More News

Thanks for removing an eyesore

Thursday, Nov. 17, 2005

At last, the eyesore of vacant buildings at the corner of routes 26 and 32 in Eldersburg for more than 10 years has been removed.

No longer will the gateway to our community be an embarrassing set of dilapidated buildings for us to complain about. Many people deserve credit for their hard work to accomplish this result and they deserve our thanks and gratitude.

As president of the Freedom Area Citizens’ Council, I want to thank our members, whose active support of this cause has finally reached this wonderful conclusion.

It has been the council’s top priority to remove these eyesores since 2004, and after attempts to get the owners to remove their structures voluntarily, it was the council that requested that the Board of County Commissioners create an ordinance to allow the county to take legal action against the building owners.

Much credit goes to the commissioners, their staff and especially the Department of Planning. They listened to residents, approved the ordinance and then followed through by citing the owners for its violation.

It is significant to also mention that our Commissioners also took an unprecedented step of pouring $2.5 million of county money into this state intersection to widen and make safety improvements. Our state representatives, Del. Susan W. Krebs and Sen. Allan H. Kittleman, have also been supportive and involved in these improvements.

Road work will probably not occur until mid-2006. Nonetheless, by continuing to move plans forward by effectively negotiating funding alternatives and by using the demolition ordinance to keep pressure on the owners, the county was successful in negotiating an agreement that would allow removal of the vacant and dilapidated buildings well ahead of the state’s road improvement work.

Last, but not least, I also wish to thank the owners of these properties for acknowledging the community’s need and for ultimately voluntarily taking action to remove their vacant buildings.

Their decision not to fight the demolition order and instead take immediate action to remove the eyesores is indeed a betterment to the community, and it is perhaps possible that their properties will even be more valuable to them as a result.

Tom McCarron, Eldersburg