Vacant Buildings

Council approves self-storage proposal for vacant buildings The Anne Arundel County Council unanimously passed legislation Monday night to help revitalize several blighted commercial areas. The bill by Councilwoman Pamela G. Beidle would allow vacant buildings to be transformed into self-storage facilities, as long as they meet guidelines that prohibit outside doors and restrict expansion. The bill also would allow mixed commercial and residential development on properties within 15 designated revitalization zones.

Baltimore's mayor has ordered a police crackdown on scrap dealers who buy stolen metal stripped from vacant houses, saying the practice has reached "epidemic proportions" and is causing poor residents to suffer.In a strongly worded letter sent last month to 13 dealers across the city, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said he has asked the police chief to investigate scrap dealers and bring lawbreakers to justice.nTC "This theft is affecting the well-being of the housing stock in the city," the March 23 letter says.

Why should it take Baltimore and its quasi-autonomous public housing authority four years to turn over five vacant, boarded-up houses to a developer who wants to invest in one of the city's most distressed neighborhoods?That's the question Edward W. Lee Jr., a landlord and developer who has been trying to get the city to sell him five rat-infested houses on North Fulton Avenue, has been asking since 1986. Lee, an experienced landlord who owns several other buildings in the neighborhood, can't understand why the city won't let him renovate the vacant buildings.

The Baltimore Board of Estimates has approved the sale of three vacant, dilapidated properties to a developer who had been trying unsuccessfully for four years to buy the buildings from the city.The board yesterday approved the sale of the buildings -- located at 833, 835, and 837 N. Fulton Ave. -- to developer Edward W. Lee Jr. for $1,500. The developer, who owns more than 30 buildings citywide, plans to refurbish the Harlem Park buildings into 12 rental housing units for low- and moderate-income people.

Dead people voted in Maryland's Nov. 8 election, Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey charged yesterday.The defeated candidate for governor, who is in the midst of an intensive investigation of voting records that she hopes will prove the election was stolen from her, made the charge before an audience of conservative legislators in Washington and then repeated it for reporters outside her Cockeysville headquarters."

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke says city housing officials have scheduled a meeting that could untangle problems that have thwarted a developer's efforts to buy from the city five vacant, rat-infested buildings."

Over the years, Eva Brown has watched neighbors on North Calhoun Street move out or die off, leaving their homes to fall slowly into disrepair, with windows boarded and foundations crumbling. In September, living among abandoned houses cost Brown the roof over her head when fire swept through the vacant buildings on her block. More than 100 firefighters, some coming from Washington for the first time since the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, arrived to battle the spreading flames.

Two vacant buildings collapsed Wednesday evening near the intersection of Light and East Ostend streets in South Baltimore, across from the Light Street branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library . Preliminary reports indicate that no one was in the three-story buildings or injured by the collapse, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a spokesman for the Baltimore City Fire Department. "It came down in less than 15 minutes," said Jenny Stefanowitz, who lives less than a block from the scene on Ostend Street.

Baltimore development officials hope to give the revitalization of downtown's west side a boost by offering seven mostly vacant properties for redevelopment. The Baltimore Development Corp. yesterday requested proposals from developers for seven scattered sites in the once-struggling neighborhood. Since the city adopted an urban renewal plan in 1999, the Hippodrome Theater has been refurbished, and private developers have built new and redeveloped apartments, offices and shops. The first condominiums are under construction in the Rombro Building, a converted garment factory.

Baltimore's mayor has ordered a police crackdown on scrap dealers who buy stolen metal stripped from vacant houses, saying the practice has reached "epidemic proportions" and is causing poor residents to suffer.In a strongly worded letter sent last month to 13 dealers across the city, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said he has asked the police chief to investigate scrap dealers and bring lawbreakers to justice."This theft is affecting the well-being of the housing stock in the city," the March 23 letter says.