There’s no trace of a market on Federal Street in East Baltimore. But Seong Ok Baik will never forget what it meant when there once was.

Novak’s Market, a small convenience store in Broadway East, was run by Baik’s Korean American family for over 20 years after purchasing the store from the Novaks in the 1980s. Fans of the HBO television series “The Wire" will remember it as the location of the last stand for Omar, the show’s iconic stick-up man gunned down by a kid while trying to buy a soft pack of Newports.

“My children [were] raised there, so a lot of good memories over there,” Baik said.

Until a decade ago when it all went up in smoke.

Fires broke out across the city in April 2015 as some of the mostly peaceful protests turned violent after the death of Freddie Gray, who was injured by police during his arrest in West Baltimore and later died.

Uncontrolled crowds damaged or destroyed more than 380 businesses, many of them in an already hard-hit area of West Baltimore. Shopkeepers and their employees said they were assaulted and robbed, vainly honking their car horns to ward off looters without much help from police. Insurance claims were estimated by the state at nearly $13 million.

In the aftermath of the unrest, a group of those affected, predominantly Korean American property and business owners, including Baik, banded together and sued the city in 2017.

Peter Hwang, one of the lawyers who represented the businesses, said that while some owners may have initially supported peaceful dissent, “at a certain point, the protesting crossed the line, and they felt like the city was not doing what they could to protect them.”

The case was settled for $3.5 million in 2022. But a jarring reality remains.

Of the 40 businesses listed in the lawsuit, fewer than 10 are still operated by their original owners, according to a tally compiled by The Baltimore Banner. Over a third are permanently closed in now eerily similar scenes: boarded up windows, shuttered doors and rust-stained gates marred by unkempt weeds.

Many said they pursued the claim because they wanted a sense of justice and to have their voices heard. The 2017 lawsuit was primarily based on Maryland’s 1835 Riot Act, which provides that if personal property is stolen, damaged or destroyed in a riot, the injured party can file a civil suit to recover for damages.

Baik worried they’d never win against the city, but she encouraged other hesitant merchants to join the lawsuit.

“The problem had to be revealed to the city,” Baik said in a recent interview aided by a translator.

Lost to flames

Baik said her family owned the building that housed Novak’s but no longer operated it after her husband, Jun Bin Baik, needed heart surgery in 2000. Another Korean American merchant leased the store, she said.

At around 7 p.m. on Apr. 27, 2015, their building, just off East Federal and North Gay streets, caught fire. It neighbored a building under construction, the Mary Harvin Center, which was first set ablaze, with the flames eventually jumping to Novak’s, according to Baik.

For Baik and her husband, who for years worked seven days a week with their children under tow, it was an irrecoverable blow. On the day their property turned to rubble, Baik said she watched it all unfold on television. Fortunately, she said, the staff at Novak’s emerged unscathed.

Others weren’t as lucky.

At a liquor store nearby, a group assaulted and robbed a father and daughter. Looters tried to drag a husband and wife from their store on West North Avenue. In that case, the husband suffered from brain bleeding and had to regain motion on the right side of his body, according to the lawsuit.

Merchants called the police but were met with automated voicemails, according to their lawsuit. One desperate couple said they went to the police station pleading for help, but none was available.

The lawsuit accused the city of willful neglect, citing as an example former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake‘s comment to the press at the time that the city “gave those who wished to destroy space to do that.”

The Baltimore Development Corporation’s Storefront Grant Program offered $5,000, which the lawsuit called an “underhanded tactic” by the city to evade liability that “only added insult to injury,” as participants would have had to waive claims against the city. When reached by The Banner, a BDC spokeswoman did not provide an immediate comment about the issue.

Creating American dreams

The struggles for foreign-born merchants in Baltimore, including Baik, have a long history.

The Baiks wanted to flee harsh living conditions in Seoul, so they set out in 1975 for the United States in hopes of a better life for their two young children. The glamour created by big time Hollywood movies like “Gone with the Wind,” “Ben-Hur” and the James Bond series only heightened their expectations.

“That’s why [we] had big dreams coming to the states,” Baik said.

But coming to America came at a cost. Baik left her stable job as a bank secretary and her husband gave up work at a construction company. When they arrived in America, they had to take whatever work they could, often laborious, to rent an apartment.

“We had to survive. Our family. Ourselves,” Baik said.

Baik and other immigrants did not have any credit and struggled to get loans from banks. Initially, Baik and her husband put money together with a group to afford a store, she said. Eventually, they started a partnership in 1978 to open a store in Park Heights.

It’s where Baik said she first noticed the tension between Asian American business owners and the predominantly Black communities they served.

Baltimore wasn’t alone. In Los Angeles in the early 1990s, tensions between the communities erupted after the 1991 fatal shooting of a Black 15-year-old girl by a Korean store owner. In Brooklyn, black residents boycotted two Korean stores around the same time because of an altercation between a Haitian woman and the merchants.

Malcolm Drewery, an associate professor in Morgan State University’s department of sociology and anthropology, said the phenomenon can be partly explained by racism and economic policies that particularly disenfranchised Black Americans.

“We just see the money coming into these stores and then that money is being funneled out of the Black community and we don’t see any upgrades or changes happening within the communities,” Drewery said in an interview.

But Drewery insists it can’t be assumed that all customer and store owners have strained relationships, “because a lot of these stores are cornerstones or staples in the community.”

Fond memories

Charles Royster remembers Novak’s when it was owned by the original family before the Baiks, and was known for its elaborate, fresh produce stand.

Royster, a barber for 30 years at Lee’s Barbershop and Beauty Salon in Broadway East, would go to Novak’s as a child with a note from his parents. Royster often left with a bag of groceries and an agreement that his folks would pay the tab by the end of the week.

Once the store changed ownership to the Baiks, the produce slowly disappeared and the market turned more into a corner store with limited options, Royster said.

“Now, it’s just a desert,” Royster, 63, added.

From the barbershop, which often serves as a connector and hub in Black communities, Royster often hears gripes about the lack of grocery options. People tend to come into the community, run businesses and not give back to the neighborhood or hire local residents, he added.

Denny Moe, another barber, said he has mixed feelings about the city’s settlement with the merchants. He’s doubtful he would have received protections or advocacy if he, a Black man, was a business owner in the neighborhood.

“It’s hard for us to [even] get the loans and grants,” he added. “You damn near gotta go down and protest to get $10,000.”

City champions see Broadway East as a resurging part of the city after a long period of disinvestment. There’s still the castle-like American Brewery Building, for example, which was transformed into a health care and community center, near where Novak’s once stood.

Southern Baptist Church’s Mary Harvin Center, which neighbored Novak’s and also burned down, was rebuilt and opened a year later with 60 apartments for seniors. The church has also spearheaded other development projects, including another senior housing complex and a soon-to-be health and wellness center on the site of an old laundry factory.

“It’s important to know that this property was offered to Southern Baptist Church for $1 in the 1980s, but because we didn’t have a vision at that time for it, we eventually paid over $600,000 to acquire it,” Bishop Donté Hickman Sr., head of the church, said during a groundbreaking in 2024.

Reimagining vacants

In the end, the Baiks decided not to rebuild. There had never been a plan to have her own children run the market on their own.

“My children’s generation used their head and good education background, so they do not want their parents’ business,” Baik said.

A portion of their property was sold to Southern Baptist in 2009, according to a deed. Church officials declined to comment for this story. The remaining land sold to a real estate company last summer.

While the Baiks and many others decided to decamp from Baltimore, a few others have decided to pick up the pieces some business owners left behind.

In Harlem Park, for example, Bree Jones said her nonprofit, Parity, bought one of the properties from a son of the former owner.

The original Carrollton Food Market was damaged and looted after the unrest, but reopened in May 2015, according to the lawsuit. It shuttered in the years following and then sat vacant, according to Jones and Harlem Park neighbors.

The corner lot building is severely dilapidated, and Jones estimates they’ll need to invest up to $800,000 in renovation costs. The goal is to build a coffee shop and cafe, with Parity’s offices on the top floors. The commercial property is the first for Parity, which typically rehabilitates properties to create affordable homeownership opportunities.

Back in Broadway East, Royster pointed to a slew of long-gone businesses that hint of the neighborhood’s potential: a bakery, another market and a barbeque joint up the street.

Royster thinks residents need to find ways to make the best of their neighborhood and focus on rebuilding the community.

“It’s in our DNA,” he said. “We just know how to survive.”