which members say is more focused on encouraging strategic development while preserving the neighborhood's character.
"We think an active corner is safer than an inactive one," says GRIA founder Eric Imhoff, 27, over coffee at the Sweet Sin Bakery — itself the source of a continuing zoning battle, and one that highlights the differences between the two groups.
The newer organization supports the effort of the gluten-free bakery and vegetarian cafe to get a liquor license. The older group, suspecting that the license would quickly be passed to another establishment, does not.
"Adults already have enough places to play," says Joan Floyd, 54, in between sips of tea at the New Wyman Park Restaurant, a Remington institution on 25th Street. "Fundamentally, we need to be more mindful of making Remington more family-friendly, more kid-friendly."
The two organizations also differ in their approach on the $65 million 25th Street Station project, the development that includes the Walmart on a 11.5-acre plot not far from the restaurant.
Imhoff's group has teamed up with the Charles Village Community Association and the Old Goucher Community Association to hash out issues over traffic, lighting and the aesthetics with developers WV Urban Developments LLC, headed by Rick Walker.
But Floyd's group has not been part of those discussions, choosing instead to present its concerns at public meetings.
"We are our own entity," says Floyd, who has studied the city's zoning code so thoroughly she consults for lawyers on zoning issues. "We can speak with the developer and work with the city, but we're not going to join the development team."
Imhoff, who holds a graduate degree in community arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, works as a community organizer for Banner Neighborhoods, a Southeast Baltimore nonprofit. He helped form the Greater Remington Improvement Association shortly after moving to the neighborhood a few years ago.
"I'd come home to Remington and think I really need to get stuff started here," he says.
Since then, the group has organized block parties, art classes, mural paintings and Halloween events. Members have cut down invasive plants along Wyman Park, planted blueberry bushes by a 7-Eleven store and helped set up a community garden on an empty lot on Fox Street — a stone's throw from a tiny park maintained by Floyd's group.
The Remington Neighborhood Alliance, which marked its 10th anniversary this week, was founded after the owner of the Paper Moon Diner announced plans to open a nightclub called The Inferno. The plans were eventually shelved, but residents galvanized by the episode formed a community group.
Floyd, a familiar presence at city spending and zoning board meetings, has battled developers and city officials on dozens of projects since then. Her group fought successfully for a police building on 28th Street to be zoned to only allow public use in the future; she dreams that an elementary school will one day open there.
Neither Remington group is fighting the development project — which appears to have the backing of many residents — but a third organization is spearheading the campaign against Walmart.
Benn Ray, president of the Hampden Merchants' Association and a Remington resident, leads Bmore Local, which is slated to hold a rally in front of City Hall this afternoon to protest the Walmart store.
Benn Ray, president of the Hampden Merchants' Association and a Remington resident, is the founder of Bmore Local, which is slated to hold a rally in front of City Hall this afternoon to protest the Walmart store. The group is not opposed to Walmart in theory, but it has asked that the city require national chain businesses that move into the development to adhere to certain regulations, including paying workers the state living wage and hiring a majority of residents from within a 5-mile radius.
Ray, the owner of Atomic Books in Hampden, sees small businesses such as the Mill Valley Garden Center and Farmers' Market and the Open Space — an auto repair shop turned artist lofts, gallery and performance space — as hopeful signs for the neighborhood. He would like to see Remington become more connected to its artier neighbors, such as Hampden and Charles Village.
"I would like to see the locally owned independent business model that Hampden has become known for grow throughout Remington," says Ray.
And Ray is not alone. Filmmaker John Waters, the grand master of Baltimore's quirks, has spoken out against the Walmart, warning that it would kill Remington's potential as a "hipster neighborhood."
Perhaps it's only appropriate that residents have so many different takes on the Walmart project, since the neighborhood is characterized by diversity. According to the 2000 Census, about two-thirds of residents are white and one-third black, making it one of the city's more racially diverse neighborhoods.
And, because many properties are zoned for business or industrial uses, small workshops and warehouses sit side-by-side with century-old rowhouses.
The 85-year-old Baltimore Glass Co. sits across the street from the rowhouse in the 300 block of 27th Street that MacGregor Burns, a musician and Johns Hopkins graduate, bought two years ago.
Bands from around the country have played in the basement of Burns' 1920's-era rowhouse while passing through Baltimore. The neighbors don't mind the noise, Burns says, because he and several other new residents moved in around the time some drug dealers moved out.
Two blocks away, on Huntingdon Avenue, Abdul Aziz says that he is trying to sell his International Grocery Market after a string of robberies and near-constant shoplifting.
He grinds ice for snowballs in front of his small shop, which sells halal meats, pizza and snacks. Just hours earlier, Aziz says, he discovered that someone had palmed two bottles of snowball syrup.
Earlier this summer, temperatures rose in the store, causing the candy to melt. When Aziz went to check the air conditioning, he discovered that the entire $3,000 system had been stolen.
Across the street, Shirley Milstred, 48, sits on the steps of her father's home, watching her grandson ride his bicycle. A few doors up, girls jump rope and take turns pulling each other in a wagon.
Milstred, a lifelong Remington resident, lives a couple of blocks away on Miles Avenue, but said she doesn't feel safe sitting in front of her own house.
Like many residents, Milstred says she welcomes the Walmart store, part of a complex planned to include a Lowe's home store, restaurants, smaller shops and housing.
The grandmother of nine says she often drives to Dundalk to shop at Walmart. An elderly relative takes a shuttle bus and light rail several times a week to visit the chain's Hunt Valley outlet, she says.
On 28th Street, Jeffrey Blake sits on his porch with Sable, his affable black Lab. An antique sign advertising Schlitz beer decorates his porch; empty beer cans and bottles festoon a bush on his front lawn.
Blake says he feels far from safe in the home where he has lived for his entire 48 years. When he sits on the porch, he keeps a handgun strapped to his belt.
When he was growing up his parents, and grandparents, who lived next door, left their homes unlocked at night.
But when older residents died, Blake says, drug dealers slowly began to take over patches of the neighborhood.
He sees the the influx of younger homeowners, and plans for the new shopping center, as signs that Remington might be on the upswing.
"I'm hoping that within the next 10 years, the neighborhood is going to make a comeback," he says. "I plan on being here until I die, and I'd like to see it go back to the way it was."
julie.scharper@baltsun.com
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