In what officials are calling a historic opportunity, Baltimore is assembling land for its biggest housing development in decades by relocating a prominent church and clearing a vacant, sprawling low-income housing complex to create space for 1,100 new apartments, homes and condominiums.
Plans for the nearly 100-acre Southwest Baltimore site near the Baltimore County line call for some of the housing to be affordable and the majority to be sold at market rates, with some expected to command prices of $400,000 or more.
Under the proposal, the 7,000-member New Psalmist Baptist Church - one of the city's largest and most influential congregations - will move from its home off Edmondson Avenue to a city-owned parcel in the Seton Business Park a couple of miles to the north.
The church land, in an area of mostly stable middle- and upper-income communities, will be combined with the vacant Uplands Apartments site, where demolition is scheduled to begin next month.
"This is the most significant new housing development we've done in 50 years," said Mayor Martin O'Malley. "We need to bring people back to the city. This is consistent with our long-term strategy for growth."
The sheer number of planned new houses dwarfs the number of housing units built at any recent city development, subsidized or market rate, officials said.
"It's up there with any city development, including the Inner Harbor," said M. J. "Jay" Brodie, head of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's economic development agency.
The city will pay New Psalmist $16.5 million for its school, sanctuary, administration offices and nearby auxiliary buildings.
Of that money, $14.1 million will be in cash and $2.4 million will be in the value of the land for the church's new complex in the business park off Northern Parkway in Northwest Baltimore. The cash will come from a special 30-year bond, the principal and interest of which will be paid from property taxes generated by the new houses, city officials said.
New Psalmist's pastor, the Rev. Walter S. Thomas Sr., said the church will need to spend an additional $16 million beyond what it is getting from the city to relocate.
Thomas, who acknowledged that he was initially skeptical of the plan, said the move would allow the church to consolidate and expand. But there was also an altruistic and spiritual component to the decision, he said.
