Aside from a tiny white sign on a fence between what were once a beauty-supply store and a burger joint, there is the Grand Theater's screaming marquee that spells out the future of Highlandtown:

"COMING!! Enoch Pratt Free Library Southeast Anchor Library."

Residents and business owners pretty much speak in all capital letters and exclamation points when talk turns to the library, a project that crept much closer to reality last week when planners agreed on a preliminary design plan.

"I am very excited!" said Dr. Joel P. Cohen, whose Pearl Vision eye center has anchored the 500 block of Conkling St. for 20 years.

"I'm excited, sure enough," said George McCluskey, who runs a restaurant supply store.

"It's like a shot in the arm!" said beauty salon owner Carol Pressman.

Set to open in 2005

Library officials tentatively set 2005 for the opening of the $8.5 million, 30,000-square-foot library, at Conkling Street and Eastern Avenue. This is the place where a dime buys 30 minutes on the parking meter and from where Radio Shack, Baskin-Robbins, Woolworth and Rite Aid fled one after another in recent years.

The timeline might seem like a lifetime in other parts of town. But in Highlandtown, where the crossroads of Conkling and Eastern enjoyed a vibrant and well-remembered past, three more years is worth the wait if the library brings visitors and shoppers back to the area, said McCluskey.

"Business-wise, it would be nice if the area could be rejuvenated," Pressman said as she teased the hair of longtime customer, Gerry Dorn.

Jesse Cox, who owns Matthew's Pizza on Eastern Avenue, still remembers going to the theater to see The Tingler, a 1959 sci-fi thriller starring actor Vincent Price. Those memories were on his mind when he signed a petition to save the Grand two years ago.

Today, he's eager to see the theater go, replaced by the planned brick-and-glass library.

"History's great, but I'm for progress as long as it's an improvement," Cox said.

The block is an older but recognizable version of the way it looked back when a fledgling community paper, the Baltimore Guide, moved into a building across the street in 1927.

The corner shop, which has housed a string of optical offices since the 1960s, used to be Wager's Drug Store.

Until this summer, Pressman and her husband, Alan, lived next door, above their Phyllis Beauty Salon, for 32 years. A clothesline and four cans of fading tennis balls are all that remain in the window of a former karate school one building to the south. Then there is the Grand, boarded up for two decades, a print shop that relocated to Eastern Avenue and a green-roofed ex-tavern, vacant for about four years. A three-story gray rowhouse that housed Boyd & Assoc., public accountants, sits empty since the firm moved to an alley across the street.

At the end of the block stands a branch of the Carrolton Bank, the only building that will not be demolished to make way for the library.

The library will ultimately displace eight small businesses, including a haberdashery on the Eastern Avenue side of the block. Five of them found new commercial space within 40 yards.

'Happy to make way'

Cohen's shop is the last merchant to move.

"We have a good, solid customer base, so I knew I wouldn't go far away," he said. "We're taking a big hit financially, but I'm happy to make way for the library. Maybe there will be an influx of shops and more people in the neighborhood."

The optometrist isn't the only one whose hopes for the area hinge on a futuristic library with computer pods, teen lounge areas and a cafe.

"It's the biggest investment in this neighborhood ever, of any sort," said Jacqueline Watts, editor of the Baltimore Guide, who has been volunteering on library issues since 1995.

Not everyone stands behind plans for the new facility.

Salvatore Zannino, a Southeast Baltimore native who served on an Art Deco preservation league in South Beach, Fla., wants the new library to retain the lemon-and-lime-colored facade of the Grand, "to save something so beautiful."

The design plan tentatively agreed upon by library officials, a community advisory panel and citizens calls for demolishing the entire theater.

Another skeptic is 1st District City Councilman Nicholas C. D'Adamo Jr., who runs his family's discount store in the neighborhood. D'Adamo isn't banking on the new library turning Conkling and Eastern into Easy Streets.

"We need a drawing card for Highlandtown, but I don't think the library is that drawing card," he said.

It's not that D'Adamo is against libraries, he says. After Bibelot announced it planned to close its store in the American Can Co. retail complex in Canton, D'Amado suggested placing the anchor branch there. But planners preferred the Conkling Street site, which offered enough room to build a large library plus outdoor gardens.

"I'm for anything that can improve Highlandtown because it can improve my business, but the timing's wrong and the place is wrong," said D'Adamo, who preferred putting a grocery store on the site. "I mean, you've got empty libraries now. What is this going to change?"

Michelle Decker, sees an answer in the Midwest.

Decker, president of the Southeast Community Development Corporation, points to Chicago, where hefty investments, beginning with a library built in 1997, helped spur redevelopment of the high-rises of the city's notorious Cabrini-Green public housing complex.

The same could happen in Highlandtown, she said.

"There's a model in Chicago of using libraries to spark commercial and public investment," she said. "Here's our chance to make that happen here."