The Uplands Apartments complex near the Baltimore city-county line has been vacant for nearly a year, but demolition to clear the site for the city's biggest housing development in decades has been delayed by litigation.
Neighbors and politicians have complained that vagrants and vandals will be drawn to the site until the 970-unit, approximately 50-acre complex is torn down. The complex is part of a proposed 100-acre plan to build 1,100 new apartments, homes and condominiums.
``If they can't tear it down, they're doing the next best thing by protecting (the city's) investment'' with security guards, said Angela Bethea-Spearman, president of the Uplands Community Association. ``It's better than being unprotected.''
The city has issued a request for proposals from security firms to provide armed, uniformed guards licensed to carry handcuffs and loaded handguns.
The city's housing department has three employees watching the complex, and cement barriers and fences have been set up to close off parking areas where people dump trash.
Deputy Housing Commissioner Douglass Austin said the complex has also had problems with fires, floods and break-ins.
The fire Monday destroyed the complex's community center.
A housing department official said Monday that the fire might have been set by vagrants trying to stay warm in the building. Fire Department spokesman Kevin Cartwright said Tuesday that fire officials had not determined the cause of the blaze.
The Uplands redevelopment plan is facing a challenge filed last year in federal court by former tenants of the low-income apartments who contend that the housing proposed for the site is too expensive to allow them to return.
Three months ago, a federal judge asked officials of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to reconsider the fair-housing implications of the terms of the agency's transfer of the vacant complex to the city, and lawyers for HUD, the city and the tenants have been in settlement talks in an effort to resolve the issue.
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