Benjamin Eidlisz had big plans for Southeast Baltimore.

The New York businessman had amassed an empire of rowhouses throughout much of the city’s east and west sides. Now he wanted to transform a roughly 1-acre industrial lot into a six-story apartment complex. It was mid-2024, and all he needed was the Patterson Park community association to sign off on a zoning change.

But Eidlisz rubbed residents the wrong way, they said. He pressured them. One neighbor said he didn’t answer “low-stakes” questions. Others said he omitted key facts.

That community group — which decided not to back his apartment plan, killing it — offered a kind of scrutiny that the New Yorker had largely escaped until that point. And the encounter provides a window into the business practices of one of Baltimore’s most influential landlords, one who has been jeopardizing city and state efforts to tackle vacant housing.

Over nearly a decade, Eidlisz had operated mostly anonymously, using limited liability companies and collaborating with business partners who rarely, if ever, spoke to the public. His business methods allowed him to expand rapidly, without attracting much attention.

Members of the Patterson Park group that rejected Eidlisz said they were disturbed, but not surprised, to learn that he is at the center of a mass foreclosure event rippling through Baltimore.

Two-thirds of the roughly 700 homes in Eidlisz’s portfolio have gone into foreclosure over the past year, and two real estate companies linked to Eidlisz have declared bankruptcy. Few of the foreclosed properties have sold at auction, leaving renters in a lurch and noteholders stuck with millions of dollars in unpaid debt.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott announced in November that city officials are investigating, and finance industry insiders are publicly calling it fraud.

Eidlisz and his associates have not been charged with any crimes. He has refused to answer substantive questions on the record.

Eidlisz isn’t listed on any property records for the Southeast Baltimore parcel that he pitched as an apartment building. That’s his pattern.

A 41-year-old who owns a four-bedroom house in New York’s Hudson Valley and drives a black SUV with a bumper sticker that reads “#1 DAD,” Eidlisz has no website, no social media presence and no current online résumé.

While Eidlisz has been sued a few times in Maryland state court, he has a more extensive record in New York, where former business partners and investors have accused him of fraud, money laundering and deceit. He has also been pursued for tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt.

Eidlisz has denied the allegations in court filings. Most of the civil cases, now several years old, are still open, but show few signs of progress. He has settled the credit card debt, records show.

It’s not clear why Eidlisz decided to dabble in development in 2024. Until then, all his Baltimore forays appear to have been as a property investor and landlord.

Some Patterson Park neighbors first got to know Eidlisz a year earlier as the owner of a problem rowhome on East Fairmount Avenue. Trespassers had taken over the site, setting fires and leaving trash, according to emails from residents to the office of their then-city councilman, Zeke Cohen. The Banner obtained those emails in a public records request.

Residents attempted to reach out to Eidlisz and his team to get a handle on the problem. They often got no reply.

That track record made some in Patterson Park skeptical that he would be a good steward of a new apartment building.

“Neighbors weren’t convinced that Eidlisz was going to follow through,” said Ernest Le, president of the Patterson Park Neighborhood Association. People started doing more research, Le said, and realized he owned more than one derelict property around town. “They didn’t like what they saw,” he said.

Mark Parker, who was running to be the district’s council member, said he began researching Eidlisz’s history as concerns from residents spread.

Parker, who later won his council race, made a spreadsheet with “hundreds and hundreds” of rowhouses all seemingly tracing back to Eidlisz. But he said nothing he found was like the development that Eidlisz and his associates were proposing.

“Not that people can’t do new things,” Parker said. “They just don’t have any track record of doing this.”

Cohen, who has since been elected City Council president, said he told Eidlisz and his attorney that they needed a letter of support or a memorandum of understanding from the Patterson Park Neighborhood Association before he would introduce the zoning change.

Eidlisz and his attorney Joseph Woolman told the Patterson Park neighbors that they hoped to get the zoning legislation introduced before the four-year City Council term expired in December 2024, the emails reviewed by The Banner show.

Woolman introduced himself and Eidlisz as the team behind Gold Ventures. In response to several questions from concerned neighbors, Woolman wrote that the company owned two other apartment buildings in Baltimore: 10 East Madison St. and 912 N. Calvert St. Gold Ventures bought the two properties in 2022.

Public property records and business formation paperwork show someone else as the owner of Gold Ventures, another New Yorker named Eluzer Gold.

Court records show that Gold owns a credit consulting business near Eidlisz’s residence in Spring Valley, New York, and that he was an investor in Eidlisz’s rental-home-buying ventures.

Gold wasn’t included in any of the email chains with Patterson Park residents, and neighbors don’t remember meeting him. Eidlisz, they said, was front and center.

Gold has not responded to requests for comment.

When the neighbors asked if Woolman’s client was the subject of any ongoing legal disputes, the attorney replied that he wasn’t privy to such information, according to the emails reviewed by The Banner, and that it wasn’t relevant to the Patterson Park project.

They also asked Woolman about the vacant home on East Fairmount Avenue, the one that troubled neighbors. He said a permit was on its way. (The housing department issued a use and occupancy permit in September 2024.)

Cohen’s staff at first believed the community association submitted a letter of support, emails reviewed by The Banner show. But Patterson Park community members made it clear in early October 2024 that wasn’t the case. In the face of that discrepancy, Cohen withdrew the rezoning bill.

Some neighbors suspect Eidlisz never intended to finish the project — and that the zoning request was a shortcut to boost the property’s value.

“Many of us have seen this dog-and-pony show before,” said Steven Preston, a neighbor involved in the discussions with Eidlisz. “And if you can’t manage one property and be a responsible property owner ... how do you expect me to trust you can manage a multifamily apartment?”

In the months since Patterson Park residents batted away his request, Eidlisz’s business plans across the city have unraveled — justifying their suspicions. Hundreds of homes in his orbit are now in foreclosure. Those two apartment buildings his attorney cited? Gold Ventures defaulted on a $2.5 million federally backed loan covering them both, and they’ve been transferred to a new, court-appointed owner.

The Patterson Park parcel looks the same as always — a row of garage-style storage lockers sitting empty. And now the lender for that property’s purchase is suing Gold Ventures in Baltimore Circuit Court for more than $2 million.

Neither Gold nor Eidlisz has filed a response.