Moving ahead with what officials hope will be the transformation of a badly blighted section of East Baltimore, the city has begun acquiring properties for a major revitalization effort centered around a biotech park.

As a first step, the city is moving to take control of about 70 vacant houses outside the boundaries of the proposed biopark. These buildings -- mostly along three blocks of North Broadway just north of the Johns Hopkins medical complex in the vicinity of Madison Square and Collington Square -- are scheduled for renovation by private developers, officials say. The houses will be offered first to East Baltimore homeowners displaced by the renewal project. Other buyers would be next in line.

Although Mayor Martin O'Malley signed legislation last week authorizing the city to seize up to 3,000 properties -- many in heavily decayed blocks -- for the biopark as well as hundreds of units of new and renovated housing, the city is pursuing these initial 70 properties under separate "quick-take" authority. Officials estimate it will cost $5 million to renovate the properties, with the money coming from existing state and federal funds, officials said.

Besides providing opportunities for relocation, the acquisitions are "a way to stabilize the surrounding neighborhoods so they don't deteriorate," said Laurie B. Schwartz, interim chief executive officer of East Baltimore Development Inc., the quasi-public nonprofit group set up to oversee the redevelopment.

The rehabbed houses will also help "upgrade Broadway as the major entranceway to the East Baltimore development," she said.

Homeowners in blocks where the vacant houses are being bought welcomed the prospect of renovation of the properties, though at least one community leader remains skeptical.

"It's good news if it happens or happens soon," said Bertha Floyd, whose home in the 1000 block of N. Eden St. sits between two vacant properties that are on the city's acquisition list. "We need people who are concerned about their properties."

Floyd, 76, has owned her home bordering Madison Square since 1951. Indicative of the depressed property values in the area, her home is valued by the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation at $15,000.

The properties on each side of hers have been vacant since the early 1990s, she said, adding that she has a file folder full of correspondence with city officials trying to get the houses boarded up so squatters and vagrants couldn't get inside.

"It's a terrible experience," she said of living between two abandoned properties. "You don't want to live like that."

In all, nine vacant houses on Floyd's block are on the city's acquisition list, although officials say the exact number and location of properties are "fluid."

"If they're buying up the properties to renovate, I'd be more than happy to have that happen," said Cassandra Pierce, another homeowner who lives next door to a rowhouse that has been vacant for the five years she has lived on the block.

Pamela Carter, who bought a house in the 1000 block of N. Broadway two years ago, called the acquisition of the houses "a plus."

"Hopefully, it'll motivate people to buy houses," said Carter, 27, a social worker with the state.

But Ornat Erby, head of the Biddle, Broadway, North Avenue and Chester Support Council, worries that the renovations, like the project as a whole, will be of little benefit to residents.

"All of this is strictly for Hopkins," he said. "Before you know it, we'll have gated communities."

Owners of the vacant properties have a mixed reaction to the city's acquisition efforts.

Robert A. Benjamin recently accepted the city's offer of $2,500 for a rowhouse he owned on Collington Square that he said has been vacant for at least 10 years.

"I'm glad the city took it. I would have paid them to take it," said Benjamin, a computer consultant from Hamilton, Va., who bought the property as an investment in the early 1980s.

"It was a pretty worthless property," he added. "Houses around there never appreciated. It was a nightmare trying to manage that little thing when you're 100 miles away."

Barbara S. Hawkins recently turned over a rowhouse in the 800 block of N. Broadway that collapsed in a storm for what her attorney said was "zero consideration."

Hawkins, an ophthalmologist at Hopkins who lives in Columbia, bought the vacant building 20 years ago in the hope of renovating it and living near her work. She said she is happy to be rid of the property now, but both she and attorney Leslie Gladstone expressed regret that the city wasn't more supportive of her desire to rehabilitate the rowhouse.

"With owners like Barbara Hawkins, if money was made available at a reasonable rate, that would be much, much cheaper in the long run than the city doing what it is now," Gladstone said.

The city had offered $4,500 as fair market value for another rowhouse in that block but had agreed to hold off on taking title to the property to give the owner time to renovate it himself, according to the owner's lawyer.

Attorney Michael B. Green said he felt the offer was too low -- his client and a partner bought the property two years ago for $15,500 -- but added that the city "has been very cooperative" in delaying its acquisition.

William N. Burgee, director of property acquisitions and relocation for the city's housing department, said the city was willing to let owners rehab the properties on their own but would make sure they moved quickly.

The city began moving in the spring to take control of these vacant buildings under "quick take" authority, months before the City Council amended five urban renewal ordinances allowing the city to condemn up to 3,000 properties. The quick take authority provides for the accelerated acquisition of properties.

Some of the $5 million in public funding for the acquisition and rehab of the first 70 properties could be recouped from the sale of the renovated houses or from a pool of relocation funds made up of city and private money, officials said.

Acquisitions in the core of the redevelopment area between Madison and Chase streets are expected to begin in the spring, officials said. Initially, the city plans to acquire about 800 properties in that area, 60 percent of which are vacant buildings or land, to clear land for the biopark and housing, they said.