Open Letter from Katy Greene Davis

Fellow Baltimoreans,

We are under an unimaginable threat to our historic buildings all over downtown Baltimore. The developers are poised to tear down one and a half acres of historic properties right in the heart of nationally famous Historic Fell's Point (the original city on the shores of the Patapsco River). Saint Stanislaus Church will be gutted, and the Mother Seton Convent, the Friary of the Franciscans, and all the adjacent buildings down Aliceanna Street will be fodder for the wrecking ball if we don't stand up and put some heat under the rear ends of the politicians, the archdiocese, and the developers. This kind of sneaky behind-the-scenes, back-room dealing is old and stinks of greed. The developers (who, by the way, sit on the board of the Mother Seton…how convenient!) have been presented with an alternate plan to save the church, the facades, and the Mother Seton Convent, but they have turned it down.

People in Baltimore wake up, politicians wake up and listen to your people. Do the people of Fell's Point want giant townhouses on their quaint streets, NO! Do the merchants of Mt. Vernon want a garden for the Basilica or an apartment building full of consumers for their goods, DUH!!!!! Did the National Trust want to tear down a city block (part of the original footprint of Fell's Point) of turn-of-the-century warehouses to make a parking lot (an illegal one at that) for a swanky restaurant, NO, NO, NO.

I grew up in Annapolis. I now know how lucky I was to live in a place where historic preservation rules and greedy, visionless developers are kept in check by ironclad preservation guidelines.