Page 126 - Rukert - 100th Anniversary

RIVERVIEW PARK: THE PLAYGROUND THAT WENT TO WORK
IN HIS BOOK HISTORIC CANTON, NORMAN RUKERT SR. RECOUNTED THE TALE OF RIVERVIEW PARK, WHICH BEGAN IN EARNEST IN 1868
AS A SMALL BEER GARDEN AT THE EASTERN END OF THE CANTON SHORELINE. In 1898, the park was enlarged and advertised as “The Coney Island of the South.” Visitors to the park, which was accessible only by horse or streetcar, swam in the Patapsco River off a long pier and enjoyed other amusements like a dance hall, Ferris wheel and carousel. Riverview Park also featured the first wooden roller-coaster in the South.
After rebuilding following two fires in 1909 and 1915, the encroachment of industry was Riverview Park’s ultimate demise. The property was sold in
1929 to the Western Electric Company and the remaining amusements were auctioned off. The Western Electric Point Breeze manufacturing plant operated there for the next 50 years, employing as many as 6,500 workers at one point. The plant produced telephone cable and wire until operations were phased out in 1983. After Western Electric’s departure, the complex was converted into the Point Breeze Business Center, an industrial park popular with maritime firms.
Fast forward to 2017, when 33 acres of that very property would be acquired by Rukert Terminals and aptly named Rukert Riverview. Most people
today know the area as Point Breeze, and few realize it was the site of an amusement park. Nonetheless, naming it Rukert Riverview harkens back
to its earlier days, and would surely please Norman Rukert Sr., who visited the park as a child and remembered it fondly as a historian and author. A ride from Rukert Terminals’ main office on South Clinton Street to Rukert Riverview takes one past the former site of the Colgate Warehouses, which Cap Rukert operated during World War I.
When the deal was finalized, the MPA retained
70 acres of property. Rukert Terminals acquired
the other 33 acres, making it the largest single land acquisition in company history. Rukert Terminals’ parcel contains two buildings. The largest building at 2200 Broening Highway, built in 1956, features 532,000 square feet of warehouse space, with an additional 91,000 square feet of attached office space. The second building at 2300 Broening Highway, built in 1962, is a 163,000-square-foot warehouse that the company had been renting since 2015. Before the two-year lease ran out, Rukert Terminals became its own landlord. The company continued to use 2300 Broening Highway for storage of plywood and aluminum. The larger building at 2200 Broening Highway is occupied by tenants.
Like many other Rukert Terminals prop- erties, the Point Breeze industrial and business complex has an intriguing past. Rukert Terminals’ newly acquired buildings were part of the Western Electric Company’s sprawling Baltimore plant, where telephone cable, cord and wire were manu- factured from 1929 to 1984. Prior to that, the land at the eastern edge of Canton was the site of an entirely different establishment — an amusement park! Named for its location along the Patapsco River, the Riverview Amusement Park operated from 1898 to 1929. Keeping with the Rukert custom of celebrating local history, management decided to name its latest acquisition Rukert Riverview.
In just two years, the Grays Road and Riverview acquisitions increased Rukert Terminals’ inside storage capacity by 31 percent. The fourth-generation family business now occupied 163 acres, including 1.8 million square feet of warehouse space in 31 buildings. The combined workforce of Rukert Terminals and Beacon Stevedoring reached a new high of 187 employees. During the 30-year
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