Former College Building In Developing East Baltimore Area Sells For $3.4M
The former Sojourner-Douglass College property in East Baltimore sold for $3.35M in early June, months after another entity purchased it for nearly twice the price, according to online property records.
According to property records, an entity called 200 North Central Avenue LLC purchased the property at 200 North Central Ave. from Idlewild Properties LLC, which had paid $7.2M for the asset in February. Prior to that, the property last sold in 2002 to Sojourner-Douglass College for $325K.
North Central LLC now owns the roughly 153K SF structure, which was built in 1923 on nearly 3 acres, according to state records. The Baltimore Business Journal first reported the sale of the property, which has sat vacant since the nonprofit college closed in the summer of 2015.
Buyer North Central LLC lists attorney Laura A. Van Meter's Severna Park office as its principal address on incorporation papers filed with the state. Seller Idlewild Properties LLC lists its principal office address as 304 High St. in Cambridge, Maryland, which Bay Vanguard Bank lists as a branch address.
The section of East Baltimore surrounding the former Sojourner-Douglass campus is undergoing extensive redevelopment. Public and private partners have launched an ambitious plan — dubbed the Perkins, Somerset and Oldtown Transformation Plan — to remake a city section that includes nearly 6,000 residents and more than 2,000 households.
The plan involves a partnership with the Housing Authority of Baltimore City and private developers including Beatty Development Group, Cross Street Partners and McCormack Baron Salazar.
Late last month, Cross Street Partners and Beatty Development Group purchased the historic trolley barn in East Baltimore at 130 South Central Ave. Potential uses for that building include coworking, office, restaurant, gym, retail and workforce training/development space.
Boundaries of the transformation plan stretch north to Monument Street, south to Eastern Avenue, west to the Jonestown/Little Italy neighborhood border and east to Broadway.
The plans center around razing the Perkins Homes public housing complex, home to 587 families in 629 units. Plans call for replacing public housing with affordable and market-rate housing.
Redevelopment plans also include revamping the former Somerset public housing complex site that opened in 1943 and was demolished in 2009. Developers also plan to transform the former Bel Air Market site that closed in 1996 and was razed in 2002.
According to the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance, between 2016 and 2022, $116M in private, $8.3M in city and $18.8M in state money has been invested in the project. So far, $540M has been committed to the project, including $30M in federal Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grants.
