Walking through a blighted East Baltimore neighborhood on a recent snowy morning, Del. Talmadge Branch pointed at an empty, boarded-up warehouse on Biddle Street and shook his head.
The building should be a multimillion-dollar gym called Hoop City, he said. Children from the neighborhood and members of nearby Israel Baptist Church should be dancing and practicing karate in its studios and kicking soccer balls on indoor courts.
That was the vision Branch sold to his pastor at Israel Baptist and the pitch he delivered to colleagues in Annapolis seven years ago.
It seemed like a good idea then, and state lawmakers secured $800,000 in two state bond bills to pay for the gym. The administration of then-Mayor Martin O'Malley got on board, buying the building for $200,000 in taxpayer dollars in 2002, selecting Ronald H. Lipscomb as the developer. Over time the city spent an additional $411,000 - including $75,000 in state money - for studies and architectural drawings.
But nothing was ever constructed, or even demolished. Instead, neighborhood youths hang out in clumps on street corners and residents continue to scowl at a hulking brick eyesore surrounded by a rusted fence and filled with trash.
"This thing has been a nightmare," Branch said amid the snowflakes. Over and over he has asked: "What makes this project so un-doable?"
The answer is complicated, but it should serve as a cautionary tale to those navigating city bureaucracy and trying to pull public money into a private enterprise.
Looking back, city officials acknowledge that the idea of building a private, for-profit gym at 2101 E. Biddle St. using taxpayer money was ill-conceived.
Over time, construction estimates ballooned, making financing flaws even more clear. Yet the city continued to pump money and time into the project, until credit markets became tight.
In September, Lipscomb, who is part of a wide-ranging investigation by state prosecutors looking into this project and others, left the venture.
Baltimore Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano, in an interview this month, said he would be "very leery" of entering a similar deal again.
For the foreseeable future, it seems that the city-owned property will stay vacant. The exit of Lipscomb leaves the city out hundreds of thousands of dollars and the influential pastor of the nearby church fearful that the community will have little input on the ultimate fate of the building.
