A Backwater's Incoming Tide

Condo Development Brings a Sea Change to the Quiet Eastern Shore Town of Crisfield

Randy Green of Rockville, Md., guides his boat into the dock next to Harbour Light, one of the new condominium complexes along the shoreline in Crisfield. He bought one of the first units in building. (Kim Hart -- The Washington POst)

CRISFIELD, Md. Each morning before dawn, Chesapeake Bay watermen gather for coffee and gossip at Gordon's Confectionery, an 80-year-old diner in this tiny fishing village that once bustled with three dozen crab-packing houses.

For years they have watched the sun climb above Crisfield's shoreline, which for decades consisted only of sailboat masts, seafood restaurants and a few storefronts.

Now the sunrise is obscured by high-rise condominium complexes that lure a steady stream of vacationers, retirees and baby boomers seeking second homes.

Developers hungry for waterfront land at reasonable prices discovered the quiet town of Crisfield nearly three years ago, and the best-kept real-estate secret on the Eastern Shore quickly spread across the region. Investors from Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia are flocking to Maryland's southernmost town, bringing newcomers and changes to the tight-knit community.

The city's jagged coast is now lined with about 250 units of condominiums and town houses, some selling for nearly $1 million. Three buildings are under construction with nine more in the works, which will add another 300 units in the next two years.

Real estate agents sometimes sell three or four units in a weekend. Forgotten lots and dilapidated houses are being snatched up, often by Washingtonians and Baltimoreans eager to escape the crowds of Ocean City and other popular seaside retreats.

"It's a turnaround kind of town," said Randy Green, a Rockville financial planner who two years ago was among the first buyers at Harbour Light Condominiums, a 127-unit complex on Crisfield's southern tip.

About 14 other Rockville residents have moved into his building. Other neighbors hail from Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York. Green, 52, spends several weekends a month and most of the summer crabbing off his building's private dock, kayaking through trails in nearby Janes Island State Park and taking his two children for jaunts in his new 26-foot power boat.

"I think the town's going to take off," he said. "It's neat to get in on the ground floor of something like that."

His friend Paul Bodbout, also from Rockville, bought a run-down house in town last month and fixes it up on weekends. He's thinking of selling it to buy a condo on the water.

"The more I come down here the more I love it," he said from the back seat of Green's boat. "This place seems like a really good secret that's about to get out."

For now, downtown is studded with vacant lots and boarded storefronts. Developers predict businesses, restaurants and boutique retail outlets will catch up with the residential building boom in the next three to five years, breathing new economic life into a city that for decades has been stalled by the seafood industry's decline around the Bay.