Across from the precisely manicured lawns of Fort Meade stands a row of boarded-up businesses, tattoo shops, an adult bookstore and some faded bars. Once a bunch of bustling bars and arcades earned the area across from the military base the nickname Boomtown. But while nearby communities have blossomed in recent decades, Boomtown has fallen into decay.
The shooting of four men, two fatally, early Sunday morning in a parking lot here is only more evidence, neighbors say, that many businesses and abandoned properties have become magnets for criminals.
With an influx of residents expected as part of the huge military base realignment, residents and business owners hope that Boomtown can be fixed up.
"It's ridiculous that it looks this way with all these people moving here," said Dawn Washington, who owns a hair salon not far from where the shooting happened. "When people move here for BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure], do we really want them to be greeted with this?"
The area has been in decline for at least four decades, but increased security at Fort Meade - it became a closed base after 9/11 - has cut traffic to a trickle as workers are reluctant to spend their lunch hours waiting at checkpoints. And many business owners are wary of making improvements because their property could be seized to make way for an impending $400 million road-widening project.
Like many entrepreneurs who own salons, carryout restaurants and dry cleaners that remain open on this section of Annapolis Road, Washington keeps her business immaculately clean. But the pink walls of the salon frame a view of the parking lot where two Annapolis men were killed around closing time at the adjacent Traffic Bar & Lounge.
Police have interviewed the two survivors, gathered security camera footage and are working 17-hour days to crack the case, said Capt. David Waltemeyer of the Anne Arundel County Police Department's criminal investigation division.
Neighbors, particularly in the growing Seven Oaks community, have long complained that the strip is unsafe. In August 2006, a retired federal security officer was fatally shot in his car in the parking lot of a bar called My Place. No arrest has been made in that shooting.
And in August 1996, Thomas Hall, a Korean immigrant who worked 13-hour days at his store, Tom's Liquors, was shot and killed by a robber in an attack that wounded his wife and two customers.
