On a shady stretch of Eastern Avenue just west of Broadway, there’s a boutique selling candy-colored cross-body clutch bags, pearl-and-stone necklaces and other trendy accessories.

Across the street, construction crews are readying a furniture store that is going to have chic indoor and outdoor furniture that would be right at home in nearby Harbor East.

Around the corner on Broadway is Fells Point Station, a newly-opened 47-unit apartment building that boasts a fitness room, business center and fireplace in the lobby. Two Baltimore firms just announced a $2.5 million plan to convert the Martin Seafood Co. building at 1618 Bank Street into 20 apartments with onsite parking.

Signs of revival are popping up lately in Douglass Place on the west side of Fells Point, located between Bank and Fleet streets from Broadway west to Caroline Street.

There’s also plenty of evidence that the neighborhood continues to struggle – smashed glass in an alley, dreary shops and dollar stores, a man passed out on a bench in the middle of the day.

Seth Barkman, who is opening the MiY Home furniture store along with partner Michael Wright, prefers to emphasize the positive. “Right now, I think this area is on the upswing and I think people feel that,” Barkman said. “I think the vibe is moving in the right direction.”

But other trends – in particular, the proposals to add or expand low-end liquor stores and seven-day-a-week taverns – concern Barkman, Wright and other longtime residents.

These establishments, they argue, will hurt the neighborhood because of their proximity to several establishments that serve the homeless and treat people with drug and alcohol problems.

“Public drunkenness, substance abuse, and associated ills such as public urination, defecation, and people passing out in the streets, benches, doorsteps, sidewalks, flowerbeds, on peoples cars, etc. [are] extremely commonplace,” wrote Jeff Hossfeld, one of the signers of an online petition against a proposal to transfer a tavern license to 1615 Eastern Avenue.

“This has gotten extremely out of control and needs to stop,” Hossfeld wrote.

Shared Challenges

The bar and liquor store wars heated up noticeably this spring, with some community leaders saying they had one positive side effect: bringing people together across neighborhood, ethnic and generational lines

Within a few weeks, the petition against the 1615 Eastern Avenue proposal (which is on the same block as MiY Home) got 121 signatures.

Another liquor-related proposal drew about 20 people in April to an afternoon Liquor Board hearing at City Hall. At issue was a request to allow six-day-a-week Bristol Liquors at 507 South Broadway to become a seven-day-a-week tavern.

That decision didn’t go the community groups’ way (the liquor board approved Bristol’s request), but Fells Point Community Organization president Joanne Masopust found afterwards something to cheer about: “This turnout during working hours was really great, it’s really a sign of a lot of energy in the community right now.”

To Deirdre Hammer, president of the Douglass Place Neighborhood Association, the changes happening these days are not without precedent. “When I moved here, 1990 to 2008 was staggering,” she said. “There was a ton of renovation going on in those years. I saw a lot of homeowners moving in and taking part in the neighborhood.”

That momentum “came to a screeching halt” with the real estate collapse and recession, so now the reviving economy has essentially re-started what was put on hold, she said.

Another reason for the renewed interest in Douglass Place, Hammer observed, is the expansion of Harbor East. “Harbor East is coming right up to the boundaries of our neighborhood,” Hammer said. “We have no problem with that. Douglass Place now has maybe the last of the best offerings that are around.”

Barkman agreed. “A lot of these [buildings] have been vacant for a long time,” he said, “and I think only now people are looking at it as another option to own a home or start a business without that huge start-up capital you would need to do something at Harbor Point,.”

Tavern to Open at 7 a.m.

In trying to lift up the area,  community leaders have pushed city officials to respond better to 311 complaints about trash, old mattresses, used condoms and worse. Other solutions have squarely targeted vagrants, street, dwellers and people with substance abuse problems.

City Councilman James B. Kraft got the city to remove benches in the grassy Broadway media where people were sleeping. Fells Prospect Community Association President Victor Corbin has joined with other community leaders to propose the creation of “drunk tanks.”

“Otherwise known as ‘sobriety centers,’ modeled after those in Houston and Tampa,” Corbin wrote in a letter to the City Council, noting that greater Fells Point has over 125 liquor establishments.

Community leaders see tighter liquor regulation as a way to head off those problems by limiting the availability of cheap booze that would exacerbate substance abusers’ problems.

The red flag for many with the 1615 Eastern Avenue tavern was its planned hours of operation. At a community meeting, applicant Raj Bommakanti said that it would be an “upscale” establishment, with packaged goods and a wine station, and that it would open at 7 a.m.

“No upscale anything keeps these hours,” one signer of the petition wrote.

Under the BD7 license that Bommakanti is seeking, the establishment could be open from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.

At the applicants’ request, the case before the Liquor Board was postponed last month. Asked to discuss the application and community opposition, Bommakanti referred a reporter to his attorney Abraham L. Hurdle, who said via email, “We do not comment on ongoing and future litigation.”

Barkman and Wright say they and other opponents are not against bars and booze.

“The best and worst thing about Fells Point is the bars and alcohol,” Wright said. “The alcohol isn’t the problem, it’s the way it’s being sold. These liquor stores can choose to sell to people who are drinking recreationally and who are not at risk or they can sell to homeless people who are at risk. You’re either helping the community or hurting it.”

The Stoop Safety Test

Inte’a DeShields, owner of Charm City Noir boutique at 1618 Eastern Avenue, was born and raised in Baltimore. She said she has seen positive signs of change in Douglass Place, too.

When she first moved into the building eight years ago where she would eventually start her business, she recalled, the neighborhood was very different.

“Then, you had to be much more careful than now when coming in,” DeShields said. “I’m always watchful, mostly because I know what living in the city means. I wouldn’t have sat on my steps at 12:00 or 11:00 at night eight years ago. Now when I have friends over I sit on my steps and it’s not bad.”

DeShields said the neighborhood is racially diverse, including people of African descent, a French-Israeli couple and a group of young Indian men. She said there are also people with small children living on either side of her boutique.

As a graduate student who often comes home late after spending long nights in the library, DeShields said she would be concerned about her safety if Bommakanti’s business is up and running across the street from her building.

“I’m in the library sometimes until 2, 3 in the morning,” DeShields said. “If I come home at 1:50 and his establishment is just letting out whoever has been drinking there all day, that concerns me.”

DeShields, neighbors with kids – those are the kind of residents that Wright, Barkman and Hammer hope to attract to Douglass Place.

“We’re looking forward to working with other people in the neighborhood to figure out how to get planters in front of businesses to make them look more friendly and plant trees on the street, just working on things to make it better,” Barkman said.

“A lot of the people that are commuting in and out of the city that might live 20 miles from here might say, ‘I really don’t like that commute, it looks so beautiful in Fells, I’d love to live there.’ That would be the dream.”