Pigtown is just aching for a good make-over.
Like customers who flock to cosmetics counters in search of a better look, the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood wants to build on its best features as it looks to spruce things up.
And unlike urban renewal projects that have changed the way a place looks or the people who live there, community activists in Pigtown hope to see revitalization projects that keep residents there but improve the overall quality of housing, eliminate vacant properties and attract new businesses to the area.
"There's no moving people out of Pigtown," says Rodney Carroll, a sculptor who moved from South Baltimore eight years ago to find a building large enough for his studio.
"We want to help people stay, some of whom have rented here for 25 years. They should have a chance to buy their houses."
Mr. Carroll and his wife, Narda, knew Pigtown -- a grid of streets lined with brick and Formstone rowhouses -- was "borderline" when they bought an old furniture factory on Clifford Street to house their offices, studios and living quarters.
"I need a lot of space," says Mr. Carroll, who makes outdoor sculptures. "You can't get a building like this in South Baltimore; they've all been turned into condos."
Mr. Carroll, who has been active in a number of community groups, says he was willing to take a chance on Pigtown because it's an interesting neighborhood with a diverse and racially integrated population and active civic and community groups. At least a dozen groups and associations have worked to improve aspects of the neighborhood for the past decade.
Despite their efforts, the past few years have not been kind, residents say. Increasing crime, loss of businesses and homeowners, vacant houses and growing unemployment have hurt the area.
"We've got to get rid of the vacant housing. And we need to get jobs in here," says Leah Shifflett, who moved to Pigtown in 1958 and raised six children in a Formstone rowhouse.
"The goal is to help stabilize it. Work on the crime and grime," says Mr. Carroll. "I think [community groups] have made a lot of progress . . . but now the city has got to help."
Kimberly Bares, executive director of Tri-Churches Housing Group, agrees the city needs to make a greater commitment to Pigtown, a neighborhood of 6,200 people just west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and south of Pratt Street.
'On the edge'
