Neighborhood

The Garwyn Oaks community in Northwest Baltimore is hoping that a housing resource center opening today will increase homeownership by 30 percent and protect the historic area from encroaching blight.The Garwyn Oaks Housing Resource Center will hold its grand opening from noon to 2 p.m. today.Now predominantly African-American, the neighborhood was built in the early 1900s and its large, wood-framed homes with front porches and half-acre yards gave the area a small-town look."All you [have]

"Good Shabbos."The Hebrew greeting for Good Sabbath is exchanged hundreds of times on a Saturday by the predominantly Orthodox Jewish community in Bancroft Park, a unique neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore."On Saturdays, you see literally hundreds of people walking to and from synagogues, giving the neighborhood a tremendous sense of community," explained Eric Benzer, an attorney who lives on Bancroft Road.Within Orthodox Judaism, there are different degrees of religious observance, but most do not drive on the Sabbath.

Bah! Worthington's answer for troubled youths"Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" With apologies to Charles Dickens, that seems to be the thrust of the missive "Group homes don't belong in any state neighborhood" (Feb. 28).The letter writer is irked by nettlesome do-gooders such as those at Family Advocacy Services who would impose a group home for their dreary young delinquents with their depressing problems and baggy clothing on his posh Worthington Valley community.Surely, he must fear, they would bring with them their dreadful loud music and frighten the horses if, indeed, they do not eat them.

THERE IS A FINE art to being received and welcomed at the beginning of a trip and then, at its end, being bid goodbye.At this time of the year, when each weekend brings traffic arteries clogged with travelers, I'm reminded of ceremonies surrounding these goings and comings.Only this past weekend, as I emerged from an Amtrak coach, my sister Ann somehow knew at precisely what spot in an eight-car train I'd be. She had her three children all dressed in sunsuits, the twin girls in their stroller, their 3-year-old brother calling out my name.

ON THE DAY his handsome 89-year-old profile graced the front page of the New York Times last week, John Pente, the movie hero of Baltimore's Little Italy and role model for us all, sat at his kitchen table with his daughter Marge and pushed down a button on his telephone answering machine."

As the last residents of Wagner's Point accept a city buyout and slowly leave their homes, the tiny neighborhood in southern Baltimore's chemical belt is suddenly beset by unwanted new arrivals: looters.During the past month, scavengers have broken into dozens of Leo Street houses, often within hours of the departure of their former owners. These intruders have been so methodical that their handiwork provides an easy-to-see record of who has left: the newly empty homes are clearly marked by shattered windows, kicked-in doors, smashed walls and splintered fences.

After three public hearings and hours of intense debate, the Sykesville Town Council voted 6-1 last night against a rezoning proposal that would bring a $3.5 million corporate headquarters into a neighborhood.The mayor's promise that a vote would take place drew a standing-room-only crowd of nearly 100.Nearly all those attending opposed rezoning residential land to business use and allowing Episcopal Ministries to the Aging to build its headquarters.The ministry -- the parent company of Fairhaven Retirement Community, South Carroll's largest employer -- planned a series of six cottage-like buildings on a 3-acre plot at the northern end of town.

Houses in a neighborhood such as Stoneleigh are like snowflakes, say the residents: No two are exactly alike.Perhaps that's why taking a walk down Stoneleigh's tree-lined streets can be a bit overwhelming."

A refuge for Albanian Kosovars. A staging area for the 2012 Summer Olympics. A "healing garden" for the city. A retirement community. A facsimile of Venice, complete with canals.Those are just a few of the ideas that architects, landscape architects, planners and urban designers have proposed to reinvigorate the blighted area north and east of the Johns Hopkins medical campus in Baltimore.They are among the more than 80 entries submitted this spring in an international design competition titled "New Strategies for the Undercrowded Baltimore Neighborhood: Encouraging Neighborhoods of Choice and Diversity."

Charlene Ames, a resident of 22nd Street, never thought she would be walking the former drug corners of Greenmount Avenue while seeing a future blessed with hope and neighborhood confidence.But today, Ames and a small band of neighbors are 10 months into a quiet start at rebuilding a collapsed neighborhood's health. These devoted and optimistic residents say they can observe small hints at progress -- such as a cleared and cleaned lot and increasing attendance at monthly jobs fairs."If I had my way, Greenmount Avenue would be rebuilt with stores for this neighborhood," said Ames, a Defense Department systems administrator who has lived on East 22nd Street for 14 years.

Neighborhood:: Ashburton Location:: Northwest Baltimore Average sales price:: $141,000 (January-June) Notable features:: Beautiful single-family homes - some brick - and lots of mature trees. An old-money feel without the price tag. Directly to the south is Hanlon Park, with Lake Ashburton. A 2002 study of city neighborhoods, prepared by Johns Hopkins University graduate students, called Ashburton "a well-defined enclave in northwest Baltimore that has established itself as the home of Baltimore's black elite."

They all laughed when word got out that its owners were going to replace the upscale bistro Neo Viccino with a sports bar. The only people laughing now are the many, many customers who seem thrilled to have Turp's Sports Bar and Restaurant in the Midtown-Belvedere neighborhood. When you walk by it, Turp's looks busy all the time; Neo Viccino always looked like an Edward Hopper painting. This turn of events is an illustration of something, surely - of giving people what they want, of the struggling economy.

The problem in Little Italy is not its fractious nature. Sitting in any of its community meetings, one understands why post-World War II Italy underwent 30-plus successive governments. Italians - passionate about everything - often engage in fierce debates and disagreements at community meetings, but when it comes to supporting the church and the neighborhood, those same adversaries work together, turning 750 pounds of ground beef into meatballs, producing more than 15,000 ravioli for the spaghetti/ravioli dinner, cooking up hundreds of pounds of dough and calzones for the festivals.

When Micha Dannenberg looks out the window of his Southwest Baltimore home, he's noticing some definite changes. There are fewer vacant houses, he said. Parking has become more of a chore. And new business owners in the neighborhood are starting to move in. "There is a real new community involvement that corresponds to the redevelopment of the Hollins Market," he said. The changes seemed apparent Sunday when thousands of people flocked into Dannenberg's neighborhood for the annual Sowebohemian Arts and Music Festival.

In a crumbling old city where so many houses look as if they could use a coat of paint, the arrival of a new neighborhood hardware store is a cause for rejoicing. So when I was walking up Old York Road a few weeks ago and spotted a nuts-and-bolts inventory being moved into a building fronting Homestead Street, I felt as if old Waverly had turned a corner. It's the not-so-little-amenities that make a neighborhood - good grocery stores, a friendly pub, a cozy restaurant. Actually, the Ace Hardware that opened this week is part of a steady Waverly revival.

Of all the things the rowhouse on East Oliver Street had been over the course of its lifetime, the most recent was what some locals delicately called a gentlemen's social club. That would explain the huge pedestal bed surrounded by mirrors and bolted to the floor that had to be ripped out as the house was renovated to offer quite different services: The Spiral Dance Womyn's Center & Bookstore. It is an unlikely feminist outpost in an impoverished neighborhood of boarded-up houses and corner drug dealers.

Workers removed scaffolding from the old American Brewery's towers, revealing a 19th century exuberance of restored copper, slate, brick and brownstone. Emerging from a $21.2 million restoration, the East Baltimore landmark is ending 35 years of neglect and vacancy - and nail-biting about the fate of this vulnerable icon of Baltimore's industrial past. "It is simply breathtaking," said C. William Struever, the Baltimore developer whose firm has the renovation-construction job and removed the scaffolding last week.

Originally a community that housed blue-collar mill workers in the early 1800s, the Woodberry neighborhood has developed into an eclectic area with diverse housing styles while still retaining most of its original charm. "It's as if rural America was dropped right in the middle of the city," says Dr. Claudia Brown, a former school principal, 34-year Woodberry resident and member of the Park Hill/Edgegreen Community Association. "The residents used to be more blue-collar, but now it's a more cosmopolitan area with residents coming from remarkably different backgrounds."

With the well-known neighborhoods of Guilford, Charles Village and Waverly surrounding it, one would think the tucked-away and lesser-known community of Oakenshawe could get lost in the shuffle. But residents of the neighborhood would never let that happen. They treasure it too much. "It has beautiful trees, gorgeous gardens and people who are out and about," said Becky Bridger, co-president of the Oakenshawe Improvement Association. "I love the beauty, the diversity and the caring neighbors."

The insurgents met to plot their next move, over lemonade and chocolate chip cookies. The level of their anger was such that even the tiniest revolutionary, a mere child, used the strongest language that her young ears probably had ever heard. "I think this is inappropriate," she squeaked. The defiance may be largely decorous, but Roland Park is mad. The lawns of this placid neighborhood lately have sprouted, along with the usual summer hydrangeas and lilies, signs of the ire: "Keswick NO!"