East Side

It has sometimes been referred to as a biotech center or "biopark," as if it's only for scientists. Its largest building is filled with laboratory space. But it's more accurate to describe the 88-acre redevelopment area north of the Johns Hopkins Hospital as a full-fledged, mixed-use neighborhood. Besides laboratory space for life sciences companies and others that want to be near Hopkins, this East Baltimore community, informally called the New Eastside, has been designed to contain townhouses, condominiums, rental apartments, stores, a school, churches, professional services, parking and open space - everything found in older urban neighborhoods.

The John Wesley African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church has served the East Baltimore community for 82 years, the last 58 of them in a cozy, pitched-roof meeting-house on Ashland Avenue, in the shadow of the Johns Hopkins medical campus. Across the street, a sign on an empty block of land welcomes visitors to the "Science and Technology Park at Johns Hopkins." Next to that, another post tells church members to park there. But the Rev. Frances "Toni" Draper, who's led this congregation for seven years, knows that soon there will be few places for them to park at all. The burgeoning science complex and its accompanying redevelopment project, set on land once overrun by drug dealers, addicts and rats, have swallowed dozens of acres.

Police are looking for two men who opened fire on a group of six men standing outside Shirley's Honey Hole, an East Baltimore bar, early Saturday morning, leaving one dead and five wounded. "We do know that there were people in the area frequenting the bar," said Anthony J. Guglielmi, a police spokesman. "We are looking for public help solving this crime. We are going to do what we can do to reduce crime in Baltimore, but we need help to do that. "I know there were people there who saw that shooting.

Seeking ways to revitalize Baltimore's east side, the city is exploring the idea of tearing down a mile-long stretch of the Jones Falls Expressway that divides downtown from the Johns Hopkins medical campus. Baltimore's Department of Transportation has hired an engineering team headed by Rummel, Klepper & Kahl LLP to examine the pros and cons of razing the elevated expressway roughly between Chase and Fayette streets and replacing it with a landscaped "urban boulevard" that would provide access to an area larger than Charles Center or the Harbor East renewal district.

The patchwork of Baltimore's neighborhoods includes an area that is itself an amalgam of diverse cultures, a place affected in many ways by the city's development - the east side. Blacks, whites and Latinos have all been a part of its story. Italian, Greek and Ukrainian cultural traditions are among the variety that have flourished here. Change is a constant factor on the east side, too, as the expanding medical campus of the Johns Hopkins University drives home in our day. Out of this history comes East Side Stories: Portraits of a Baltimore Neighborhood, Then and Now, a photography exhibit that opened Saturday at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture.

The corner of East Baltimore's Milton Avenue and Biddle Street has two liquor stores, a convenience store, a church, blowing trash, a police surveillance camera, kids peddling drugs and idle men worn from age and disability catching up with old friends and old times. Today, it is to have turkeys. Six of them, to be exact. And four hams. And plenty of other food set up on donated tables in front of one of those nondescript corner shops that sells malt liquor in 40-ounce to-go cans and seems to proliferate in impoverished neighborhoods, as common as boarded-up rowhouses and vacant lots.

The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation announced yesterday that it will contribute $15 million over five years to the second phase of a major redevelopment plan near the Johns Hopkins medical complex. The money will support existing programs of the East Baltimore Development Inc., the nonprofit organization overseeing the project, as well as new initiatives for work force development, senior services and education, including construction of an education campus that will include a school for children in prekindergarten through eighth grade.

Detectives define a shooting as an unsuccessful homicide. If that's true, the Baltimore Police Department needs to start worrying, if City Hall wants to end the year with the lowest number of slayings since the mid-1980s. Shootings are down, but not as much now as they were a few months ago. In June, the number of people shot this year compared with last year was down 30 percent. As of two weeks ago, the latest firm numbers available, shootings were down just 16 percent compared with last year.

Beginning this week, the residents and property owners of East Baltimore's Old Town neighborhood will have an opportunity to shape their future by participating in a weeklong planning charrette sponsored by the Baltimore Planning Department. This area between the Johns Hopkins University medical campus and downtown represents a significant development opportunity, which is why the city has selected it for this public "visioning" session. On the east side of the study area, the vacant Somerset Courts public housing community adjoins the Dunbar and Sojourner Douglas schools at the edge of the Hopkins campus.

Charles Grene reads the Weather Page in Westminster, and he's noticed the subtle, graduated colors we use for Maryland. "The west side of the state is pink, then the color goes to yellow, with the east side of the state shown in green. What do the different colors represent?" he asks. Our graphics folks tell me it's a relief map. The colors indicate elevation above sea level. They're colors commonly used for mountainous, Piedmont and coastal regions. In real life, it's all drought-brown.