For the better part of two decades, since Baltimore leaders signed away the rights to a 14-acre swath of West Baltimore beneath their homes, the residents of Poppleton have gotten used to waiting.
Waiting for their homes to be seized and razed, waiting for new buildings to rise in their place, waiting for help when that development failed to materialize.
Now another wait may be in store.
City officials announced in June that they were trying to cut ties with La Cité, a New York City-based group tapped in 2006 to develop the property. Baltimore officials said La Cité defaulted on its land disposition agreement after failing to prove it had financing in place for a senior apartment building long planned for the site.
La Cite, however, shows no signs of walking away. The company responded with a statement that argues it’s Baltimore, not the developer, that’s in breach of the agreement.
Company officials won’t say whether they’ll take the issue to court, but a spokeswoman said all legal options will be explored. Given past legal entanglements between La Cité and Baltimore, all parties are holding their collective breath.
“It would definitely take a couple years, three to four at least,” attorney Thomas Prevas said, for a potential lawsuit to play out.
Prevas, a former member of Baltimore’s Planning Commission, has no formal ties to Poppleton, but has offered legal assistance to some of the area’s few remaining homeowners.
“It just comes down to the language in that contract,” Prevas said. “But it’s really, really, really unfair to that neighborhood.”
Baltimore officials say they are in a strong position, potentially stronger than the last time they tangled with La Cité. Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott said in late June that he feels “confident” in the tack the city took.
“Our priority is to move forward with this long-awaited development with a sense of certainty,” said Tammy Hawley, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development. “We look forward to resolving these concerns and collaborating with the community on the next steps.”
The 2006 deal, inked during Democrat Martin O’Malley’s mayoral administration, gave La Cité the right to rehabilitate 13.8 acres, roughly bordered by West Mulberry Street to the north, North Amity Street to the east, West Fairmount Street to the south and North Carrollton Avenue to the west.
The area, which sits just south of Baltimore’s “Highway to Nowhere,” was at the time made up of 526 properties, a horseshoe of land surrounding a large block containing the Greater Model public pool and Francis M. Wood High School. When proposals were requested for the site in 2004, the city had not started the process of acquiring — through condemnation and other means — more than 160 of those tracts. More than $15 million eventually would be spent to buy and demolish homes and relocate the residents of Poppleton, one of the city’s oldest Black neighborhoods.
La Cité’s plans included developing up to 1,800 residences and about 150,000 square feet of commercial space for an urban grocer and other retailers. The developer also wanted to launch a charter school at Francis Wood, where Excel Academy now operates, and a youth-oriented tennis training center.
Much of that plan is unrealized. A 262-unit apartment complex opened in 2019 on the site, but it has struggled and La Cité has not completed the redevelopment’s first phase.
The project benefited from “tax increment financing,” which diverts increased property taxes from the development to pay down the debt on some infrastructure improvements. In 2017, the city issued $12 million in TIF bonds to support the project.
Additional bonds are now at the center of the dispute between the city and La Cité. The company has said the city failed to take action on the next round of TIF financing, a “material breach” that has stalled development. La Cité was forced to declare an “event of force majeure,” the company said in a statement. That typically refers to events beyond someone’s control that can excuse a contractual obligation.
City officials disagree. The spokeswoman for the Department of Housing and Community Development argued in a statement that the sale of TIF bonds are a developer-driven process. La Cité has not submitted the financial information required for the next tranche of bonds to be issued, Hawley said.
“Despite being advised on the necessary steps, they have failed to act,” she said. “It is the developer’s responsibility to submit the required information to progress.”
While Baltimore officials maintain they are confident in their standing to end the agreement, the city has a losing record in disputes with La Cité. In 2012, with no buildings completed on the site, Baltimore officials tried for the first time to cancel their agreement with the developer. The city’s argument at the time was similar: La Cité was “unable to secure financing,” Housing and Community Development spokeswoman Cheron Porter said at the time.
La Cité sued. In court documents filed that year, the company mounted a now-familiar argument: It was Baltimore’s fault it had failed to secure financial commitments. The company said Baltimore blocked its access to public financing, specifically TIF bonds. The suit also argued the city failed to acquire clear title to all the properties necessary for the project’s first phase.
A federal judge sided with La Cité. The contract continued.
The land disposition agreement for Poppleton, the document governing La Cité’s rights to the properties, is particularly favorable to the developer. Other such Baltimore agreements have what’s known as a reverter clause or clawback provision, allowing the city to take property back if a developer doesn’t meet certain conditions. Some agreements require permits to be obtained within a certain timeframe. Others require the project to be done by a deadline. The Poppleton agreement has no clawback.
The deal does, however, have a new amendment that adds a stipulation to the agreement. Signed in June 2022 when Scott’s administration announced some homes were being removed from the development’s footprint, the amendment calls on La Cité to prove it has financing in place within 22 months. The amendment allows Baltimore to terminate the agreement with respect to future projects if that milestone isn’t met.
Prevas said he believes the amendment presents an opening for the city in what has proven otherwise to be an “atrocious” deal.
“This new amendment does create an opportunity for the city to say, ‘Look, we paid you $250,000 for consideration, we amended the LDA conditions,’” he said. “‘One of the conditions was that you’re going to present sufficient financial backing by this date and you didn’t do it.’”
Scott said he couldn’t comment on “pending litigation,” but maintained confidence in the city’s position.
“Since that letter went out (to La Cité), I’ve talked to people from Poppleton and all I’ve heard was, ‘Thank you,’” Scott said. “It’s been a long time, and we stand by the letter. We’ll work through all the legal things as we move forward.”
In a statement Friday, La Cité said it informed Baltimore in April that equity capital and a loan commitment were in place for future phases of the Poppleton development. However, TIF funding also was an “integral part” of the financing, the developer said.
“La Cité is waiting for the city to perform, not the other way around,” the developer said. “La Cité has always been a good partner and given the city the time it needed to meet its contractual obligations. La Cité remains hopeful that the city will do the right thing, however it is prepared to explore all legal options to get the project back in alignment.”
Whether the city prevails or not, the prospect of litigation is likely to cost everyone involved something they’ve already sacrificed in multitudes: time.
Seema Iyer, who got involved with Poppleton in her former role as associate director of the Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore, said the neighborhood “deserves better” than what has been wrought by years of delays.
She said the neighborhood’s location presents many advantages: proximity to the University of Maryland BioPark, sports stadiums and the proposed Red Line. But the next plan, to be developed if the city can extricate itself from the La Cité contract, needs more community buy-in, a process that also will take time.
“The urgency of ‘now’ is long since passed,” Iyer said. “Even before this project started, this area had seen so much disinvestment, so the urgency of now is 20 years ago.”
Tisha Guthrie, a resident of the apartments build by La Cité and the secretary of the Poppleton NOW community group, said residents of the neighborhood can’t afford to wait for the city to do its due diligence. Community leaders have been reviewing documents related to the development searching for their own legal arguments for potential breach of contract, she said.
The city’s move to try to cancel the development deal has created optimism, but should the situation become mired in the legal system, community outcry will be louder than ever, she said.
“This community has been in a holding pattern for going on two decades,” Guthrie said. “I don’t think its hyperbole to call it terrorism.”
“This is not just a Baltimore thing. There will be a broader initiative to galvanize, and to really ensure that our voices are heard; and that there’s something done, so we can put an end to this,” she said. “We will get this land back. We will.”
Baltimore Sun reporter Lorraine Mirabella contributed to this article.
