Rebuilding blocks and blockheads in Baltimore

“We always contended the important thing was to keep houses out of the hands of slumlords,” says Ed Rutkowski, executive director of the Patterson Park Community Development Corp. (Sun photo by Kim Hairston) Oct 11, 2006

The Baltimore Sun ran an article last week, "City group writes urban success story," about the success of the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation, which has been so successful that it has to look elsewhere for new projects, because the supply of houses needing renovation has dried up. From the article:

The revival that Rutkowski's group helped create in a then-rapidly declining swath of Southeast Baltimore runs so counter to prevailing trends that even experienced revitalization leaders were taken aback. It had all the signs of relentless decline: white and middle-class flight, prostitutes, drug dealers, shady investors, derelict homes spreading like a virus. ...

Now, vacancies are dwindling; crime has dropped. Home prices have shot up at least fivefold. Restored brick facades are multiplying. It's not a problem-free neighborhood, but there's general agreement that it's far better than it was a decade ago.

A community development corporation shifting its focus away from the neighborhood it was formed to help is a remarkable step in Baltimore. It's also unusual nationally, said John K. McIlwain, a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington. CDCs, as they're called, are often battling just to keep blight at bay - and lots are more well-intentioned than well-managed."

Many CDCs are ineffective," McIlwain said. "Clearly, not this one."The Patterson Park CDC, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary Wednesday, said its turning-point decision is fairly straight-forward: No more cheap houses are left.

"High prices for everything that is available says that there's really no need for us," said Rutkowski, 59, the organization's executive director. He was a software development manager for UPS when he moved to Patterson Park 20 years ago. "We always contended the important thing was to keep houses out of the hands of slumlords."

The 25-employee CDC won't vanish from Patterson Park. It owns vacant commercial buildings that need to be redeveloped. It will likely keep many of its 140 rentals. It plans to continue its significant support of local organizations, from the year-old charter school to the group that helped restore the huge park that gives the area its name. If the neighborhood starts to slip, Rutkowski said, the CDC will step in.

The reason that this organization "counters the trends" is because they are in a decent location, with great historic assets. BUT, they also focused on asset-based revitalization, with a strategy of renovation, not demolition and new construction.

Pity that the average Baltimorean still doesn't understand this, and that goes all the way up to the top, including people like Mayor O'Malley.

Later in the week, the Sun ran another piece, "City moves to get 200 properties," about the American Brewery neighborhood, which they wrote about in great detail a few months ago, in "A neighborhood abandoned."

From the article:

Hoping to set the stage for the future renewal of one of the city's most distressed areas, officials are moving to acquire about 200 abandoned properties around the historic American Brewery building in a long-neglected corner of East Baltimore.The 30-odd properties closest to the brewery - which has been vacant for more than three decades but is slated to be renovated as the local headquarters of a nonprofit social services agency - will be shored up to prevent further deterioration, while the rest will be held until the city decides what to do with them. ...

The acquisition plans, which could take as long as a year, represent the city's second major step in recent months to address the decay around the brewery.This summer, the city applied for a state grant to help acquire and demolish one of the most decayed blocks in the area, saying the demolition would create a cleared site that could attract developers while enhancing the desirability of the brewery and two vacant school buildings nearby.

The area was the subject of a two-part series published earlier this year in The Sun, "A neighborhood abandoned." The series described life in a community that had lost 60 percent of its population, leaving behind a landscape where about half the properties were vacant buildings and empty lots, and that had been largely bypassed for years by efforts at renewal.

The city says there are no immediate plans about what to do with the properties once they're acquired.Yesterday, residents on blocks surrounding the city-owned brewery complex - which includes the five-story, 19th-century brewhouse and a vacant former bottling plant - expressed a mixture of satisfaction and skepticism at the city's intention to begin accumulating abandoned properties on their blocks. ...

"I think it's a good idea," said Berrain, 50, a retired city sanitation worker who rents a rowhouse with his wife and four children. "They can renovate them. Even if they don't, tear them down. They're not doing any good standing there."

In one neighborhood, Patterson Park, the neighborhood has been revitalized by the rehabilitation of over 400 historic rowhouses. In another neighborhood, the city moves forward to demolish large swaths, and residents recommend demolition.

Ironically, Otis Rolley, planner director of Baltimore, will be speaking at the National Building Museum next week, in a forum about comprehensive planning, along with Ellen McCarthy of DC, and the planning directors of Denver and Seattle. Were I going to be in town, it'd be a great opportunity for some pointed questioning.

Also see:
-- Is this the fifth phase of center city revitalization? (since World War II)
-- Falling up -- Accountability and DC Community Development Corporations
-- The Building Blocks of Revitalization
-- Passion and Vision: The real building blocks of revitalization.

Index Keywords: urban-revitalization