June 25, 2009
New York's Lower East Side was a run-down neighborhood blighted by crime and decay before young artists began moving in during the 1970s and turned the place into a lively entertainment destination. An infusion of creative types in the 1990s transformed Washington's distressed U Street corridor into a dynamic cultural hub.
Now Baltimore is aiming to engineer a similar urban renaissance in the long-beleaguered Greenmount West neighborhood, which forms the eastern half of the city's fledgling Station North Arts and Entertainment District. Last week, an alliance of nonprofit community development groups announced plans to build dozens of rent-controlled artists' residences and affordable townhomes along Greenmount Avenue at Oliver Street to increase the area's attraction for the creative class.
Greenmount West has been home to a small but active community of artists for more than a decade. Many are graduates of the Maryland Institute College of Art who were drawn to the neighborhood because of its inexpensive studio and living space in the area's converted factory buildings. Their presence in the arts district has stimulated the development of new businesses and entertainment venues that have greatly enlivened the Charles Street corridor north of Penn Station.
The new $15 million apartment and townhouse development will be built on city-owned land near a former Venetian blind factory that was purchased several years ago by a group of artists who turned it into a noncommercial gallery and studio space. The complex will house 69 one- and two-bedroom loft-style apartments for artists at controlled rents ranging from $619 to $775 and eight townhouses priced from $165,000 to $180,000. The apartment building will have off-street parking and a first-floor multipurpose area that can be used as a gallery and performance space.
The developers hope to attract a wide variety of creative types - artists, writers, musicians and performers, as well as young professionals whose energy can be harnessed to enliven the area and enable the community to truly take root. And because the rents are stabilized, the artists won't all have to move out to make way for gentrification, as eventually happened in New York and Washington. The experience of other cities has shown that change can come quickly to neighborhoods when they become home to dedicated, creative people, and the announcement of the proposed City Arts building in Greenmount West could accelerate a process that already seems well under way.
