Baltimore housing officials laid out plans yesterday to tear down six high-rise apartment buildings at Lafayette Courts next spring, the first stage of an ambitious agenda to overhaul the city's most outdated and dangerous public housing projects.
The city will begin demolishing the worn, cramped towers in April to replace them with modern rowhouses under a plan approved last night by the Board of Housing Commissioners.
Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III hopes eventually to level the public high-rises at Lexington Terrace, Flag House and Murphy Homes as well in a $293 million program that would be financed by the federal, state and city governments. His goal is to transform the projects into modern communities, with garden apartments, day-care centers and health clinics.
Families will begin moving in February from the 807 apartments at Lafayette Courts, a development of six high-rise and 17 low-rise buildings near the main Post Office in East Baltimore.
Only three of the low-rise buildings are scheduled to remain under the plan that still must receive final approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The decision to tear down the high-rises came hours after the city demolished a block of privately owned vacant houses in West Baltimore's Penn North community. A house in the 1500 block of Retreat St. was also razed. In October, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke declared that he was fed up with absentee landlords allowing properties to languish until they became too costly to repair.
He issued an ultimatum to landlords: Either fix up the houses or the city will tear them down. Mayor Schmoke says he wants to rid Baltimore of its growing inventory of vacant houses that will soon reach 8,000.
The target of the program, never tried before on a citywide scale in Baltimore, is vacant homes such as the ones on the 1400 block of Traction St. owned by R. William Connolly, a landlord whose properties have been cited for numerous housing violations.
"We've wanted this for a long time," said Helen Bradford, who has lived in the area for some 70 years, as she watched the wrecking crew demolish the vacant rowhouses.
Baltimore's long-awaited plans for eliminating its squalid public high rises got a boost a year ago with $50 million federal grant. The city Housing Authority also has lined up a $15 million HUD grant and $10 million from the state for the Lafa
yette Court redevelopment, but still needs more money to raze the sixth high-rise building.
The rebuilt Lafayette Courts will have about 400 apartments, including 109 one-bedroom units reserved for the elderly and 18 for teen-age mothers.
The other half of the tenants will be moved into public housing scattered across the city to reduce the heavy concentration of poverty, said Estella Alexander, chief assistant to the commissioner.
Ms. Alexander unveiled a blueprint last night that showed 210 traditional Baltimore rowhouses with yards in what is now the high-rise "Superblock."
In the middle block, the low-rise buildings will be replaced with new apartments for seniors and unwed mothers, while those in the eastern block will be renovated into 36 family units.
The plan also calls for a day-care center, recreation area and job training program.