Bill Coleman is a dabbler.
Once a state insurance contractor, then a limousine service dispatcher, Coleman says he does what?s convenient at the moment.
Now, the city of Baltimore has turned to him to help clean up some of its roughest, most run-down streets, a gig Coleman hopes will stick.
Using homemade decals of windows with shades and curtains, or doors with house numbers set into colorful stained glass, Coleman masks the unsightly plywood typically used to board up the city?s some 17,000 abandoned buildings. Coleman estimates homes sit empty for four to five years before city officials determine what to do with them, and his job is to make them more attractive to passers-by ? and less attractive to vagrants ? in the meantime.
“It?s good for the neighborhoods and it?s good for the city,” Coleman explains. “It looks so good, no one knows it?s fake.”
With two patents on the product, which involves a photograph coated in waterproof laminate then applied to plywood with a “special” glue, Coleman has done about $75,000 worth of work for the city, including entire blocks along Harford Road, Wilson Street off Martin Luther King Boulevard, Lauren Street and Aisquith Street in Park Heights.
He said he got the idea two years ago when he was boarding up one of his own properties and wanted more than just plywood. The city requested a bland look, he said, with blinds that appear closed and simple white doors. In the future, he said he hopes to add details like vases in the windows, Tiffany lamps through the curtains and even images of people inside.
City officials confirmed Coleman?s business, called Creative Camouflage, has been a cost-effective temporary solution, in addition to what housing spokesman David Tillman called aggressive code enforcement and property acquisition.
“This is not an attempt to fix the problem, merely an attempt to give some temporary relief to neighbors who have to look at these,” Tillman said.
Carolyn Cook, a government watchdog for the state?s board of Realtors, was so impressed with Coleman?s work, she asked the Baltimore County Council to consider enlisting his help before they passed a bill earlier this year affecting abandoned property. The law allows the council to declare property abandoned for longer than six years county property, subject to destruction.
The decals could postpone demolition, she said.
“If you are just driving down or walking the street, they blend really well,” Cook said. “They really are an improvement to just boarding, and are a benefit to the neighborhoods on the edge and the gateway neighborhoods.”
