It took the developer La Cité more than a decade to complete the first apartment complex in its planned rejuvenation of a West Baltimore neighborhood. Then unpaid water bills from those two buildings helped doom the rest of the project.
Emails between the developer and Baltimore officials reveal that the unpaid water bills inflamed an already strained relationship — and contributed to the city’s decision to end La Cité's future development rights in Poppleton. Through a public records request, The Baltimore Banner obtained more than 200 housing department emails from November 2022 to early June of this year.
The emails show that the city alerted La Cité last August that future bond proceeds critical to the project’s next phase were on the line if it failed to pay the roughly $500,000 tab. The city warned the firm again in December. In June, the city threw up its hands.
With the water bills still unpaid and the developer’s failure to show financing for the next phase, Baltimore’s housing department canceled La Cité’s exclusive development rights going forward.
The batch of emails reviewed by The Banner show the city and the developer had a long history of poor communication.
Dan Bythewood Jr., La Cité's president, and his attorney often expressed frustration in emails over the city’s responsiveness. In one instance, it took city officials about a month to get a meeting with Bythewood on their calendar.
Last year, as she prepared another campaign to return as mayor, Sheila Dixon inserted herself into the mix on the developer’s behalf, the emails show. Bythewood is a longtime political donor to Dixon, who was City Council president when the original La Cité deal was struck and became mayor shortly thereafter.
Read the emails
She prodded the housing commissioner and city administrator in July 2023 to send La Cité more money. La Cité had been asking the city for reimbursements for community improvements it made while building the apartment complex; the city argued it had overpaid the developer.
“Dan has not been reimbursed and it is over a year,” Dixon wrote. “This should not be the case and take this long, they need help so they can be paid.”
In an interview, Dixon said she has often acted as an intermediary for companies that do business with city to move projects forward. She said she was not paid by La Cité.
Both the developer and the city turned to outside counsel to correspond about the troubled Poppleton project: Gordon Feinblatt LLC for La Cité and Ronald B. Sheff, from the Washington, D.C.-based Hall Render, for the city.
After La Cité missed the deadline in May to show it had the money to start its next building, the city sent its most consequential email yet: a three-sentence notice that a letter was being hand-delivered to La Cité's attorney, notifying them that the deal was off. The attachment read, in part: “The City hereby terminates the [agreement]. ...”
In an email Tuesday night to The Banner, a La Cité spokeswoman said its contract with the city “explicitly requires” Baltimore to support the project and release the next wave of funds. The spokeswoman said the unpaid water bills involve a “separate corporate entity” and should not obstruct the project from progressing.
The statement also knocked the city for failing to meet its own obligations to get to the next phase, which included acquiring property, removing existing utilities and other “pre-construction activities.”
“Throughout the years, we have remained dedicated to building a more prosperous, safer and inclusive neighborhood,” the statement said. “We look forward to obtaining the TIF [tax increment financing] in cooperation with the City as soon as possible.”
Housing officials declined to comment beyond a statement in June saying that La Cité had failed to meet “necessary underwriting criteria” and demonstrate “financial readiness.”
What comes next for Poppleton isn’t clear.
Shortly after the city notified La Cité that it was ending their agreement, the developer indicated it might sue the city, but it hasn’t made any moves in court. The termination does not include La Cité's next phase, an apartment building age-restricted to older adults, but the developer hasn’t secured financing for it.
“It’s a tough situation to be in, for a lot of us,” said City Councilman John Bullock, who has represented Poppleton in the city’s 9th Council District since 2016. Bullock is one of many city officials who came into office years after Baltimore struck its deal with La Cité.
“I’m sure they’ll appeal or have some strategy,” Bullock said in June about La Cité. “I understand the developers are not happy with this.”
At issue, according to La Cité officials, is the city’s failure to release the next wave of tax increment financing bonds that were first approved nearly a decade ago by the Baltimore City Council. The bonds are used to cover public infrastructure costs at the start of a project and are ideally repaid later with future property tax revenues.
The developer says the absence of bond money means it can’t secure financing for the senior building.
The company’s statement to The Banner touted lower crime rates, more affordable housing and increased home sales and land prices as evidence of the firm’s positive impact there.
In emails, he expressed a different view of Poppleton.
Starting in late 2022 and continuing through early last year, Bythewood complained to Mayor Brandon Scott’s office about “teens” and “adolescents” causing crime in the neighborhood and asked for the city to provide more police resources there and make more arrests.
Poppleton is a short walk just west of downtown Baltimore and is near highways and developing tracts such as the University of Maryland’s Baltimore campus. To the south is Pigtown; to the north Poppleton is cut off from other neighborhoods by the aborted final leg of Interstate 70, known as the “Highway to Nowhere.”
The community is home to the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, Maryland’s first and only literary landmark, as well as Poe Homes, which has been tapped by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for a major revitalization effort that will unlock funding across all levels of government.
Just as the residential housing boom across the country was coming to an end in 2006, the city reached a deal under then-Mayor Martin O’Malley with La Cité to reinvigorate the neighborhood with 1,650 housing units, public park space and other amenities such as a grocery store.
La Cité was slow to start building, blaming the 2008 recession for its troubles in securing funding. In 2012, the city tried to cancel the deal, but La Cité prevailed in court and continued to hold its exclusive development rights. It held a ribbon-cutting for its only development there, the two-building apartment complex, in 2018.
Through ups and downs with the city, La Cité and the Bythewood family have consistently courted the support of politicians, donating nearly $110,000 over the years, according to Maryland campaign finance records.
Dixon is their top recipient, records show, at $34,000. She said she has long believed in the project’s merits and thinks La Cité has been mistreated by the city.
“I think it’s a great project,” she said. “It’s helped to enhance the area.”
An early advocate for the redevelopment of Poppleton, Dixon filed the legislation in 2004 to allow the city to use eminent domain to make way for the ambitious project.
La Cité, in Tuesday’s statement, said it has received support from “many hundreds upon hundreds of individuals, political appointees, businesses and community groups over the years,” as well as members of Congress.
All these years later, Dixon has remained supportive, stepping in last summer to press the case that the city owed Bythewood money. The developer argued he hadn’t been repaid for work on Center\West; the city said they actually paid him more than what he was entitled to.
Alice Kennedy, the housing commissioner, replied to Dixon’s email to say that her agency was not involved in bond disbursement. She suggested that Dixon seek guidance from the law or finance departments for assistance.
“You are commissioner,” Dixon replied, “and nothing should take this long. ... I do hope Dan can get this resolved, this makes no sense.”
Months later, with the 2024 election cycle in full swing, Bythewood contributed $6,000, the maximum, to her run for mayor. She lost.
Read part 1: Why Baltimore chose an untested developer for its huge — now failed — Poppleton project
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