Page 89 - Rukert - 100th Anniversary

PART II BRINGING THE WORLD TO BALTIMORE
calls for creativity in how to discharge, handle and store various products, giving employees an oppor- tunity to demonstrate their versatility and ingenuity.
In the banner year of 1995, trucking, vessel discharge, salt and general cargo business all increased from the prior year, breaking company and financial tonnage records! Rukert Terminals hired 10 new employees to accommodate increasing business. In addition, Building #1, which Cap had bought used in the late 1930s, was torn down and replaced with a new 36,960-square-foot warehouse. Building #9 was also rebuilt that same year.
As Rukert Terminals continued to quietly attract new and repeat business and enlarge the workforce, the more visible public marine terminals were struggling to compete with other East Coast ports. After the successful redevelopment of the Inner Harbor and the subsequent reimagining
of Fells Point in the 1980s, some suggested that other areas of the port should undergo a similar transformation. In 1988, Russell T. Baker Jr. wrote in the Sun that the Port of Baltimore’s new economic mission should be to develop the waterfront into a magnet for high-tech industries like biotechnology and telecommunications. He went on to suggest that the Clinton Street waterfront could be the site of a research and development business park. In 1989, Tim Baker wrote a similar piece in the Sun in which he suggested that recreational boating could be an economic engine for the city, luring professionals from the suburbs to the waterfront.
Soon, the waterfront industrial area of Canton along Boston Street, known as “Canner’s Row,” transformed into a strip of upscale housing, marinas and restaurants called “The Gold Coast.” In addition, the residential areas of Canton that had been work- ing-class were starting to draw young professionals.
For a time, the commercial development
stopped where the shoreline bends at the intersec- tion of Boston and South Clinton Street, an area now known as “Canton Crossing.” Nonetheless, management worried that the eastward creep of redevelopment would soon spread onto South Clinton Street, threatening Rukert Terminals and other maritime industrial businesses. These worries materialized in 1995 when a proposal to build a waterfront bar (complete with artificial beach) near Pier 5 received much fanfare. Though the liquor board denied the proposal, momentum was building to redevelop Baltimore’s shoreline as something other than a working port.
The Rukert Terminals management team, who had pursued every available acre of waterfront property for expansion, now focused on protecting what they had already built. While the cachet of living and dining on the waterfront can revitalize an area, it also comes at a cost. Redevelopment that
BELOW: Steve Landess, pictured in
a vessel hold, recalls arriving at Rukert Terminals for his first day in a jacket and tie but leaving covered in concrete, dust and mud.
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