Clay Street

The Annapolis housing authority added two more neighborhoods to its redevelopment list this week in a plan that calls for setting aside homes for ownership - a move that has some residents fearing permanent displacement. Annapolis Gardens and Bowman Court, off Admiral Drive, will see major renovations, increased security and improved landscaping by mid-2009. The agency plans to redo two Clay Street public housing communities by 2014. It expects to rehabilitate College Creek Terrace and raze and rebuild Obery Court.

It was a 125 years ago today, on a hot July morning, that Baltimoreans began hearing and seeing horse-drawn fire wagons racing through city streets. Great clouds of dense black smoke rose over buildings west of Charles Street.They were responding to a fire in the workrooms of Joseph Thomas & Sons, a door and sash manufacturer at Park Avenue and Clay Street, where floor boys sweeping pine shavings noticed a wisp of smoke curling up from a shavings box near the boiler room.Stacks of lumber, varnish and glue stored in the building quickly fed the growing flames.

BY PLEADING guilty to drug conspiracy charges, Curtis Allan Spencer ended a decades-long charade.As leader of the group Friends of Black Annapolitans, Spencer, 48, masqueraded as a man interested in bettering the impoverished public housing complexes in the state capital. Now everyone can see that Spencer had no intention of aiding Annapolis' African American community. More hood than Robin Hood, he just meant to exploit it.Spencer led a gang responsible for distributing as much as $20,000 of drugs a week and 80 percent of the city's cocaine sales, according to Annapolis police and federal prosecutors.

Articles in the Anne Arundel County edition of The Sun Sunday and yesterday misidentified the temporary relocation site of the Stanton Community Center. The center will move to the Universal Lodge No. 14 F&A Masons on Clay Street by June 1 and remain until renovation of the center's historic building is completed.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 5/22/98

Members of the Clay Street community accused Annapolis Housing Authority officials last night of trying to evict longtime residents through a proposed multimillion-dollar renovation of two public housing complexes.The residents call the plan a "miniurban renewal project" similar to one in the 1970s that was blamed for destroying much of the mostly black downtown community.Back then, residents characterized it as "urban removal" and said it displaced dozens of black businesses and sent hundreds of black families out of the downtown area into housing projects on the city line.

A controversial proposal to apply for a federal grant that would raze and rebuild two of Annapolis' poorest public housing complexes was postponed until at least next year because of opposition from residents.Annapolis Housing Authority officials confirmed yesterday that they will not pursue a HOPE VI grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development this year.The multimillion-dollar project would have torn down 163 units in Obery Court and College Creek Terrace in the Clay Street community to build about 200 subsidized and privately owned townhouses.

WHOSE INTEREST is served by stopping any effort to renovate Clay Street's public housing units? It's not the residents, who are living in units that were built during and shortly after World War II. It's not the community's children who have to live in an environment where drugs and prostitution flourish.Given the history of Annapolis' urban renewal projects, residents of Obery Court and College Creek Terrace have every right to be skeptical about the promises being made. Annapolis' use of urban renewal projects to break up established black neighborhoods in the past justifies a very close examination of current proposals.

In less than an hour at a meeting last week, all hope of infusing millions of federal dollars into the ailing Clay Street neighborhoods of Annapolis evaporated -- at least for this year.No matter that city Housing Authority officials backed off from a controversial proposal to raze two public housing complexes. Or that they promised residents more time to understand the HOPE VI project and its promise of new townhouses and new jobs. The trust needed for a major urban renewal initiative to move forward was lacking.

THE ANNAPOLIS Housing Authority wisely decided to delay for one year its bid for a federal grant to rebuild public housing on Clay Street, a few hundred feet from the headquarters of Anne Arundel County government.Though revitalization of rundown housing should happen sooner rather than later, the authority needs first to win the support and participation of tenants.Residents remain fearful that this project, HOPE VI, is a reincarnation of urban renewal of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a strategy they recall with disdain.

Evans responds to criticism by educatorsWith all due respect to the choice for Anne Arundel County executive made by the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County ("Teachers back outsiders against Gary, council members," June 16), I wish to set the record straight regarding my support for education.During my tenure on the County Council, I have voted to provide money for the education of our young people over and above the requests of the former and current county executives. In my leadership role as council chairman for three years, and as an individual member of the council, additional dollars have been added for classroom teachers, staff for "Bridge the Gap," new schools, renovations, classroom partitions, textbooks and roofs.

Mary Wolf was jogging around her adopted hometown of Annapolis when she turned a corner and discovered Clay Street, a community long blighted by poverty and crime, just steps from the State House and downtown Annapolis' restaurants and tourist attractions. The former television producer, who had run a successful computer literacy center in Washington, saw a need and wanted to open a center there in Annapolis. She didn't get much of a response. "People said, 'This will never work. Things never last on Clay Street.

Ground-breaking event held at Fort Meade Fort George G. Meade will hold a groundbreaking at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the pavilion for the construction of the co-location of the Defense and Military Adjudication Activities Facility, the third and final BRAC-related project at the base. Lt. Gen Richard P. Zahner, deputy chief of staff for Army G-2, will host the ceremony, part the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission Recommendations. The $31,856,596 contract was awarded to Skanska USA Building Inc. of Rockville and will provide 151,590 square feet of administrative space for approximately 760 employees from 10 agencies.

Lorraine Williams has never owned a house in her 63 years. Born in Annapolis, she moved around for years as her family followed her Navy father, settling first in Virginia and then returning to Annapolis, but never living in a home she could call her own. On Saturday, Arundel Habitat for Humanity will present Williams with her first house - and Habitat's 100th home - on Clay Street in Annapolis. "I feel wonderful. ... My roots come from Clay Street," she said, adding that her grandmother was called "the mayor of Clay Street."

Responding to an onslaught of criticism, Annapolis officials have drastically changed the boundaries of the proposed "Capital City Arts and Entertainment District" to exclude outer West Street and incorporate inner West Street and the Clay Street area. The city has also struck the word "entertainment" from the district's name to placate residents who argued it would bring an onslaught of entrepreneurs requesting 2 a.m. liquor licenses. It is now called the "Capital City Cultural Arts Center."

A special election has been scheduled in Annapolis for the alderman's seat vacated by Michael Christman, Mayor Ellen O. Moyer said yesterday. The primary election in Ward 2 will be held Nov. 27, with the special general election Dec. 19. The winner will fill the final two years of Christman's term. The Republican, one of only two on the eight-member city council, was elected in 2005 but officially resigned last week, noting frequent travel for his job. His wife also recently accepted a job in Australia.

The Annapolis housing authority added two more neighborhoods to its redevelopment list this week in a plan that calls for setting aside homes for ownership - a move that has some residents fearing permanent displacement. Annapolis Gardens and Bowman Court, off Admiral Drive, will see major renovations, increased security and improved landscaping by mid-2009. The agency plans to redo two Clay Street public housing communities by 2014. It expects to rehabilitate College Creek Terrace and raze and rebuild Obery Court.

Two of Annapolis' oldest organizations in the fight for civil rights are looking to team up in an effort to help revitalize the Clay Street neighborhood. Wayne Jearld, president of the Anne Arundel County chapter of the NAACP, said yesterday he is in talks to move the organization's headquarters into the historic Universal Lodge No. 14 building by early fall. "The NAACP can be a stabilizing force in the community, and the longer we are there, the more we can make a difference," Jearld said.

For the first time in Annapolis, serious consideration is being given to a major outdoor art show as a city panel weighs in Tuesday on a proposal allowing a series of murals in public spaces as part of the city's celebration of its 300-year-old charter. For an old city, the new idea is viewed -- with cautious optimism from backers -- as a way to bring in the 21st century. About a dozen pieces would be included in the exhibit. "This brings art to people, not people to art," Sally Wern Comport, the Artwalk project curator, said in her West Street studio.

The redevelopment of two aging public housing communities could bring as many as 50 additional townhouses and apartments to downtown Annapolis, the city's housing authority said last week. Architects unveiled three plans for the redesign of College Creek Terrace and Obery Court that include a waterfront park, senior housing, a community center, and 210 apartments and townhouses -- with 164 of the units serving as public housing. Members of the revitalization committee, who met Tuesday to review the plans, said the preliminary sketches were a good start to a redevelopment process that began in the spring and will take about three years.

City to hold meeting on Stony Run Baltimore officials will hold a public meeting Thursday to answer questions about a $10 million project to reconstruct a wooded stream in Roland Park by bulldozing its banks. The city's Department of Public Works will explain the Stony Run reconstruction at 7 p.m at the Roland Park Presbyterian Church, 4801 Roland Ave. The project's designers say that rebuilding the stream, by adding small dams and logs and flattening steep banks, will reduce erosion and sediment flowing into Baltimore's harbor and the Chesapeake Bay. But some scientists and neighbors have questioned the project, saying cutting down at least 150 trees and bulldozing banks could worsen erosion and destroy Stony Run Park's shady canopy.