Chicken coops and cornfields surrounded the state asylum in Owings Mills when it opened almost 120 years ago. The quiet countryside was considered by 19th-century health experts as the best place to care for the developmentally disabled, and over the years the number of patients grew from nine to nearly 3,000.
Today, the Rosewood Center complex is a shrinking oasis of undeveloped land near highways and shopping centers. The number of patients has dwindled to fewer than 150, and Gov. Martin O'Malley has announced plans to close the facilities next year.
As that closing nears, neighbors, preservationists and legislators are worried about the fate of the property.
Its location in Owings Mills, a designated growth area of Baltimore County, and the parcel's size - more than 200 acres at the edge of the prosperous Caves Valley - make it all the more attractive to private developers interested in building homes, offices and shops.
"No couple of hundred acres in a developed area exists elsewhere in Baltimore County," says Joseph M. Cronyn, a partner at real estate consulting firm Lipman, Frizzell & Mitchell. "This is it."
Rosewood is just one example of a broader trend across Maryland, as sprawling state hospitals are shuttered. Their lands, once isolated from homes and commercial centers, have been surrounded by suburban development, triggering concern among neighbors.
In Anne Arundel County, 548 acres have been preserved as open space at the Crownsville Hospital Center, a state psychiatric hospital that closed in 2004. Although county officials had wanted to preserve the rest of the property, state officials sought offers last month from developers on 532 acres that have been declared surplus. Residents have long been worried about houses being crowded onto the property.
In Carroll County, the Springfield Hospital Center's vacant brick buildings have been rehabbed for commercial offices and community college classrooms. Sykesville residents voted in a 1999 referendum to annex the property so that local officials would have control over how it was developed.
And in Catonsville, the 200-acre Spring Grove Hospital Center has been eyed by a local developer for a mix of shops, offices, apartments and a hotel. Residents, who expressed opposition several years ago to a juvenile detention facility being built on the property, have asked officials to set aside some land for athletic fields.
