When a completely redone rowhouse sold for more than the $150,000 asking price recently, it was seen as a harbinger of Greektown's comeback.
What made community activists particularly happy was that the two-bedroom Newkirk Street house was snapped up in just four days; properties in that Southeast Baltimore enclave used to languish on the market for months without as much as a nibble.
"It's an uphill battle, but we are turning the corner," said John E. Gavrilis, executive director of nonprofit Greektown Community Development Corp. "There is a lot of strength in this community, but there are also lots of weaknesses."
Walking along Eastern Avenue, near Ponca Street, within sight of Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Gavrilis passed an alarming number of empty storefronts next to thriving restaurants and coffeehouses where knots of men gathered to play cards or shoot the breeze in Greek. On side streets were boarded-up rowhouses, along with decrepit single-family homes that absentee speculators have illegally converted into multiple rental units.
Gavrilis, a retired city police colonel and former commissioner, thinks such problems can be corrected.
"People will invest in their properties if they know they can get a return," he said, listing Greektown's strengths: restaurants with a regional following; St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church; and homeownership that is climbing again after dipping perilously during the last decade.
The rowhouse at 402 S. Newkirk St. is the first of 20 houses the development corporation plans to rehabilitate during the next two years and sell to homeowners. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held there at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, Mayor Martin O'Malley and Peter G. Angelos, the lawyer and Orioles owner, are expected to attend.
In a way, "Greektown" is a misnomer for the area. The neighborhood of 1,346 homes and 60 businesses is a melting pot - always has been.
When Greeks started moving to Baltimore in droves in the early 1900s, many settled in houses built on hills east of Highlandtown because Bethlehem Steel had jobs and the No. 26 streetcar ran to Sparrows Point, said Helen Johns, a lifelong resident. At the time, the community had a strong presence of Finns - whose national flag's colors are the same blue andwhite as Greece's - as well as a sprinkling of German and Irish residents.
"It was always a diverse community," said Johns.
