Nonprofit has $1.2M plan to turn old library branch into offices, restaurant

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A nonprofit community development group wants to turn the unused former Highlandtown branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library into a mixed-use project with offices and a restaurant.

The Baltimore Development Corp. Wednesday announced that it had received just one response to its request for proposals to redevelop the site, at 3323 Eastern Ave.

Southeast Community Development Corp., a group that develops affordable housing and community-use commercial properties and provides housing counseling services for home buyers and distressed homeowners, was the sole bidder. Their plan calls for a $1.2 million renovation of the structure to provide 5,000 square feet of offices and classrooms on its second and third floors and about 3,000 square feet of first-floor retail.

Baltimore firm RM Sovich Architecture would design the project, which will be built by Pennsylvania-based Hostetter Construction Corp., if the proposal is accepted by the BDC. The property has been vacant since 2007, when the local library branch moved to a new, more modern site at Conkling Street and Eastern Avenue.

Chris Ryer, executive director of the Southeast CDC, said the group is sill looking for tenants to provide what he called “catalyst retail” for the first floor of the building.

“We’re looking for the restaurant and bar use that will appeal to the demographics we have, and really create a new market here,” he said. He added that several studies that had been done of the area found that people who live nearby have a “fairly high income” and that there was a large number of people between the ages of 20 and 50.

Financing arrangements have not yet been finalized, but Ryer said that if the group is not worried about finding the money for the project.

“We’re a very strong CDC, so honestly we could finance this ourselves,” he said. “If we wanted to — which we don’t — we could take a large portion of [our endowment] and put it into real estate. I think that will make it a little easier to borrow money for this.”

The Southeast CDC was endowed three decades ago by the Ford Foundation, and today has a cash cushion of about $1 million to $1.5 million, Ryer said. About half of the group’s budget comes from corporate and charitable donations, while the other half comes from government grants.

Over the last 15 years, the group has developed between 400 and 500 affordable housing units near the Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore. Many of the commercial projects the SECDC works on are related to the Highlandtown Main Street initiative, a city-sponsored program meant to attract businesses to city neighborhoods.

The group also worked to help develop the historic Patterson Theatre on Eastern Avenue, now home to Baltimore’s Creative Alliance, as well as the Southeast Anchor Library on the site of the former Grand Theatre and Santoni’s Supermarket in Butcher’s Hill.

The top two stories of the former Highlandtown Library site will house the SECDC’s headquarters.

“We’re using our office tenancy as an additional tool to see it redeveloped, but also to control the costs so we can cast as broad a net as possible to find that retailer,” Ryer said.

He added that the Southeast CDC will tap Chesapeake Real Estate Group LLC to do the leasing on the project because of its expertise in attracting restaurant tenants. Chesapeake recently brought Bagby Pizza Co. to the Bagby Building, a converted historic furniture warehouse it owns in downtown Baltimore’s Harbor East neighborhood.

Doug Schmidt, one of Chesapeake’s founders, sits on the board of the Southeast CDC.