“It’s like a ghost town here,” said Young Cho, owner of Lexington Beauty Supply, amid the shuttered storefronts on the 100 block of West Lexington.

Photo by: Fern Shen

Staggering under the weight of a heavy box of trash, Pong Cho came out to the front of the store on W. Lexington St. that he and his wife have owned for almost 30 years and, when asked about the neighborhood, didn’t miss a beat.

“Every day we pray that stores will come back here,” said Cho, 75, whose Lexington Beauty Supply is in the ghostly 100 block of W. Lexington.

They’re one of just four functioning business, including a clothing store and a jewelry store, on this otherwise shuttered and dilapidated block. One vacant city-owned commercial building here, 103 W. Lexington St., has a small tree growing out of the top if it.

103 W. Lexington St.: city-owned, vacant and dilapidated for years, but about to get a makeover. (Photo by Fern Shen)

Oddly, though, the street itself is anything but dilapidated. What was once a 70s era pedestrian mall has been lately transformed to a functioning city street. New streetlights and even bike racks have been installed. High-end brick pavers glow red on the sidewalk and the curbs are bright white. Curb cut-outs at the red-brick crosswalks smooth the way for wheelchairs and strollers.

Today, the city awarded Monumental Paving & Excavating $235,540 – a 32 percent cost overrun – bringing the grand total to convert this short block from pedestrian mall to functioning street to $972,360.

Does this nearly million dollar project mean some development or revival is coming and the Cho’s prayers will be answered?

Streetscape mismatch: snazzy road surface, shuttered shopfronts, on the 100-block of W. Lexington St. (Photo by Fern Shen)

“Maybe, we don’t really know,” said Pong Cho’s wife, Young Cho. “That’s what they say.”

Over three decades, the couple has heard a lot of grand-but-vague promises about game-changing redevelopment to return the city’s once fashionable retail hub to its former glory.

They are literally in the shadow of the controversial Westside Superblock, where plans by Lexington Square Partners for a $250 million mixed-use development have languished for years. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is the latest city leader to champion the project.

Meanwhile, much more tangible for the Cho’s are two immediate – and negative – impacts of the street work.

One problem, merchants there say, is the loss of business during the project, which began in October and finished in June. There was noise, workers, heavy equipment and chain link fencing, closing off all but a narrow channel for pedestrians.

“We lost a lot of money, business was very bad,” Young Cho said. She and the owner of the one functioning store on the south side of the street went to the city Law Department to document their loss and seek compensation.

“That was two months ago and we haven’t heard anything from them,” Young Cho said.

The other problem has been the water they say is occasionally pouring into their basements, since the city made over the street. After one recent heavy rain, she said, it was ankle-deep. Another business next to hers on the north side of the street has also had water problems lately, she said.

“It happened again yesterday in the big rainstorm,” Young Cho said. “I asked my husband to go down there with a flashlight and the water was coming in from the street.” Cho said they have not had such problems before: “My roof is fine.”

Cho reported the problem to the city but by the time they arrived, the rain had subsided and so had the flow. “They told me ‘Call us in the next rain we have to see it happening,’” she said. Rather than let them go, Cho said, she got a garden hose, blasted it out on the street to simulate rain and proved her point.

If the Cho’s could get their customer traffic back to where it was before the streetwork they would be happier, they said, but of course they can’t help thinking about what it used to be like in the 1980s when they first came.

Young Cho and her husband have owned this building on W. Lexington since 1982. (Photo by Fern Shen)

“Used to be so many people coming here, lots of stores,” Pong Cho said, noting that the city purchasing a lot of now-empty buildings was the beginning of the area’s steep decline. “Why did the city do this?”

Cho and other property owners in the area say they would like to sell but are waiting to see if the grand plans for neighborhood development ever materialize.

(Buildings on the south side of the block – 101, 103, 105, 109 and 117 West Lexington St. – are “contributing buildings” to be preserved as part of the Superblock project. Of the buildings on the north side where the Cho’s are, only 100 W. Lexington, on the corner at Liberty St., is part of the Superblock plan. At the Board of Estimates today, $240,555 in improvements are being approved for 103 West Lexington, which is city-owned and managed by the Baltimore Development Corporation.)

Meanwhile, they need to keep running their own businesses because, as Young Cho said, “nobody wants to rent this space.” So, at 68, she is still selling wigs and hair clips. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, none of the dozen people who hustled by on the street stopped in.

“We really should be retiring,” she said, hugging her four-year-old grandson, Kai Cho, who she babysits occasionally. “At least he likes it here. He says ‘Come to the store, come to the store!’”