When a home becomes a job site, tensions between those doing the work and those living with the dust can be unpleasant. But when the contractors and crew who for months had been hammering away at the Monte Verde low-income apartments in West Baltimore showed up at a recent holiday party, they were greeted by the residents as if they were Kris Kringle and his helpers.
Standing in the middle of the room, clad in a bright-red plaid sports coat, was Michael T. Shacklette, the lead contractor for the renovation and now a party host. He had lined up donations for the party from the subcontractors who had refurbished the 301 units, all of them occupied by elderly or disabled tenants.
"They are very good guys, they treat us well," said Rosalie Turner, 83, as she moved through the party room in a wheelchair.
"I was shocked how comfortable they made it for us," said Ronald "Pogo" Pretlow, who has lived at Monte Verde for six years and is known to fellow residents as the "mayor" of the high-rise.
"This place used to look like jail, dark and dreary with cinder-block walls," said Bob Chambers, who has lived at the apartments for three years. "Now it looks like a real condominium."
Well before the 3 o'clock starting time, the residents lined up in the hallway leading to the party. This celebration was one of several festive get-togethers that Shacklette and his crew put on for the residents of Monte Verde. There was a Christmas party in 2008 as well as two summertime picnics with crabs. A band whose members reside at another Shacklette project, The Baltimore Station in South Baltimore, provided music for one of the parties.
Shacklette, who once played trombone in a Baltimore band called The Old Souls, admits he has a weakness for socializing with the tenants.
"It is enormously rewarding to walk into a building you have worked on and feel the appreciation of the people who live there," he said. "Maybe it is a bit of an ego trip for me, but it is fun."
The 58-year-old Baltimore native grew up in Anneslie, went to Mount St. Joseph High School and graduated from the University of Maryland. He worked for Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse for seven years before starting his own firm, The Michael Group. His office in Mount Vernon once employed 35 workers, but layoffs have recently cut that number in half, he said.
To many of the residents of this Park Heights high-rise once known as Green Hill, Shacklette is known simply as "Mike." He and his workers made it a point to be on a first-name basis with the apartment owners because the residents remained in the building throughout the 16-month project.
This policy, called "tenant in place" renovation, is a central principle of Shacklette's operation. His firm specializes in rejuvenating housing for nonprofits and makes it a practice to keep people in their homes, even as the saws roar. In the last seven years, the firm has reconditioned 1,000 units of low-income housing in about a dozen projects across Baltimore. Many of the residents of these buildings are elderly and don't want to move.
"Their apartment, or their high-rise building, is their world. They are willing to put up with a little bit of stuff to stay there as we work," Shacklette said.
His construction crews moved a resident's belongings into another room, or out in a hallway, while they refurbished the space. The crews worked fast.
"We can make a new bathroom a functional bathroom in one day," Shacklette said. "It takes about another day and half to get it painted." The keys to the quick work, he said, are good organization and using workers who have more than one skill. Instead of waiting for a carpenter, a plumber or a plasterer to appear, his men do much of this labor.
At Monte Verde, most of the one- and two-bedroom units got refurbished baths and new kitchens, fresh paint and wall-to-wall carpeting. "It feels so good when you wake up not to have to walk on that old cold floor," Pretlow said of the carpeting.
If the job required making an apartment suitable for a person with disabilities, the tenant was temporarily moved to another suitably equipped apartment in the building. But, in most cases, folks simply relocated to another part of their apartment while the work went on.
A central tenet of renovating this way, Shacklette said, is establishing a personal relationship with the residents.
"If you get to know my name, or the name of a workman, you are much less likely to get angry at me," Shacklette said. "And these kinds of conditions, working on kitchens and bathrooms, can lead to anger."
But there was no sign of discontent at the holiday gathering. As the party wound down, the residents of the high-rise presented Shacklette with an oversized greeting card. They thanked him for his work, and invited him to come back next year to throw yet another holiday party.