Officials say the plan will enable the city to carry out the goals of a recently adopted Middle Branch Master Plan. The city envisions a project that could encompass homes, shops and offices, preserve the city-owned 11-acre Swann Park, create an environmentally sound promenade along the water's edge and help conserve the Middle Branch, said Kim Clark, BDC executive vice president.
The project would mean acquiring property from seven homeowners with properties near Swann Park and three large industrial businesses, including Schuster's site, the 13-acre Atlantic Forest Products site and Allied Waste Services' 11-acre site.
Businesses that would be displaced are questioning the city's tactics.
"It's unusual to displace active, profitable job-supporting business," Douglas N. Silber, an attorney representing Schuster, said in an interview. "We don't believe this is a blighted area. This is the opposite of a blighted area. The jobs are there. They want to take the properties out and remove the jobs. Why, we don't know."
He suggested in testimony to the commission that the city should let the existing property owners work together to come up with their own redevelopment plan.
Daniel Schuster, owner and president of 35-year-old Schuster Concrete, asked commission members to "have the courage to look to protect my company and others that are vibrant, successful companies." He said his company bought the building five years ago.
"We could never replace that facility and the advantages that building and the physical site give us," Schuster said before yesterday's hearing.
D. Dusky Holman, an attorney with Gildea & Schmidt representing Baltimore-based homebuilder Ruppert Homes, said his client signed a sales contract three years ago to purchase the Atlantic Forest Products site and has been working with the city for much of that time to make sure its plans for new homes fall within the guidelines of the Middle Branch Master Plan.
"We were asked to hold off ... and now we're being told the property will be condemned," Holman said.
Donald J. Neukam, a district manager for Allied Waste, said the company has had its recycling facility at the West Covington site for 12 years and that 180 people are employed there.
"We're quite concerned about the timing of this process and the valuation of the property," Neukam said. He said BDC had shown the company a potential new site in the Fairfield industrial area but that proved "inadequate and not central."
Planning Commission Chairman Peter Auchincloss said he would grant requests to continue the hearing next month so BDC and property owners could try to work out a resolution before the measure goes before the City Council.
lorraine.mirabella@baltsun.com
