Two years ago, Wade and Occilee Turner agreed to leave their longtime home on a decaying street as part of an effort to redevelop East Baltimore. In exchange, they were given a home a block and a half away, renovated with nearly $100,000 in public money.

So they were dismayed and outraged when they learned that their new home was on the list of properties to be seized by the city to make way for a proposed biotech park north of the Johns Hopkins medical complex.

"They're doing the same thing to us they did to the Indians," Wade Turner, a 73-year-old retired construction worker, said recently in the living room of his home in the 800 block of N. Washington St. "They tell you to get the hell out and go where they tell you to."

Several other residents, most of them elderly, were relocated in the past two years to 10 homes on the block that were renovated at a total cost of about $1 million. The problem they and the city face is illustrative of the complexities and compromises that come into play in doing large-scale urban development in residential areas.

For now, it appears that residents are likely to get at least a temporary reprieve from having to move again, but the long-term future of the block is very much up in the air.

After hearing complaints from residents and touring the area, City Councilwoman Paula Johnson Branch said she will remove the block from legislation authorizing the city to acquire properties for the biotech park when she moves the bill from the urban affairs committee she heads to the floor of the council, possibly as early as Monday.

Branch, a Democrat whose district includes the east side, said she is concerned that residents of the block who have been relocated once have not had an adequate opportunity to study the plan for the biotech park and hundreds of units of new and renovated housing.

'Impact on people'

"The emphasis [of the plan] was on the biotech park," she said. "No real thought was given to the impact on people."

Branch left open the possibility that the council might consider a future request by the city to acquire the block for the biotech park.

"The administration will have to meet and talk with the residents again and go over what the consequences are for remaining there," she said. "If they change their mind and want to relocate, legislation can be introduced again."

City officials say that it could be at least five years before the biotech park - now projected to take from 10 to 12 years to complete and to cover several square blocks in the center of the Middle East neighborhood - would reach the 800 block of N. Washington St. If the biotech park is built as planned and the residents remained beyond five years, they would find themselves surrounded by biotech buildings on three sides and the Hopkins complex on the fourth, officials say.

"We don't think that's the best option for the residents or the biotech park," said Laurie Schwartz, deputy mayor for neighborhood and economic development.

Schwartz said numerous public presentations over several months had shown the block as one of many to be acquired for the development, but that objections had only recently been raised. She said deleting the block from the acquisition legislation would not affect the initial phase of the biotech park, adding, "As the development of the biotech park unfolds, we'll reassess the situation."

Hopkins - which donated the properties that were renovated for the Turners and others to the nonprofit Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition and is a backer of the biotech park - calls the situation involving the block an "unfortunate miscoordination of well-meaning efforts."

"The recommended plan for the area suggests that the Washington Street homes should not remain," Hopkins said in a statement. "The residents have made their wishes known clearly, however. Now the challenge to the city's planners will be to devise alternatives that respect those wishes and to work with the community residents to determine a mutually agreeable plan that enables and supports the growth of a strong community."

Hopkins began buying abandoned properties on the block for possible expansion at tax sales an auctions in the mid- and late-1990s. In 1999, it transferred 10 of the properties to HEBCAC for $1 apiece.

In turn, HEBCAC - a partnership created by the city, state and Hopkins to reverse the decay of the east side - renovated them using federal money funneled through the city, part of a redevelopment strategy that focused on selective demolition and individual rehabs.

The newly renovated properties were offered to east-side residents in exchange for their homes, mostly "alley houses" on small streets, that were torn down as part of the redevelopment effort. The relocated residents would receive clear title to the new houses if they stayed there 10 years.

When the HEBCAC strategy failed to keep up with the pace of property abandonment on the east side, the strategy itself was abandoned for a more comprehensive redevlopment plan centered on the biotech park.

The public investment helped stabilize the 800 block of N. Washington St. but did not eradicate blight there. The block has a half-dozen abandoned rowhouses - a third of the number in the 900 block of the street.

Although Hopkins has renovated some properties on its own, Jeff Thompson, acting executive director of HEBCAC, said the work has failed to stimulate private-sector investment in the block.

"There's still a lot of work that needs to happen if the block's going to be brought back," he said.

At one point, planners considered giving the biotech park a north-south orientation, which would have spared the 800 block of N. Washington St. But they eventually decided on an east-west configuration, which would involve demolition of the block, for two key reasons, according to deputy mayor Schwartz.

"Prospective tenants wanted to be immediately adjacent to Hopkins," she said. "Commercial tenants would help reinforce the Monument Street business corridor, which we want to revitalize."

Schwartz said such trade-offs are typical of big urban development projects.

"This isn't a cornfield," she said.

Residents' reaction

Residents are mixed in their reaction to Branch's stated intentions to remove their block from legislation giving the city the right to acquire property, with some expressing joy and relief and others wary that sooner or later, they'll have to move.

But there is little difference of opinion in their desire to remain in their homes, even if a biotech park is built all around them.

"That wouldn't bother me," said Carrie Whitaker, 75, a retired nurse companion who moved in December with her husband, Hoover, into a newly-renovated house at the end of the block. The house was renovated by staffers at Hopkins, which gave them the house in exchange for the home on nearby Rutland Avenue that they had lived in for more than 40 years.

"I'm just praying they don't come in and take this block," she added. "I like this house. They fixed it up just like I wanted it."

Her sentiment was echoed by Julia Bates, who moved from deteriorating North Castle Street a block and a half away into a HEBCAC-renovated house two years ago last week.

Bates, 76, a retired furniture maker, said if she had known she would be allowed to stay only a short time, "I never would have taken the house, no indeed.

"I don't see why they want to put all this money into these houses and then turn around and tear them down," she added.

Edward Livingston, 69, was put in a house temporarily after giving up his home on North Chapel Street before becoming the first resident to move into the renovated homes on North Washington Street. Livingston, a retired social service worker, described the idea of having to move again as "anxiety-provoking."

Mack Jackson, 85, recently lead a visitor through his house, also renovated by HEBCAC, proudly pointing out such features as the washer-dryer and closets in every room.

"I got a beautiful home," said Jackson, whose previous home of 43 years on Durham Street is now part of a parking lot and is also in the footprint of the proposed biotech park. "I thought I was set for life."

Occilee Turner, 73, said the block is "100 percent better" than the 900 block of North Castle St., where she and her husband, Wade, lived for 54 years before being relocated. "Castle Street was nothing but drugs," she said.

But a better location is not the only reason the retired nursing assistant doesn't want to move.

"It's too much," she said of the prospect of packing and relocating once again. "He's on a cane, I'm on a cane. I can't hardly do what I do."

"We thought we'd be here until we die," she added.