The fight over the Red Maple Place affordable housing project in East Towson is not over, with opponents now zeroing in on its environmental impact.
The debate over the project, which dates back seven years, pits an historically African American neighborhood that says it has been taken advantage of for decades against a developer that counters it’s planning to build a quality apartment complex that would provide much needed affordable housing.
Red Maple Place cleared what appeared to be the final hurdle for the project on July 1, when the Baltimore County Council agreed not to subject it to new design standards.
But opponents of the project are hoping they can still stop the 56-unit building through a resolution the County Council unanimously passed last November. The resolution, which was introduced by Councilman Mike Ertel who represents Towson, asks Maryland’s Department of the Environment to study any adverse environmental impact of developing the 2.5 acre wooded site on Joppa Road.
“We’re letting this massive building be built on a lot that’s really not big enough for what they’re building there, and then it’s on top of this watershed,” Ertel said.
The Red Maple property contains the headwaters of a branch of Herring Run as well as wetlands. Alice Volpitta, the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper for the environmental nonprofit Bluewater Baltimore, said that is an issue.
“We were very concerned about the potential impact to exacerbating the existing flooding in the neighborhood,” Volpitta said.
In a letter to MDE in support of Ertel’s resolution, Del. Cathi Forbes and State Sen. Mary Washington asked the agency to work with Baltimore County to identify where flooding is happening. Washington is concerned that flooding due to Red Maple could impact the Herring Run watershed, which is in portions of the county and the city and drains into Back River.
“We have to make decisions about where we place things, that take in mind climate change, changes in water flows, public health,” Washington said. “And these just historically have not really been taken into account.”
However, a spokesman for MDE said they don’t have the money to do a flood management plan and kicked it to the county.
“Developing a flood management plan would be a useful tool but there are no state resources provided or available that are allocated for this work,” MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said in a statement. “We do encourage the county to pursue federal and state grant funding to complete the studies identified in the resolution.”
Erica Palmisno, press secretary for County Executive Johnny Olszewski said the County Council should talk to the state about it.
“We encourage them to continue to contact state officials if they remain interested in continuing discussions on this effort,” Palmisano said in a statement.
Dana Johnson, the president and CEO of Homes for America which wants to build Red Maple declined to be interviewed for this story.
In a statement she said, “The fully approved development plan for Red Maple Place includes significant storm water mitigation in the form of a 100-year flood vault to ensure that the current runoff is improved.”
Johnson said they hope to break ground in a few months, with Red Maple being completed in early 2026.
Red Maple has survived multiple design and judicial reviews. In a 2021 interview, Johnson defended the plan.
Johnson said, “This project will provide high quality homes with access to some of the best schools in the county for those kids who are going to live in this building, and transit and job access.”
Residents in East Towson have for years argued that the project, which would be adjacent to the neighborhood, would forever change its character, which has been chipped away by development. The community traces its back to formerly enslaved people from the nearby Hampton plantation.
But at a 2021 hearing Anthony Fugett, the past president of the Baltimore County Branch of the NAACP backed Red Maple.
Fugett said, “If you say not in my neighborhood and use that as an argument per se, then you have to accept that argument anywhere and that’s something as a branch we couldn’t accept.”
Fugett said the county has a horrific affordable housing history.
In an agreement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Baltimore County is legally obligated to create 1,000 affordable housing units by 2027.
With all of the twists and turns in this case Nancy Goldring, the president of Historic East Towson, which has been battling the project, isn’t ready to crystal ball what’s going to happen.
Goldring said, “I could not have predicted anything that has happened thus far and so I can’t say unequivocally where this thing ends.”
Goldring hopes the end is not East Towson losing its last piece of forested land.
