Eyeing a "major opportunity" for redevelopment, the city wants to acquire and raze a sprawling, nearly vacant subsidized apartment complex in West Baltimore and create a mixed-income community of hundreds of homes.
The city's plans for the Uplands Apartments, off Edmondson Avenue near the Baltimore County line, are particularly significant because of the location of the complex amid stable middle- and upper-income neighborhoods, the size of the site and the number of units that would be demolished.
At 46 acres, Uplands is half again as large as the Memorial Stadium site in Northeast Baltimore and as big as the combined Inner Harbor East and Allied Signal sites along the waterfront.
And with more than 900 rental units, contained in about 50 low-rise buildings set amid winding roads, Uplands has more apartments than any of the public housing high-rises that have been torn down to make way for a mix of market-rate and subsidized housing units.
The redevelopment plans would spell the end of the half-century-old, privately owned complex, which has been in sharp decline for at least a decade, and set the stage for a debate over how much low-income housing should be put there.
Calling Uplands a "major blighting influence on an otherwise solid area," Baltimore housing commissioner Paul T. Graziano said: "We're going to eliminate blight and create wealth and increase the tax base for the city."
The city plans to advertise next month for a master planner, and hopes to have a design for the Uplands site and some nearby areas by September, Graziano said.
The number and type of units that would be built, as well as the percentage of affordable units, "will be the subject of much deliberation in the planning reviews," Graziano said. "We're not talking about re-creating anything remotely like what's there now."
Construction "of hundreds of units" would be done by private developers chosen in a competitive bidding process and would take several years to complete, Graziano said.
Tens of millions
"This is a major opportunity," he said. "In terms of housing opportunities, this is the biggest that's out there right now."
The price for the effort would depend on the number and type of units to be built, but would certainly be in the tens of millions of dollars. The cost of demolishing the buildings, which would be funded with public money, is estimated at $5.5 million, with millions more required for new streets and utility lines.
Financial details are still to be worked out. The public portion of the new construction could come from a combination of federal subsidies for affordable housing, tax-exempt bonds or bonds based on future taxes, Graziano said. The plan would have to include enough units to make the project financially feasible for developers, he added.
The Uplands Apartments are now operated by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which took over two years ago after a partnership headed by developer Morton Sarubin defaulted on the federally backed project.
In a letter to Graziano last month, HUD said it plans to foreclose on the property June 2. The letter said HUD cannot wait until after the planning process is complete to transfer the property to the city but must do so the day it forecloses.
HUD has requested $1.9 million for the property, but the city hopes to get it for a nominal fee, officials say. A private buyer could take over by bidding more than the $14 million outstanding on the mortgage, but that is considered highly unlikely.
HUD, which has been spending $380,000 a month to maintain the property, said in the letter that it expects the last of the tenants to be out by April 30. As of last week, about 80 families remained.
Affordable housing
A key question for those still there, housing advocates and community leaders say, is how many of the new units would be set aside for low-income families.
James Pettiford, 34, who has lived in Uplands for six years and was recently approved for a subsidized apartment in Randallstown, said a mouse problem and lack of hot water make him happy to leave, but that he would like to move back if given the chance.
"Overall, I loved living here. It's a nice area, and it's convenient to a lot of things," said Pettiford, who has two small children and makes $11.25 an hour as a truck driver for the city. "I would definitely be disappointed if it's not redone as affordable housing."
Pettiford is not alone in his desire to return to the complex, for the same reason the city finds it so desirable.
"The majority do want to return. It's a prime location," said Karen Forbes, a coordinator with the Legal Aid Bureau's housing preservation program who has been assisting the tenants.
Forbes said her goal is "to bring as many affordable units back to the property as possible without creating this concentration of poverty." Half to two-thirds of the units should be designated for low-income residents, she said, with many of them being rental units.
While they welcome the prospect of redevelopment and express a willingness to accept some low-income housing, leaders of nearby communities are pushing for the majority of the units to be market-rate and owner-occupied.
"Our goal is market-rate housing," said Angela Bethea-Spearman, president of the Uplands Community Association, who called the proposed redevelopment a "new day" for the neighborhood. "As a community, we would like to see homeownership. ... We like the style of semidetached and detached houses."
A coalition of area neighborhood groups wants about one in five units to be earmarked for low-income people, said Dana McKee, head of the Ten Hills Community Association.
In a letter to HUD in November, the city initially proposed building 900 subsidized units and 100 market-rate units - an idea that raised the ire of community groups and had the federal agency questioning the density of the project.
But city officials have said since then that they will clarify to HUD that they used those numbers merely as an attempt to preserve the maximum advance federal funding of $40,000 per subsidized unit. In fact, city officials say they will tell HUD they want to use the money to create 900 units throughout the city, with the number at Uplands to be determined.
The department would review and respond to any new proposal from the city, said HUD spokesman James Kelly.
A look back
Located on the site of the former estate of Mary and Henry Barton Jacobs, an eminent physician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Uplands Apartments was built in the late 1940s by developer Ralph DeChiaro to house part of the city's burgeoning post-World War II population. At the time, Uplands was one of the largest apartment complexes in the region.
In 1972, beginning to show its age, Uplands was bought by a partnership headed by Sarubin, perhaps best known for his development of the Peabody Court Hotel in Mount Vernon. With the middle class by then fleeing the city in large numbers, Sarubin turned Uplands into a privately managed low-income housing project under a program in which the federal government provided mortgage insurance and subsidized rents in return for an agreement to operate the property in accordance with HUD standards.
During the past decade, Uplands declined sharply. Legal Aid brought dozens of rent cases against the complex, said legal assistant Deanna Watkins. "Some of the apartments didn't have water for a period," she said. "Some had raw sewage backing up."
In 1999, HUD wrote Sarubin that the properties were in "deplorable condition."
That year, the manager of Uplands and several other apartment complexes around the state owned by partnerships headed by Sarubin pleaded guilty in federal court to defrauding the government by skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from the projects.
In January 2001, HUD notified Sarubin that he had defaulted on the project because he failed to keep up with mortgage payments and said it would proceed with foreclosure. HUD assumed management of Uplands.
HUD's scheduled foreclosure on Uplands comes a year after the agency foreclosed on another Sarubin complex, the vacant 308-unit Freedom Village complex in East Baltimore.
Sarubin speaks
In an interview, Sarubin criticized HUD for failing to approve loans or rent increases that would have provided him with the money to maintain Uplands.
"They'll blame it on me for letting the project go to hell," Sarubin said. "But if they don't give you the financing and don't give you the money, there's not much you can do."
Sarubin derided HUD for spending nearly $10 million over two years "vacating a place that's not vacant yet."
At a recent tenants meeting at adjacent New Psalmist Baptist Church, several Uplands residents complained about the difficulty of finding suitable new housing.
"I have my Section 8 voucher, but I haven't been able to find anything," said Trashauna Bennett, 33, a retail manager with three children. "I looked at two places that weren't livable. If I'm going to leave here, I'm going to go to something better."
New Psalmist, with 7,000 members, makes no secret of its desire to play a role in the redevelopment of Uplands.
"We want to be players," said the Rev. Walter Scott Thomas. "We feel it will be an opportunity for people to come back to the area, with the church as an anchor."
Neighborhood leaders say the redevelopment of Uplands, convenient to the Beltway and downtown, provides a rare chance for the city to attract middle-income residents to the southwest section and could lead, in turn, to improved schools and stores.
Although some worry that the buildings will sit vacant while the city lines up money and developers for the project, most were encouraged after a recent meeting with Graziano and other housing officials.
"I'm starting to think it's going to work," said Ada Brown, president of the Hunting Ridge Community Association.
City seeks to redevelop Uplands
The Uplands Apartments are a nearly vacant low-income housing project of 900 units in about 50 low-rise buildings on 46 acres. The city wants to acquire and raze the complex and build a mixed-income community of hundreds of units.