EBDI leaders hit on job creation at hearing

Former residents and job seekers from East Baltimore hammered at officials of East Baltimore Development Inc. on Wednesday about missed employment opportunities and delayed housing during a packed hearing in the City Council chamber on the controversial $1.8 billion redevelopment project, now in its second decade.

The two-hour investigative hearing, a continuation from a March 30 hearing called by Councilman Carl Stokes, drew a crowd of about 120 and was at times informative and contentious.

EBDI officials and three minority contractors brought to the hearing by master developer Forest City-New East Baltimore Partnership testified that the project was designed to help rebuild the Middle East community with a dedication toward hiring local workers.

Forest City Senior Vice President Scott Levitan said the third master plan for the redevelopment, now being drawn up, was focused on providing housing options at the site within the next two years.

But when the testimony opened up to former residents, they demanded housing and jobs — and charged that they have been disrespected and ignored for years.

“I am out of work, I’m a construction worker, they won’t hire me,” said Carl Gilmore, a Middle East resident. ”I need to feed my family. I need to work, and I’m counting on it.”

East Baltimore Development Inc. officials and contractors hired by master developer Forest City-New East Baltimore Partnership testified that the project is moving forward with local, African-American-owned firms.

“What I’ve come to recognize is a sense or a feeling that these challenges are being met with a listening ear,” said Martin Richardson, owner of the Verde Group, a contracting company that is renovating scattered site housing at the EBDI site.

Christopher Shea, EBDI’s CEO, told council members Stokes and Warren Branch and council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young that EBDI was working to “bring the middle class back” to East Baltimore. Shea said EBDI had produced $12.5 million in “wealth equity” for Middle East residents and the community through the project.

“A bulk of the presentation tonight is to make clear that an additional element of EBDI’s work is to create wealth,” Shea said. “And create wealth in an African-American class of East Baltimore.

“There have been 262 owners on average, who received a $50,000 increase in equity wealth in their new homes — that is equity that is theirs for their families to use, to send their children to college, for emergencies, to push them back into the middle class from which they came,” Shea said.

Levitan said construction was just beginning on a new parking garage, with construction on a state public health lab to begin in early 2012.

Levitan said a new community school, to open in late 2013 or 2014, would attract new residents to the community, and that the plan now is to build and renovate 254 housing units. Many of those will cost between $190,000 and $220,000 — a price that brought gasps from some in the packed council chambers who had been relocated from the Middle East community and have said they wanted to move back.

Shea said in response that EBDI would work with residents who wanted to return to the new community but who could not afford the higher-priced housing.

When the hearing opened up to testimony, the focus was on jobs for those who live in East Baltimore.

Richie Armstrong, an organizer for Baltimore Churches & Community, which brought about 30 members to the hearing, made a passionate plea for jobs.

“We are not here to beat up on EBDI,” Armstrong said. “We are here to let them know the community is no longer asleep. And many members are here tonight to participate in this for the very first time, to let them know you can no longer shut us out. We will be in your face. We will confront you and we will speak up on your behalf. People here came out tonight to make a change. They deserve the right, it is their due just to be able to provide for their families when you have something like this going up just outside their door.

“We’re serving notice that the residents of East Baltimore will not be overlooked anymore.”

Jermaine Jones, a community organizer for Baltimore Churches & Community United, said he has been discouraged by the development and its lack of options for residents.

“I live in East Baltimore and I am tired of coming out of my door and seeing people looking for jobs, who want to go to work while there is a massive development project going on right there,” Jones said. “I am here today to say we need transparency … we need numbers for people living in this area; we need more than to build buildngs and homes, we need opportunities.”

Jones disputed data presented by Shea that said the nonprofit had created 759 permanent jobs over the past decade — 181 going to East Baltimore residents.

“The numbers we heard today baffle me,” he said. “We’re talking about 10 years and $564 million spent and only 180 permanent jobs in 10 years?”

Stokes also questioned Shea’s figures. At the March hearing, he had lambasted the group for presenting incomplete hiring data.

“So far, we’re encouraged by the numbers we’ve heard tonight,” Stokes said of the data presented by Shea, adding that he wanted to receive follow-up data. “But in no way do we accept what we hear tonight.”

Stokes asked Antonio Marshall, owner of RAM Contracting, hired to work on construction of the new community school, if his company was legitimately a minority firm.

“Do you have equity in the project?” Stokes asked. “We’ve had false companies come before us and tell us they were African-American and they were fronts. I know it’s an unfair question. It’s just that we’ve been burned so many times before. I ask you, are you who you say you are?”

Marshall answered: “Absolutely. We know this market and the subcontractors and we can build the project … we are builders and we are serious about building this school.”

Tim Parish, a life-long east Baltimore resident whose small trucking company has worked at the EBDI site, is president of the Middle East Truth and Reconciliation Council. Parish said he wanted to help organize outreach for employment.

“We are willing to work with you all to make this thing happen,” he said.

At the March 30 hearing, officials of EBDI promised a City Council committee that they would operate with a renewed sense of transparency and communication about the finances and progress in economic development and new home construction as part of the $1.8 billion redevelopment project on 88 acres in Middle East.

The promises were made amid a public scolding by some City Council members, who chided EBDI’s top leaders, board chairman Douglas W. Nelson and Shea, the CEO, following their testimony, saying they had failed to supply a complete record of financial and job data.

Council members had requested such data for a month, they said.

“At this point, it’s very hard for us to feel comfortable,” said Stokes, who called the meeting as chairman of the Taxation, Finance and Economic Development Committee.

At a meeting Feb. 7, the City Council voted unanimously to conduct investigative hearings on EBDI. The vote was taken days after The Daily Record published a five-part series detailing how the nation’s largest urban redevelopment project, just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital, is beset by problems and lagging far behind schedule in terms of building new housing, creating jobs and attracting biotech development.

EBDI is the nonprofit that was created by the city and Johns Hopkins University in 2002 to spearhead the project. To make room for the new development, EBDI relocated 732 households from the largely blighted African-American community known as Middle East.

During the March 30 hearing, Shea said that despite rugged economic conditions, EBDI had made strides with development of the John G. Rangos Sr. Biotech Building, construction of a residential tower for Johns Hopkins University graduate students, and planning of a parking garage.

Since then, the group has embarked on passage of a third master plan for the development, which was met this summer by protest from several residents in the community who complained they were not included in the planning process.

Levitan testified that the efforts to rename the Middle East community Beacon Park had been dropped because of community opposition.

“Renaming the development is undesirable,” Levitan said. “We’re willing to not rename.”

City Council President Young left the hearing after 40 minutes. He later released a statement:

“I am encouraged by the continued dialogue and progress surrounding the large-scale redevelopment of East Baltimore,” Young said. “Tonight’s hearing represents a tangible step forward in continuing to hold EBDI accountable for the best interests of the residents of East Baltimore.”

The hearing stretched on for three hours with more than two dozen residents and officials of EBDI and the developers testifying about various stages of the project.

Stokes pledged to keep an ongoing dialogue on the redevelopment in the coming year.