Even the Dundalk residents eager to see the run-down Laundromat they?ve been stuck looking at for the past decade kept their distance.
Maneuvering the giant steel jaws of the front-end loader was Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith.
“Hey!” he said, climbing down from the bulldozer, turning around to survey the gaping hole he left in the concrete wall. “I?ve only done this six times!”
After four years of trying to buy the Dundalk Avenue laundry facility, officials began demolishing the empty building Thursday and announced the start of construction on a landscaped traffic circle at the adjacent Dundalk Avenue intersection. With the building gone, the land?s waterfront view ? which many said they didn?t know existed ? will be exposed, and the county is planning a park at the now graffiti- and trash-littered ballfield just beyond the store.
County Council Member John Olszewski, D-District 7, said he hopes the county will replace the building with a community center. The project will cost the county $3.1 million, Smith said.
The demolition will take just more than a month, officials said, but residents of the Turners Station and Watersedge neighborhoods said they?ve waited years for the county to finish what it started. After the county bought and razed a storage warehouse next door, Olszewski said activists incessantly called his cell phone, wanting to “know when the Laundromat is going down.”
“People said to us, ?Look, first impressions are so important and we feel like our neighborhoods aren?t getting their just desserts because of the way this looks,? ” echoed Mary Harvey, director of the county?s Office of Community Conservation.
Smith touted the county?s other investments in Dundalk during his first term, including $4.5 million in roads, sidewalks and gutter improvements and $19 million on recreational and community facilities. In all, he said the county has spent $70 million his Dundalk “renaissance” initiative, not counting $20 million in school renovation and construction funds for Dundalk.
The county is also working to acquire 56 crime-ridden and blighted apartment buildings on Yorkway, which officials expect to exceed the original $11 million estimate. Police responded to more than 4,000 calls last year there, they said.
“It?s another great day for Dundalk,” Olszewski said. “I just want to thank the residents of Turners Station and Watersedge for being so patient.”
