Baltimore has agreed to a $2.4 million purchase of the Fishmarket -- clearing the way for its conversion to a children's museum and removing a major obstacle to redeveloping the Market Place area.
The city is scheduled to take title next week to the property, which has been vacant since a nightclub complex there abruptly shut its doors nearly six years ago, officials said. That will end years of frustrating efforts by the property's former owner and the city to reopen or find a new buyer for the mammoth building, which lies two blocks from the eastern part of the Inner Harbor.
"It's been a long and difficult process," Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said yesterday. "Hopefully, with the subway stop about to be completed, with the Inner Harbor East development and the Columbus Center opening later this year, the time has really come for that area."
The city hopes the museum, which replaces the now-closed Children's Museum at the Cloisters in Brooklandville, will draw hundreds of thousands of visitors annually and anchor a $30 million National Children's Center. The nearby Brokerage complex, which is mostly vacant, would include shops catering to children and offices for children's advocacy groups, pediatricians and a day care center.
Mr. Schmoke said he would speak to Gov. Parris N. Glendening about supporting a state bond measure to finance part of the estimated $25 million cost of converting the Fishmarket to a museum. Meanwhile, the city will spend $20,000 to board all the building's windows, many of which are broken.
"That has become a terrible eyesore," the mayor said.
The mayor made his comments after the Board of Estimates unanimously approved the Fishmarket's purchase from a local partnership called G.A.A. Inc.
David Fishman, an attorney for G.A.A., said he was "delighted" that the board had approved the deal. He said he foresaw no last-minute problems that could derail it.
Also delighted was Douglas Becker, chairman of Baltimore Children's Museum Inc.
"We're just so excited," he said yesterday. "Very soon you will see the signs of our residency there."
Mr. Becker said the museum was likely to open in 1997, slightly later than the projected date when the move was announced in November. But he said he would push for "the earliest possible date."
The museum group has hired a firm to conduct a nationwide search for an executive to run the museum's daily operations, he said, and has hired Michael Spock, the former head of the acclaimed Boston Children's Museum, as a consultant.
It is also nearing an announcement on an architect and exhibit designer for the project, tentatively called Port Discovery, he said.
Once the city takes title to the Fishmarket, it will negotiate a long-term lease with the museum, said Michele Whelley, executive vice president of the Baltimore Development Corp.
The purchase agreement approved yesterday by the Board of Estimates calls for the city to put up $2 million -- and to lend the children's museum $400,000 toward the purchase price. The museum will repay the loan from a $3 million grant from NationsBank, payable when the museum's doors open, according to interviews and documents.
The appraised value of the property is $1.7 million, documents show.
G.A.A. is a local partnership of local businessmen Jack Stollof and Harvey Nusbaum. G.A.A. acquired the Fishmarket in 1992 by buying a tax lien against the 1906 landmark for $700,000. The former owner, a partnership headed by Boston-based McCourt Co., lost control of the building after failing to pay its property taxes.
The McCourt group bought the building, which for years was the city's main commercial fish market, from the city for $900,000 in 1985. It spent close to $25 million on renovations, opening the building as a nightclub complex in November 1988.
Eight months later, however, McCourt closed the Fishmarket -- and it has remained closed since.