Baltimore’s Hendler Creamery was home to the country’s first fully-automated ice cream factory. But it became toast on Tuesday, when Baltimore’s preservation commission granted a contract purchaser’s request to tear it down.
One month after determining that the 1892 building at 1100 East Baltimore Street was a contributing structure to Baltimore’s Jonestown Historic District, the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) voted 8 to 1 to approve an application from Helping Up Mission to raze it to make way for a community green space.
What remains of the already-gutted building has been standing across the street from the non-profit’s headquarters since 2018, when a company headed by local developer Kevin Johnson halted work on a city-approved construction project that would have incorporated two of its brick facades into a $75 million, 296-unit apartment building he proposed for the site. The project was being developed by Hendler Creamery Development LLC, an affiliate of Commercial Group, headed by Johnson and based in Hanover, Maryland.
Concerned that the partly-dismantled building was both an eyesore and a potential safety hazard, with steel beams buttressing the remaining façades and forcing pedestrians to walk into Baltimore Street, Helping Up Mission negotiated a contract to buy the property so it could take down the building and clean up the rubble-strewn site. The sale contract was contingent on the city’s issuance of a demolition permit and that required CHAP’s consent, since the property is within a city historic district.
CHAP’s vote, if it isn’t appealed in court, clears the way for Helping Up Missionto move ahead with plans to buy the property and raze the Hendler building, Chief Administrative Officer T. Sky Woodward said after the meeting on Tuesday.
Based at 1029 E. Baltimore St. in Jonestown, Helping Up Mission is a Christian-based non-profit that “provides hope to people experiencing homelessness, poverty or addiction by meeting their physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs,” according to its website. It operates programs from several properties in Jonestown.
Woodward said the organization has a “dedicated donor” who has agreed to pay the cost of purchasing the property. She said the plan is to create a “green, parklike space” where the apartment project was supposed to go and that the organization is aiming to complete the demolition and green space within a year to 18 months after it receives a demolition permit from the city.
The decision was a setback for local preservationists who argued that the building could still be saved.
John Murphy, an attorney who represented preservationists Donna Beth Joy Shapiro and Fred Shoken, said he was disappointed by the panel’s decision. He said city law allows 30 days for parties to appeal a decision by CHAP, and he would have to consult with his clients to see what they want to do.
Murphy said a big part of his disappointment is that the Hendler building was allowed to sit in its partially-dismantled state for so many years, and deteriorate, after the developer walked away from the project. He said CHAP had approved a plan that would have saved the facades of the Hendler building, as preservationists wanted, but then the city didn’t follow through to make sure the plan was carried out.
Designed by Jackson Gott and others, the Baltimore Street building was constructed to power the city’s then-fledgling cable car system and turned into a theater in 1903. In 1912, the Hendler Ice Cream Company converted it to the country’s first fully-automated ice cream factory. Hendler remained in business until the 1970s.
Two-step process
Tuesday’s meeting was the second phase of a two-step process that CHAP follows when it receives requests to demolish a building in a local historic district.
The first step was a public hearing held in May to determine whether the building is a contributing structure in its historic district, and CHAP voted 6 to 5 that it is. The May meeting was a do-over for a meeting in March, after a video recording of the earlier hearing was lost.
Tuesday’s hearing, the second step, was held to give the applicants an opportunity to discuss their plans for the site and present information to show whether preserving the building would pose an economic hardship.
A representative for Helping Up Mission, director of facilities Tom Stone, said clearing the site and rebuilding the structure “to appear as the old” would cost $5.7 million, including $1.8 million for demolition. Holcomb put the figure of replicating the south façade alone at $2.4 million. But beyond the monetary expense, speakers said, another issue was ensuring safe conditions for construction workers.
William Rockey, a vice president with Century Engineering, said that in order to work on the façades, a contractor would have to remove the steel bracing that currently holds them up. But once the bracing is removed, he said, the façades would no longer be structurally stable, making them dangerous to be near.
In any repair or reconstruction scenario, “you will have to remove some of this bracing and leave portions of the wall literally swinging in the breeze” and at risk of collapsing, he warned.
“We can’t preserve the existing façade. We would have to reconstruct it in order to be safe,” said Helping Up Mission CEO Daniel Stoltzfus.
Eric Holcomb, the executive director of CHAP, said he agrees about the potential danger to construction workers once the braces are removed.
“There is no feasible way that I can see, after talking with the engineer and other folks, to provide a safe work environment for the workers to conduct any rehabilitation work,” he said.
For that reason and others, CHAP’s staff recommends that the commission authorize demolition, Holcomb said.
“I just don’t believe that this building can be rehabilitated,” he said. “That’s the bottom line.”
Holcomb added that he didn’t think replicating the façade with new materials was warranted: “I don’t think that we are the Reconstruction Commission.”
Preservationists at the meeting disputed those arguments, saying they believe it would be possible to save the façades and incorporate them into another building, as Johnson had proposed.
Tom Liebel, an architect who served as CHAP’s chair when the panel approved Johnson’s apartment project in 2017, said his firm is currently working on a construction project that will save the front façade of the historic Mayfair Theatre at 508 N. Howard St. and incorporate it into an apartment building.
“I don’t think anyone is arguing that the end result of this should be a freestanding wall,” he said. “The intent is to have a building behind it. And while the first applicant did not succeed with that, I think there might be opportunities for other individuals to pursue that. I would point to the Mayfair Theatre as an awesome precedent for this…Preserving the façade can be done.”
Liebel also said he doesn’t believe economic hardship arguments apply in the case of the Hendler building because Helping Up Mission is the contract buyer, not the current owner. If the cost of saving the façade is too high for Helping Up Mission, he said, its directors could opt not to move ahead with the purchase and then the organization wouldn’t experience any hardship.
“It’s only a hardship if they proceed with the sale,” he said. “If they choose not to go forward with the purchase, there is no hardship for them.”
If Helping Up Mission doesn’t have the resources or inclination to preserve the building, “they don’t have to purchase it,” Shoken agreed. “The only entity that has a hardship is the owner, who isn’t here.”
“The commission is being hood-winked here,” Murphy said. “The owner of the structure is the only one entitled to claim hardship. He cannot claim hardship because the hardship is self-inflicted. He caused this.”
Preservationist Bill Pencek, former president of Baltimore Heritage, said he also believes it would be possible to stabilize the Baltimore Street facade so it doesn’t deteriorate any further, and that would give the current owner more time to find a buyer who could salvage it in keeping with the plan approved by CHAP.
Pencek pointed to the restoration of the B&O Railroad Museum’s historic roundhouse, after its roof collapsed in a snowstorm, as a case where a roofless building was salvaged despite a “substantial loss” of architectural fabric. “There are many examples,” locally and across the nation, he said.
Safety concerns
One difference between CHAP in 2017 and CHAP in 2023 is that most of the members now on the panel weren’t on CHAP when it approved Johnson’s plan.
Some members of CHAP said this week that while they would like to see the façades preserved, they are also concerned about public safety. They said they are troubled that the braces jut into Baltimore Street and pedestrians are walking out into traffic to get past them. Stoltzfus, the non-profit’s CEO, told the panel that there has been “evidence of drug use on the site” and of “people experiencing homelessness residing in the ruins.”
Just before taking their vote, panel members discussed the public safety implications of leaving the structure up much longer in its current state.
“I don’t think this is a conversation here about just eradicating history,” said CHAP chair Harry Spikes. “This has definitely turned into safety.”
“The status quo that we have right now is really unacceptable, from a public safety point of view,” said City Council member John Bullock, a panel member. “I think we’re at a point now where demolition is where we have to be.”
“This is a truly beautiful old building that we should have taken care of. We should have fought for it years ago,” said architect and panel member Kuo Pao Lian, who was not on the panel in 2017.
But the commission also has to consider the building’s current state and the blighting effect it has on the area, Lian said.
“I now have to ask myself: What is the health, safety and welfare of the public and the image of the city? It’s not necessarily about the idea that just the building may fall down or not fall down,” he said. “People live right there, people walk through there, and it’s just there and it’s reminding us of a failure…I agree it’s terrible. I just cannot see a place where I can say the health, safety and welfare is being fought for if we say, hey, it’s going to be this for another 15 years.”
The lone vote against demolition came from commissioner Peter Morrill, who asked whether the city will take any action against Johnson for not completing the project that CHAP approved and for allowing the façades to deteriorate.
“I would love to know, how do we hold the person that caused this problem accountable for it?” he asked. “That fact that he can do this to city property, ignore city laws and then walk away with a payday from an otherwise great neighbor is really gross to me.”
Holcomb said he will ask the city’s law department to look into the possibility of making a claim against the developer.
“I would like to go to the law department and see what our options are regarding demolition by neglect” by the current owner, he said.
