Baltimore County Councilman Pat Young shifted uncomfortably as he stood in the basement of the Catonsville branch of the county library system on Monday night.

Young, who represented Catonsville in the General Assembly and currently serves on the County Council, acknowledged to a packed room that he should have held a meeting about the armory becoming a cannabis incubator when he first learned of the state’s interest n the building.

“In hindsight it makes sense and we probably should’ve done that,” Young said. “And I’ll own it.”

Monday’s meeting followed months of confusion, complaints and miscommunication about plans to turn the vacant Baltimore County armory into a state-run cannabis incubator, designed to promote small marijuana businesses owned by people of color.

The brick armory sits vacant in a neighborhood, next to an elementary school and a local day care.

Earlier this month, Gov. Wes Moore reversed course and declared the project would not be located in Catonsville. This came a week after The Baltimore Banner published an article detailing residents’ frustrations.

Young invited the community, state Dels. Sheila Ruth and Aletheia McCaskill as well as state Sen. Charles Sydnor, to discuss the timeline behind the original incubator project and what’s next for the former National Guard-operated building.

Finger pointing, demand for transparency

Young explained that the armory is currently under the purview of the Maryland Military Department, which has been divesting its armories and consolidating facilities for years.

That procedure, called the surplus process, involves offering the building to other state agencies and local entities, Young said.

He said the county declined a previous opportunity, in 2023, to purchase the building. “The price tag was too much,” Young said.

The councilman said it was estimated at the time that renovations would cost around $11 million.

Young added that it was the state’s responsibility — including the Maryland Cannabis Administration, the Maryland Economic Development Corp. and the Maryland Department of General Services — to hold meetings in Catonsville and solicit community input about the incubator project.

The cannabis administration held one meeting in Catonsville, in November 2024, but never followed up, Young said.

Residents discovered that the project was moving forward this spring and started a Change.org petition demanding transparency and answers.

In June, Moore’s chief of staff, Manny Welsh, told The Banner that Sydnor, Ruth and McCaskill — all of whom voted to allocate $7 million to the project from the past two state budgets — had been supportive of placing the incubator in Catonsville.

“The governor and General Assembly are aligned on this project,” he said last month.

The lawmakers told Catonsville residents on Monday that they had tried to work with Moore’s administration and encouraged the state to hold public meetings.

“This administration, they fumbled the ball,” Sydnor said. “And we looked awful because we didn’t know what was going on.”

One Catonsville resident, who declined to give her name, gave the elected officials assembled an “F” for communication.

“Put yourself in our shoes,” she said. “We knew none of this information. Zero ... if [the cannabis incubator] had been better communicated to us, I might have been like, ‘Hey this would be great.’

“I don’t know,” she added, “because I was never given enough information to make an informed decision.”

Now what?

After fielding dozens of clarifying questions, complaints and frustrations, Young turned the conversation toward the future.

“As of right now, without a clear path forward for a vacant armory in Catonsville, this is the first step in the conversation that you wanted to see happen,” he said.

Because the state is no longer interested in the building, the next step in the surplus process is for the armory to be sold by the Maryland Department of Planning.

Private entities will now have an opportunity to bid on the building unless elected officials lobby the governor to form a working group, he said.

The three state lawmakers said they are scheduling a meeting with Moore to form the working group.

Young explained that Pikesville residents used this mechanism when that community first began talking about restoring their armory.

The working group behind the Pikesville armory is in the middle of raising tens of millions of dollars to transform the 14-acre site into a community hub. It now hosts outdoor jazz concerts and other events.

“It’s not apples to apples,” Young said. “But it is a process that can be utilized, which [Pikesville elected officials] utilized to slow surplus down, which then turned into the group that now is managing the next steps for the Pikesville armory.”

Some Catonsville residents suggested that their community’s armory, about 3 acres in total, be turned into a green space. Another voiced support for the building to be converted into an animal shelter.

One resident living on Mellor Avenue, the same street as the armory, simply asked lawmakers to open up the building’s gated-off blacktop, so more parents can park when baseball games are active across the road.

Young said he will meet with County Executive Kathy Klausmeier to bring her up to speed and find a way to utilize $250,000 that was allocated to Baltimore County last year to determine the cost of restoring the armory.

“All of us,” Young told the residents, “will gather back together again.”