The recent demolition activity in a downtown historic district was prompted by a building collapse, not progress on a redevelopment project, according to an area resident who heard the building fall into the street.
“It wasn’t by any means a planned demolition,” said Matt Kelly, a resident of the Centerpoint Apartments at 8 N. Howard Street. “It collapsed.”
Kelly lives on the fifth floor of the Centerpoint Apartments, and from his window he can see the 200 block of West Fayette Street, part of the city’s Five & Dime Historic District, where two four-story buildings have come down in recent weeks.
Since mid-June, a crew has been working to take the buildings down and clean up debris on the north side of Fayette Street, part of the footprint of the proposed Compass development project planned by a group called Westside Partners.
A representative of Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) said in an email message last week that the demolition activity was approved by the commission, after the panel held public hearings on the project last year.
But Kelly said he could tell it wasn’t an ordinary demolition job. He said he was in his apartment at around 9:45 p.m. on Friday, June 14, when he heard a ”very loud” sound outside his window. He said he thought at first it might have been an accident involving a light rail train on Howard Street, but it wasn’t.
After hearing the sound, Kelly said, he went outside to see what happened and make sure no one was injured. That’s when he saw that the front portion of a building in the 200 block of W. Fayette Street had collapsed onto the sidewalk and into the street.” A fire engine and ambulance were on the block when he got there, and more vehicles came soon afterwards, he said. “I would say four to five” pieces of apparatus in all, he said.
The building that collapsed was at the eastern end of a row of six vacant structures that date from the mid-to late-1800s. Kelly said he didn’t see any sign of a fire or any indication that anyone was in the buildings on the row at the time of the collapse, and he didn’t see anyone being treated for injuries afterwards. He used his cell phone to take videos and photos of the scene.
From what he could see, “almost half of the building collapsed forward” into Fayette Street, he said. “It looked like it was only the front of the building that collapsed…They had the hook and ladder truck and extended [its ladder] over the back half of the building as they were doing their search and rescue to make sure no one was there. Luckily no one did get hurt, thank God.”
A spokesperson for the fire department has not responded to a request for information about the incident.
Maryland Fleet Week flyover
Kelly, a territory manager for Rankin Automation, an automation distributor, said the building collapse occurred on the same day that a F-35B jet flew over downtown as part of the scheduled Maryland Fleet Week and Flyover Baltimore activities, and shortly after a heavy rainstorm. When he left his apartment after hearing the initial sound, he said, it was drizzling. He speculated that the combination of the flyover, the storm and the building’s deteriorated condition may have contributed to the collapse.
“The building has been abandoned and dilapidated” for years, he said during a phone interview from his apartment. “I’ve been in this building for 11 years. Nothing has taken place over there…Everything is so dilapidated because it’s been neglected for 20-plus years.”
Just before the building collapsed, there was “a heavy downpour…like one of those hyper-bursts where you can’t see five yards in front of you,” he said. “It was like that for five to seven minutes, and then it let up. And then right after the rain stopped, that’s when I heard what I thought was a light rail versus truck accident. Then it was a steady drizzle for another two hours.”
The flyover of the F-35B jet took place six to eight hours earlier in the day.
“It vibrated my building,” Kelly said. “It was so loud, I was on a conference call for work, and everybody was like, Whoa, are you all right? That’s how loud it was, that it overtook my conversation. I don’t know. But I can tell you, vibrationally, from that noise, it may have played a factor. But you have to remember, that flyover was six-eight hours earlier in the day, too…Did it vibrate something or loosen something? Possibly. I think it may have had more to do with literally just neglect and time. But then when you add the flyover as well as the heavy rain, and you combine it, who knows? Maybe they all contributed.”
There have been no other reports of building collapses in downtown Baltimore during Maryland Fleet Week and Flyover Baltimore.
Quick clean-up
By the next morning, Kelly said, several pieces of construction equipment were on the Fayette Street site, including a bulldozer and a bobcat positioned to take down the rest of the partially-collapsed building at the end of the row.
“They were all over trying to clean it up as quickly as they could,” he said. “That’s a very big [bus] transfer point…By Monday at noon, the street and the sidewalk were absolutely clear. By noon on Monday, you could tell they had definitely made a valiant effort.”
The following week, crews razed the four-story building next to the one that collapsed. No other buildings on the block have been taken down since then. One structure on the block, now the end building in the row, is separated from the sidewalk by a chain link fence.
All of the buildings in the row – 220, 222, 224 and 226 West Fayette and 101 N. Howard Street — are part of a portfolio of 18 properties that were awarded in 2020 to Westside Partners, which has proposed to redevelop the area with a mixed-use project that will be carried out in phases. The city still owns the properties that are targeted for development.
Christopher Janian, a principal with Westside Partners, did not respond to a request for information about the status of his project. The development group has missed at least one deadline to finalize its plans with the city, changed architects, and lost one of its original team members, a group called Landmark Partners, since former Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young selected it over five other bidders more than three and a half years ago.
Eric Holcomb, executive director of CHAP, referred questions to the city housing department. Representatives for the Baltimore Development Corporation and city housing department also did not respond to requests for information.
