City Demolishing Blighted Remington Property

A blighted house in Remington will be demolished to make room for an expanded community garden.

Baltimore Housing, through it’s Vacants to Value program, which was established more than two years ago to help demolish or renovate abandoned buildings, will tear down a dilapidated house at 10:30 a.m., Tuesday at 2605 Miles Ave. to help make way for the extension of a garden already on the building’s south side.

"It’s a blighting influence. Blight is never good," said Cheron Porter, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Housing.

The building is in a section of Remington near the revamped Miller’s Court mixed-use development and the former James and Lynn’s Tire Service that is being turned into by Seawall Development. Price Modern is also preparing to renovate its nearby property in the 2600 block of Sisson Street.

"We’re hoping to clean up the whole street and make it a brighter, better, more viable place to live," said Judith Kunst, president of the Greater Remington Improvement Association.

The Remington neighborhood is no stranger to the Vacants to Value program. Last year, through the initiative, the city sold nine properties in the 2800 block of Remington Avenue to Seawall Development to be rehabilitated.  

Kunst said her community organization—one of two active groups in the neighborhood—has been working with the city for several years to have the property demolished. Overall she said she has been very happy with the process of working with the city.

"The process has been very easy because Vacants to Value is a program of very caring people with the city, who are really trying to help the city," Kunst said.

But the process to demolish a house isn’t always easy.

Porter said the length of time it can take to demolish, or sell a building, could be impacted by several variables, such as how long it takes to contact a property’s owner, how willing the owner is to address the city’s concerns and whether or not the courts become involved in the process.

"It’s different with every case," Porter said.

The Vacants to Value program has been one of the major initiatives under Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's administration, and has been used to address blight in the North Baltimore neighborhoods of Woobourne-McCabe and Harwood.

"Six decades of disinvestment left this city with vacant properties in nearly every community, and we needed to find a new market driven approach to eliminate blight that would create new homeownership opportunities and stimulate growth throughout the city," Rawlings-Blake said during an event in November.

Through fiscal year 2012, the most recent Vacants to Value data available, there were 16,000 vacant buildings in Baltimore citywide, 450 properties being rehabbed or renovated and 245 vacant and blighted properties demolished through the program.   

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