Daily Bread

Plans to move Our Daily Bread's soup kitchen from downtown Baltimore are moving closer to fruition as city government and downtown business leaders discuss possible relocation sites, including a former city school across from Green Mount Cemetery.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said yesterday that he will meet this month with a committee of business and civic leaders established to explore moving Our Daily Bread from the corner of Cathedral and Franklin streets near the Basilica of the Assumption. The Downtown Partnership, a group of business owners, has said that a half-dozen sites are being considered.

Joe Coakley thought he was dropping off some corned beef casseroles that women in his church had made for the new soup kitchen downtown. But before he knew it, a nun was slipping an apron over his head and telling him how nice he was to have volunteered.Ten years later, Mr. Coakley is still working the ovens at Ou Daily Bread while his wife, Anne, ladles the corned beef mixture onto plates. They were at the soup kitchen yesterday as it marked its 10th anniversary, a bittersweet occasion.The program's staff and volunteers are proud of its decade o service in feeding the poor.

Meetings were held, petitions were signed and surveys were taken, and in the end, the people of Johnston Square and Brentwood Village prevailed as the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced yesterday that it would not move Our Daily Bread to their East Baltimore neighborhood.Associated Catholic Charities, which runs the soup kitchen, said in a statement that community response persuaded the organization to look for another relocation site for Our Daily Bread, which is next to the Basilica of the Assumption on Cathedral Street.

One in a series of occasional features highlighting people and organizations in the Baltimore area who exemplify the "Spirit of Sharing," The Sun's annual holiday campaign. It's not just lunch. And it still moves the older volunteers to see men and women say grace over their free meal at Our Daily Bread, the downtown soup kitchen run by Catholic Charities. Pat Marani of Parkville has been volunteering here for maybe 17 years - she isn't sure exactly - but it never fails, every day she and her band of volunteers see people giving thanks over warm baked chicken or tuna casserole.

WHEN THE downtown business community and cultural institutions complained last year about the impact of Maryland's largest soup kitchen, Our Daily Bread, a compromise seemed a long shot.Associated Catholic Charities, which serves lunch to more than 800 people a day at Our Daily Bread, took the challenge to heart. Its proposal, unveiled yesterday, won't satisfy everyone, but it nimbly addresses several conflicting concerns.The $20 million plan includes moving Our Daily Bread to a site just east of Interstate 83 and north of the state prison; adding job training and a men's shelter to that location after an old garage is razed; and moving a daytime shelter for women and children called My Sister's Place to the current Our Daily Bread building, opposite the Enoch Pratt Central Library.

Our Daily Bread, one of Baltimore's busiest and most visible soup kitchens, may be moving as the result of efforts by merchants and community leaders to get rid of panhandlers and revitalize the Charles Street corridor.No decision has been made to relocate the soup kitchen where Pope John Paul II dined with the poor and others in October 1995.But Catholic Charities, which operates Our Daily Bread, has formed a committee chaired by George Collins, the former CEO of Baltimore brokerage T. Rowe Price, to study its options.

Catholic Charities has succeeded in raising at least $17 million to move a food pantry across from the central Enoch Pratt Free Library into an expanded center for the homeless east of downtown. That means that long-debated plans to move Our Daily Bread out of the Mount Vernon cultural district should lead to construction next year of an employment and counseling center for indigent people, said Hal Smith, executive director of Catholic Charities. The Baltimore Planning Commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing Thursday on the proposed location of the Our Daily Bread Employment Center at 358 E. Monument St., across from the state prison complex.

CARDINAL William H. Keeler chose the right person, many agree, when he asked George Collins, former CEO of T. Rowe Price, to head a committee to examine the future of Our Daily Bread. As the Collins group wraps up its look at the Catholic Charities soup kitchen, however, members must feel like bridge builders who fasten the last rivet only to realize that the shores have moved farther apart.On one side are representatives of the business community, who may feel even more urgency to relocate Our Daily Bread since Johns Hopkins University's announcement that it will enhance its downtown campus.

Running out of money to buy food, David P. Anderson was among the first to file into the dining room yesterday at Our Daily Bread. Behind him, dozens waited in line on Christmas morning as Anderson sat down to a turkey dinner and reached first for the cranberry relish. But it wasn't until he was walking out of the downtown Baltimore soup kitchen that Anderson learned who had prepared the meal and served it to him. For the 15th year, members of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation stepped in so the usual volunteers, several of them Christians, could celebrate Christmas Day at home with their families.

WHEN Catholic Charities' officials announced plans to move Our Daily Bread out of downtown, it said it would take six months to assess feedback.That was three months ago.The plan has already been scrubbed.The Archdiocese of Baltimore, which operates the charity and Our Daily Bread, didn't anticipate the stiff opposition of the Johnston Square neighborhood in East Baltimore, where it planned to move the soup kitchen and expand an existing job-training center. Next time, even at the risk of inflating the price of a prospective site, the host neighborhood needs to be invited into the planning early.