Matthew King dies, leader of Harlem Park Community Development Corporation, Baltimore

When I first started in community revitalization as an avocation, I spent a lot of time comparing DC to weaker market cities like Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Philadelphia, etc.  

Even though DC lagged area communities like Fairfax, Montgomery, and Arlington Counties, by comparison to cities like Baltimore it was much better off.

I was always surprised to see that particularly innovative programs or "all hands on deck, we're all in this together" initiatives were more typical of the weak market communities, and not DC.

My line describing the difference is that "Because they have significantly fewer opportunities and options, these cities have a desperate willingness to experiment [innovate]" [which isn't present in DC].

Baltimore Sun image.

Dan Rodricks, a columnist at the Baltimore Sun, reports that Matthew King, the president of the Harlem Park Community Development Corporation in Baltimore, died tragically, at the age of 35 ("Death of a dreamer and doer in Harlem Park").  From the article:

Matthew King and I had hoped to get coffee together some day in one of the old rowhouses of Harlem Park. It was a little joke between us. Someone had spray painted the question, “Why no Starbucks here?” on a boarded-up, three-story beauty at Lafayette Avenue and N. Carey Street, and King, president of the Harlem Park Community Development Corp., took that as a challenge. 

Why not a Starbucks or, better, a locally-owned coffee shop in a renovated rowhouse near leafy Lafayette Square? And why not new housing? Why not new homeowners? Why not a whole Harlem Park renaissance? 

With a background in finance and real estate, King took on the tall challenge of trying to bring investment to the long-neglected West Baltimore neighborhood where he had purchased a home a decade earlier. His CDC rolled out a top-notch master plan for Harlem Park in June. I looked it over and started to believe in the possibility of the corner coffee shop and more. Why not?

According to Rodricks, the group just produced "a top-notch master plan" ("Promising plan, huge challenge: A Harlem Park renaissance in West Baltimore," Sun) for the neighborhood a couple months ago, with one of the elements being a focus on commercial district revitalization.

Empty buildings: opportunities or hindrances?

Matthew King is the kind of person I was thinking about when I made the point about desperation driven by lack of choices, a recognition that if he didn't participate in his community's improvement, maybe improvement wouldn't happen at all.

When such people die, especially so young, it can be very damaging to revitalization efforts, especially as social and community capital can be pretty limited.

By contrast, in DC, my joke is that "big government (federal), trickles down and shapes little (local) government in its image."  It's top-down, not particularly innovative, and very hard to have impact, especially if you are not part of the traditional power structure.

In Baltimore, they have fewer choices, so they can't be so cavalier about wasting people as resources.