For nearly two decades, the shuttered Poppleton Recreation Center’s peeling red-and-white exterior and crazily angled ramps have been, like so many other parts of this West Baltimore community, a sad reminder of better days.

Thanks to more than $3 million raised from donors, foundations and federal, state and city sources, the building has been renovated, painted bright yellow, blue and green, and is open once again for community members to enjoy.

“We resurrected the rec!” declared Tony Scott, executive director of the Southwest Partnership, the nonprofit group that spearheaded the project.

Scott wasn’t the only speaker employing biblical imagery at the reopening on Thursday, which attracted a crowd of well-wishers to 1049 West Saratoga Street.

“God shine upon us!” proclaimed Pastor Brenda White, of the Allen AME Church a stone’s throw away. “For all who thought we were dead, somebody said, ‘These dry bones can live!’”

Spotting Poppleton Now Community Association president Sonia Eaddy, White gave her a warm greeting and a hug.

Eaddy recalled coming to the center as a teenager, meeting kids from Poe Homes, Lexington Terrace and other neighborhoods, and hanging out with them at the basketball court til 2 or 3 in the morning.

“It brought us together and it took away the stigma of ‘the projects,’” Eaddy said, marveling that, after so many years of pleading for the center to be re-opened, it finally happened. “To see this come to fruition is like, wow.”

Mayor Brandon Scott, meanwhile, took credit for channeling federal Covid-19 relief money through the American Rescue Plan Act into Recreation and Parks upgrades like this one, going on to praise the community.

“I want to say thank you, to not just Ms. Eaddy, but all of our Poppleton neighbors, for your resilience and your perseverance. It took a lot of heart and courage to keep fighting for this project.”

None of the speakers referenced the fact that Eaddy and her neighbors are suing a developer and the city – with Scott named as one of the defendants – alleging their neighborhood was grievously wronged.

After the speeches concluded, guests and dignitaries headed inside for a tour of the building, a piece of cake and the customary ribbon-cutting, as little kids dashed around the gleaming new floors.

Boarded-Up and Vacant

Just beyond Thursday’s joyful celebration was a landscape afflicted with blight, vacancy and a host of uncertainties that raised an awkward question:

Will efforts to resuscitate the neighborhood – depopulated by a failed redevelopment project – ever get off the ground and bring back residents who will use the new rec center?

Pockmarking the entire area are large expanses of land where the rowhouses – demolished for the stalled La Cité project – used to be. A handful of well-kept properties like Sonia Eaddy’s co-exist with roofless, trash-strewn vacants.

Across dozens of blocks there is an eerie quiet that residents say speaks to what they’ve lost.

More than 500 homes in one of Baltimore’s oldest Black communities were targeted for acquisition through eminent domain as a result of the city’s 2006 agreement giving the New York company exclusive rights over 13 acres.

Blessed with HUD construction loans and city tax increment (TIF) financing, La Cité promised 1,800 units of affordable and upscale housing, a hotel, retail and more, but to date it has only delivered a single 262-unit apartment complex.

• Developer hollowed out Poppleton for private gain, residents’ lawyers tell a federal judge (4/10/25)

Those remaining in Poppleton were hopeful last year when the city announced it was canceling its developer’s agreement with La Cité, but Eaddy and her group say the honeymoon period with the Scott administration quickly came and went.

They discovered that La Cité was still in the picture, allowed to partner with a homebuilder to do a project on city-owned land. That project was never part of a community-driven effort to bring in new developers to revive the neighborhood the way its inhabitants want. City leaders who had appeared to support their efforts, residents say, never followed through.

Losing patience, Eaddy and fellow Poppleton residents filed a federal complaint arguing the failure of the inexperienced La Cité, backed by the city, harmed their property values.

Redevelopment? Or Removal?

One especially dismal sight in the neighborhood was the boarded-up and apparently completely vacant Poe Homes project, the oldest of the city’s public housing complexes.

The only humans around it last Thursday were a security guard with a pistol strapped to his waist and a ticketed tour group waiting to get into the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum on Amity Street that backs up to Poe Homes.

All the ground-level windows and doors of the housing complex were either covered with plywood or filled in with cement blocks.

Seven years ago, Poe Homes was targeted by the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC) to be replaced with a new mixed-income community under the federal Choice Neighborhoods program.

But given the Trump administration’s plans to shrink federal rental aid, axe affordable housing subsidies and slash HUD’s budget, community members have little hope it will happen anytime soon, if at all. In his first term, Trump pushed to terminate the Choice Neighborhoods program altogether.

Over the last year, HABC has been moving out the complex’s 288 households. Plans to raze the entire project remain on track for later this year, according to Mary Claire Davis, vice president of AHC Inc., the private developer that partnered with HABC on the redevelopment.

“It’s going to be the Baltimore way of making things disappear and leaving nothing in their place”  – UMBC professor Nicole King.

Could “Transform Poe” (what planners call the redevelopment plan) ever move forward without the estimated $60 millions the project partners had counted on from Choice Neighborhoods?

Possibly some years from now, but it wouldn’t be soon, Davis said, adding “a lot of nice money from Choice Neighborhoods would help make it happen faster.”

“We’re monitoring the federal landscape carefully,” she told The Brew on Friday. “But we and the Housing Authority are fully committed to figuring out a way to move it forward.”

The scenario is a disappointment to Nicole King, chair of the Department of American Studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has helped mobilize residents against the La Cité project.

“All I know is that HUD is not going to give them the big grant they need to redo Poe Homes. But they’re still getting rid of the people and tearing down the housing,” King said.

“It’s going to be the Baltimore way of making things disappear – like the Mechanic Theater or the McKeldin [Square] Fountain – and leaving nothing in their place.”

Glimmers of Hope

One bright spot in Poppleton, literally, is the strip of rainbow-colored alley houses on the 1100 block of little Sarah Ann Street.

Inhabited by Black families since just after the Civil War, the houses were targeted for demolition, but saved in 2022 after community members and historic preservationists protested.

The city eventually worked out a deal with La Cité to take the 11 historic houses out of the land development agreement and turn them over to the Black Women Build Baltimore group.

Participants in a walking tour conducted after the ribbon-cutting event were told that the first house was going to be offered for sale at an affordable price in the next month, with priority given to former tenants.

“There’s glimmers of hope thanks to things like the Sarah Ann houses and the rec center coming back,” King said.

Such optimism was palpable from remarks by Anthony Hudgins III, executive director of the Southwest Sports and Fitness Alliance, the grassroots group that propelled the seven-year-long rec center revival drive.

Under the shade of trees alongside the building, where his group will now be based, Hudgins sketched out some of his plans:

Sports teams outside, fitness classes inside, workforce development programs for the staff, karaoke nights, overnight teen “lock-ins,” prom “send-offs,” journaling, meditating and much more.

“Our media center is not just about filming highlights. It’s about developing voices,” he enthused. “We’re teaching our young people storytelling, editing, podcasting, branding, giving them the tools to shape their narratives.”

Asked who will come to the rec center given how Poppleton was hollowed out by a failed housing policy, Eaddy argued, in effect, that if you build it, people will come.

“That’s why it’s important to put amenities in. And find out what the community’s needs and desires are,” she said. “Then people will want to live here.”

If only it were that simple, King said.

Aside from a swimming pool under construction and scheduled to open next year (“the city really stepped up on that”), Poppleton residents have largely struggled alone to nurture these assets, she said, drawing up planning documents, writing grant proposals to save historic buildings, cultivating a community garden, fundraising for the rec center, and trying to find developers and investors they can work with.

Poppleton won’t flourish, King argued, until small businesses, lenders and homebuyers can see that it’s released from the redevelopment debacle.

“Things remain frozen. Everyone’s kind of waiting, as they have been for the last 20 years.”