In 65 years of living in Oella, Shirley Mellor has seen the historic village survive three floods and weather the 1972 closing of the woolen mill that employed her, her parents and much of the community.
Now Oella is poised to take on a new challenge.
This month, the Baltimore County zoning commissioner approved Forest City Residential Group's proposal to transform the 194-year-old mill from an eclectic collection of art studios and antique shops into 175 luxury apartments that would rent for as much as $3,000 per month.
Some area residents, particularly those who live in the historic homes surrounding the mill, have complained that the project will forever change the village's character. But Mellor and others who have lived in this community on the southwest edge of Baltimore County for years don't agree. Redeveloping the mill won't rob Oella of its small-town feel, they say. That feel has been eroding for years.
"Oella's still quaint like it used to be, but probably not for much longer," said Mellor, 65, gesturing to a towering 3,000-square-foot house that sits on a ridge next to the row of five brick duplexes on Oella Avenue, where she has lived for 57 years. "The yuppies are moving in."
Since 1984, when Oella was connected to county water and sewer, newcomers have been drawn to the area's historic homes, rural atmosphere and proximity to Baltimore, Howard County and Patapsco Valley State Park.
In the past couple of years, dozens of homes - some three times the size of the original mill houses - have sprouted where trees once grew. And residents such as Bill Meishid report that pickup trucks and compact cars are increasingly being joined by BMW roadsters and chunky SUVs on Oella's twisting, narrow roads.
According to the U.S. Census, the population of Oella and its surrounding area grew from 4,593 people in 1980 to 6,265 in 2000.
"When I first moved here in the mid-'80s, Oella reminded me of a West Virginia hill community," said Meishid, 56, a technical writer who lives in a 190-year-old former cabin on Oella Avenue. "It was a working-class, blue-collar community, more rural than suburban - a place where everybody knew everybody. That's being lost as you have this influx of people who are building $700,000 houses on 3/4 -acre lots."
Many of those who oppose the project have lived in the community a short time - a fact that's not lost on some of the older residents.
Newcomers "who moved into the old houses wanted to keep things the way they were," said Mellor. "I wanted to keep things the way they were before they even moved in."
Charles L. Wagant, a great-grandson of William J. Dickey, the mill's former owner, bought 110 mill properties and the adjacent land in 1973. Wagant rehabilitated the houses and lobbied the county for public water and sewer. For the past few years he has focused on selling off the dozen vacant lots that remain.
Wagant doesn't own the mill, but he points out that in 1988 a different developer had plans to buy the building and turn it into roughly the same number of luxury apartments. Back then, he said, there was no opposition.
"The people who are concerned today weren't here then," said Wagant, who is in his 70s and worked at the mill from the time he graduated from college until it closed. "They came here and bought their houses later.
"There's this feeling when people move into a community they like to have it stay the way it was the moment they moved in," he said.
While not opposed to the mill conversion, Meishid, like many Oella residents, said he is concerned about how Oella's streets - some of which are only 12 to 14 feet wide and have no shoulders - would accommodate the traffic generated by the apartment dwellers. Still, he says that luxury apartments would have less of an impact on the area than a large business.
"It's a big building and they were going to do something with it," he said. "Upscale housing is one way to minimize the impact."
Kelly Clark, an Oella resident since 1988, disagrees. "This is a little neighborhood with little roads," she said. "The plan is just too overpowering for the neighborhood."
Established in 1808 and named for the first woman to spin cotton in America, Oella was the site of Union Manufacturing Co.'s first textile mill in Maryland. The red brick building, situated on the banks of the Patapsco River, is immense - 190,000 square feet spread over seven levels. Clustered around it are the houses built for millworkers by the company - picturesque brick rowhouses adorned with window boxes of petunias, and substantial-looking gray stone duplexes whose exteriors have retained their original appearance over two centuries.
When Lynette Burns and her husband were looking to move out of Fells Point four years ago, they fell in love with Oella's "intimate" and "rural" setting. "We definitely didn't want to live in a cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood," said Burns, who built a yellow Victorian-style house on Race Road that backs up to the state park.
The developer's $26 million plan will overtax area roads, said Burns, a member of the Oella Concerned Citizen's Action Committee, which plans to file an appeal to the zoning decision. The filing deadline is Aug. 8. She would prefer to see the mill house a combination of condominiums and retail stores, such as a coffee shop and bakery - a plan the developer said is not feasible.
"It's about preserving the heritage of the community and its safety," she said.
The Oella action committee is also concerned about the number of apartments, the lack of recreational open space in the plan, and the impact the project would have on the environment. The appeals process could last several years, according to the group's attorney, John V. Murphy of Catonsville.
At a community meeting this year, a representative of the developer told residents that the apartments would turn Oella into an upscale community, raising the values of the mill and existing homes.
"We're going to do a tremendous project here. We're proud of it, and we're going to be good neighbors," said Jon Wallenmeyer, vice president for East Coast development of Cleveland-based Forest City Residential Group.
Although only about a dozen former workers still live in mill housing, many Oella residents, old and new, describe the mill as the "heart" of the community.
"The mill is really a central part of our lives," said Lydia Temoshok, who was elected president of the Greater Oella Community Association last month. If it becomes apartments, "we'll never be able to set foot in there again," she said.
"We're not against development and we're not against preserving historic sites," said Temoshok. "We just don't feel [the proposed development] is going to preserve Oella."
Todd Chapman disagrees. Chapman, 34, who manages a development group at Legg Mason, bought his two-bedroom rowhouse in an area of the village known as Long Brick Row about 10 years ago. Since then he has seen his $78,000 home double in value.
"I'm tired of seeing plastic up in the mill windows and trees around the mill not being taken care of," he said. Although he would prefer to see 100 apartments instead of 175 in the mill, the Catonsville native says he supports the project because of the developer's reputation, which he has researched extensively.
"One way or another, the mill is going to change," Chapman said. Nevertheless, he understands how the building can elicit such strong feelings.
"That mill is the centerpiece of the community," he said. "It's like the town square. People feel like its theirs."
Some residents say they'll move if the mill plan goes through. Others, like Mellor, are too entrenched to consider leaving.
Sitting on a park bench outside her nearly 200-year-old brick rowhouse on a recent afternoon, Mellor looked out onto the Patapsco River gurgling below and breathed a sigh of contentment. "They'll have to carry me out of here in a box," she said.