The first insult, say West Baltimore community leaders, was that Tuerk House, which operates substance use disorder treatment facilities across the city, never came to them to discuss its plan to acquire a prominent property.

It was only when a sign suddenly appeared at the former Walgreen’s drug store building at 300 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in March that people discovered a zoning change was being sought for “a residential care facility for 17 or more residents.”

“You didn’t get community buy-in first. You took us for granted, Mr. CEO!” Heritage Crossing resident Terrence Artis chided at a meeting Monday. “Somehow you thought that you could just come and place this facility in our community. That is not valuing us!”

Along with more than three dozen neighbors, Artis was confronting Tuerk House’s cadre of officials, consultants, an architect and a lawyer from the city’s top land-use firm. On easels were glossy mock-ups of the project and a floor plan.

Seeking more details, including whether Tuerk House was planning a drug treatment facility, nearby communities have met with the nonprofit’s representatives in recent weeks. They say they got conflicting descriptions and no straight answers.

The room was bristling with hostility, suspicion and disappointment.

“Their proposal changed three times over the course of the meeting we hosted,” Sonia Eaddy, president of the Poppleton Now Community Association, told The Brew.

Here they were at another meeting being told there would be no drug treatment at the facility and shown a different floor plan for the health clinic – this time with no residential units.

A pharmacy had been added as well as an urgent care facility, both to be open to the public, company officials said, explaining they also plan to purchase an adjacent office building and use it for administrative offices.

“We really want to be partners, and so we don’t want to ram anything down anybody’s throat,” Tuerk House CEO Bernard Gyebi-Foster told the crowd.

It didn’t matter – the room was bristling with hostility, suspicion and disappointment.

“A treatment center, a pharmacy, whatever you want to pretty it up to be, I don’t want it,” one woman said. “Let’s get a petition. I’ll knock on doors.”

“What’s the purpose of bringing in urgent care when we have University right over there?” another woman said, referring to the University of Maryland’s downtown campus. Her remark prompted others to call out the names of nearby hospitals and  drug treatment programs.

“The trust is not there because there’s been so much inconsistency with your plans,” explained Coraine Williams, a homeowner for the past 24 years at nearby Heritage Crossing who works in the finance department of a healthcare company. “How do we know things won’t change later?”

Like many in the room, Williams described Tuerk House as offering nothing to uplift the community while more likely dragging it down. She explained how, fearing for her 12-year-old son’s safety, she only lets him play near the school he attends across town in Federal Hill.

“He has to play in Federal Hill. He has to play in Locust Point. His friends are there. Because I’m afraid to really have him out in the community where we live,” she said. “The main concern is because there’s a lot of drug trafficking issues in our community.”

Having had a brother who was a Tuerk House resident – “he died while in their care of an overdose” – Williams said, she looks at drug rehabilitation centers differently now and wonders “are they really helping?”

“If you really want to help, you need to move this away from Baltimore City, away from a high drug traffic area,” she concluded. “They walk right outside and get back into it.”  (On a table, she had an opposition petition already signed by more than 30 people.)

No Suboxone or Methadone

The meeting sparked bitter words about what residents have said holds back West Baltimore – crime, blight, drug dealing and an oversaturation of substance abuse treatment facilities.

The dialogue was jarring because the Tuerk House team had come with a conciliatory message and a draft document making a number of promises, including:

• Not to operate a long-term drug treatment center for 15 years.

• Not to administer methadone or suboxone to patients.

• Make its best efforts to arrange transportation for patients that require longer term care to the appropriate hospital or facility.

• Will not allow patients to remain on the property for more than 24 hours at a time.

Councilman Zac Blanchard, who called the meeting, also explained the unusual zoning issues for the parcel, located at the intersection with Saratoga Street. (Once also a Rite-Aid pharmacy, the building now sits vacant.)

Developed as a Planned Unit Development that eventually lapsed, the property was designated “residential” under the 2017 Transform comprehensive rezoning process.

“You could not put a pharmacy in there today because of how it is zoned,” explained Blanchard who, as the area’s council representative, would have to support a zoning change for Tuerk House to be able to carry out its plans.

Sweeteners and a Warning

Acknowledging residents’ concerns about the project, Blanchard said they should nevertheless consider its positive features. It could fill some critical needs, he suggested, since grocery stores are lacking in West Baltimore and many pharmacies have shut down.

“In 2023 when I was campaigning, I heard from, like, every third resident that I spoke to in Poppleton about how much of a loss it was to lose the neighborhood drugstore and the impact that had,” he remarked.

“A CVS is not exactly the perfect solution to a food desert, but you could get milk there, right? You could get eggs there,” he observed.

Blanchard also pointed out that, if the Tuerk House plan were abandoned, the R-8 residential zoning would remain in place which already allows the property to be used as a residential treatment facility.

“If Tuerk house was trying to do a residential care facility, they would just go before the zoning board,” he explained. “I would never need to be involved.”

He made the point several times before ultimately concluding that, despite the evening’s barrage of negative feedback, Tuerk House should be allowed to return with another presentation.

“This is real life. Vacant properties are not happy properties,” he warned. “The most likely use of the location, under the current zoning, is something folks will definitely want less than what Tuerk House is proposing.”

“The most likely use of the location is something folks will definitely want less than what Tuerk House is proposing”  – Councilman Zac Blanchard.

Blanchard told the crowd he won’t back the plan if residents continue to strongly oppose it, but cautioned, “We don’t want perfect to be the enemy of good and end up with a worse outcome than what we could have had.”

He also said he had heard from people in the community who told him, if the nonprofit creates the project they say they will, they like aspects of it.

“Those people are not here!” an audience member shouted.

“That’s not true,” Blanchard shot back.

Tuerk House’s Gyebi-Foster, meanwhile, was upbeat, already looking ahead to the company’s next meeting, saying, “We are hoping that third time is the charm!”

“So we go back to the drawing board, figure out some of the things, maybe on the food desert side,” he mused. “I see a combination of a few things that we could do, not only on the convenience store side, but how we beautify the community.”

“They’re making a multi-million dollar investment in this area, if permitted, and this is important to them,” attorney Rosenblatt said at one point.

“Zoning for us”

As the evening wore on, the audience pushback grew fierce, including from Deb O’Neill,  a North Ridgely’s Delight community leader, who asked what she termed “the awkward question.”

“I haven’t heard a single person say they like this proposal. What if the community just doesn’t support this?” O’Neill asked. “Is it going to move forward? Because that’s what it sounds like is going to happen.”

Another speaker asked the company’s representatives if its planned pharmacy would have what residents really value about such places – daily necessities like diapers, formula, batteries, a quart of milk, more so than prescriptions.

Not really, Gyebi-Foster answered. “You’re not going to have convenience store products like batteries,” he said.

“If you can support Harborplace, Canton, Federal Hill and they can get beautiful stuff, then we should be able to get it as well”  – Janet Allen.

The area’s pharmacies didn’t leave because of lack of demand but because of the problems that city leaders left community members to battle on their own, Theresa Smith said.

“The pharmacies left because the city would not support us as we dealt with the theft, the vandalism and the homelessness,” said Smith, president of the Townes at the Terraces Homeowners Association.

Smith wasn’t the only one to bring up crime. An accountant named Anna had a sharp question and a chilling personal story.

“How can we be assured that building isn’t going to be vacant again in five or 10 years?” the Heritage Crossing resident recounted. “Because I got jumped right outside that building. I had to have my entire nose reconstructed.”

One speaker urged Blanchard to put the interests of residents over entities like Tuerk House.

“If it has to be special zoning, let’s get something that the community wants,” she said. “Not something that someone else wants to put here that we don’t feel there is a need for.”

“We don’t have any place to shop for anything decent,” said Janet Allen, president of the Heritage Crossing Residents Association. “How about libraries, some type of recreational facility, some place where people can walk to a job where they will make more than just a minimum wage?”

(An early purchaser in her unique community with its quaint park and gazebo on the site of the former Murphy Homes, Allen has spoken frequently about the city’s failure in the decades since to make promised development enhancements.)

Others chimed in with ideas: Play facilities for kids, nice restaurants or coffee shops. A community center. Smith, like Allen, pointed out that the communities they lead currently have no community centers.

“We need something to make us grow, and we need our elected officials to have that vision, to say we are worth making it grow,” Allen continued.

“If you can support Harborplace, Canton, Federal Hill and they can get beautiful stuff, then we should be able to get it as well.”