BALTIMORE OBSERVED: HOUSING

Will BRAC’s military transplants trade the Jersey Shore for urban living?

It’s a cloudless late-summer day in Fort Monmouth, a mile from the Jersey Shore, and inside the First Atlantic Federal Credit Union, Lionel Richie’s voice lilts through the sound system on radio station WWZY, “The Breeze.” Elizabeth Theisen, a sincere 48-year-old with strawberry blonde hair, pink nails, and heavy-framed eyeglasses, settles into her chair beneath a banner that reads, “Maryland Transition One-Stop Career Center.”

Theisen works for the Susquehanna Workforce Network, a state-funded nonprofit that runs workforce development centers in Harford and Cecil counties. She is here because Fort Monmouth is being shuttered by decree of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission, a federal body charged with trimming the nation’s military apparatus. In all, more than 5,000 of the fort’s military and civilian jobs—mainly in high-tech communications—will be sent elsewhere. Many of these jobs are headed to Fort Meade and Aberdeen Proving Ground, joining the estimated 45,000 to 60,000 jobs BRAC will deliver to Maryland, directly or indirectly, in the coming years. It is Theisen’s job to aid in the transition by helping employees’ spouses and partners find work in Maryland.

That’s her official job description, anyway. In practice, she is an ambassador to New Jersey for the Old Line State. Her office looks like a tourism kiosk. Racks along the walls hold rows of brochures, magazines, and tax information forms. “People come in and they ask me all kinds of questions,” says Theisen, who lives in Anne Arundel County. “‘Where are the Asian markets? Tell me about septic systems, schools, assisted living.’ I never know from one moment to the next what I’m going to be discussing.”

Competition for the high-skill, high-wage BRAC immigrants—and their roughly half a billion dollars in annual income and property taxes—has been fierce within the state. Theisen is officially agnostic when it comes to where in Maryland they should move. “I steer people to where they would be happiest,” she says. Those interested in urban living are steered to the nonprofit marketing group Live Baltimore and a slew of financial incentives designed to increase the city’s modest slice of relocating families. (Studies put that share at less than 10 percent.) But those in the business of selling Baltimore have their work cut out for them.

Lee Ann Womack is belting, “I hope you daaaance!” on The Breeze when Reginald Norwood comes by with a question about whether his New Jersey E-ZPass will work on the toll roads in Delaware and Maryland. (It will.) A fit-looking civilian fielding and training manager, Norwood plans to commute from his home in southern New Jersey rather than relocate to Aberdeen, where his job is moving. Norwood, it turns out, grew up on Edmondson Avenue in West Baltimore. He’s in no hurry to move back. “I have a 4-year-old daughter,” he says. “We go back, and I tell my daughter, ‘This is where I was born.’ But it is not a place to raise kids. The stuff around the Inner Harbor is beautiful, but you go a few blocks and you’re back in the ’hood.”

Norwood goes on his way, and after a quiet spell, a jowly, mustachioed electronics engineer named Ira Weiner walks in. Weiner was an “early mover”—one of the first people to volunteer to go south with his job. He took a bus tour with Live Baltimore, but wasn’t convinced. “I’m afraid of Baltimore. I take one step across the line, and all of a sudden the hoodlums are coming out of the woodwork,” he says. “Besides, the school system stinks. All those people with fancy houses in North Baltimore have the money to send their kids to private school. I don’t. And Sheila Dixon—have they locked her up yet?” Theisen looks horrified. On The Breeze, the Chi-Lites croon, “Oh, girl, I’d be in trouble if you left me now.”

Other BRAC transplants are more open to Baltimore’s charms. Tech writer and editor John White planned to come by Theisen’s office today, but he’s laid up at home, recovering from recent knee surgery. On the phone, he says he and his wife, who works at fort headquarters, were leaning toward Harford County or Cecil County until they visited Baltimore with their daughter, who is considering moving to Fells Point. Now, they’re thinking seriously about the city. “We’re looking at Bolton Hill, or maybe buying a shell in Reservoir Hill and rehabbing,” he says. “But we love Wyman Park. We love the Avenue [in Hampden].”

White is even willing to forgive the Maryland Transit Administration for backing out of its plan to expand MARC train service between Baltimore and Aberdeen. It’s only a thirty- to forty-minute drive up I-83, he reasons, “and it’s really a true reverse commute.” Because he and his wife took the Live Baltimore bus tour, they qualify for $6,000 in down-payment and closing-cost assistance. The state has also waived its one-year residency requirement, so their youngest, a senior in high school, can jump into a state university and pay in-state tuition.

Budget analyst Liz Mayer is planning to move to Baltimore, too. Speaking on the phone from her office, Mayer says she and her husband, an Army electronics engineer, are building a house in Pikesville. She says they considered living downtown but wanted a house large enough to host grandchildren visiting from New Jersey. She admits that, given the choice, she would stay where she is. “I was born and raised here,” she says. “I’ve used the same pharmacist, the same dentist all my life. It’s kind of scary.”

Still, Mayer says she is looking forward to having easy access to the cultural opportunities in Baltimore—opportunities that Elizabeth Theisen keeps her abreast of with regular e-mails. “There will be an adjustment period,” Mayer says. “I’m giving myself at least six months to figure everything out.”