Sandtown

A few weeks ago, some 200 volunteers gathered each morning under a tent at Gilmor and Presstman streets for 30 minutes of singing and inspirational messages. They then dispersed throughout Sandtown-Winchester to work on 20 vacant rowhouses Habitat for Humanity plans to rehabilitate this year in its effort to turn that West Baltimore neighborhood around.Although they came from many religious backgrounds, all Sandtown volunteers had received Prophet Nehemiah's call, "Come, let us rebuild." As a result, 15 rowhouses were rehabilitated last year and dozens more are slated for repairs in years to come.

Three men were shot in separate incidents Wednesday night across Baltimore, and they were expected to survive their injuries, police said. The first man was found lying in the street in the 1300 block of North Carey Street in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. Police said the man suffered from a gunshot wound to his buttocks, and paramedics transported him to an area hospital. Detectives do not have a motive or suspect, police said. At 6:44 p.m., police responded to a shooting in the 500 block of North Glover St. in McElderry Park, where they found a man on the ground suffering from gunshot wounds to his lower back and hand.

Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester, the Schmoke administration model renewal project, will get up to $8 million in loans from NationsBank to help buy and renovate the 670 vacant houses that blight the neighborhood."

Responding to a 4 a.m. emergency call, police found a 24-year-old man stabbed multiple times in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore. Thomas Rawlings, whose last known address was the 1800 block of N. Fulton Ave. where he was found, was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was pronounced dead at 4:36 a.m., Baltimore police Det. Vernon Davis said. Police have no motives or suspect in the slaying.

Shortly beyond 8 o'clock yesterday morning, on Stricker Street in West Baltimore, there comes such a hocking and a plocking from hammering and nailing as to make the very gods of urban renewal wake up and salute.Of course, I learn this second-hand. Myself, I don't show up on Stricker Street until 9:30 yesterday morning, in mid-hock and mid-plock, but everybody who was there earlier says it was stirring to watch everything commence.The hocking and the plocking? It was nothing more than bringing life to a neighborhood.

Outsiders may say there is no reason to sing God's praises in Sandtown. The place that in its heyday was known as the Harlem of Baltimore and the home of Billie Holiday is singing the blues of drugs, crime and unemployment. But for the past 12 years, hope has lived in Sandtown through the voices of children in a gospel choir named after their neighborhood. "We are a bunch of kids," says Sade Douglas, 14. "We can praise God instead of being on the streets." Sandtown choir's 55 members face a struggle daily to stay on the right path.

House by house, family by family, LaVerne Cooper wants to rebuild the West Baltimore neighborhood of Sandtown as she remembers it from childhood: safe, close-knit, hard-working.The renewal of Sandtown, a community of more than 10,000 people southwest of North and Pennsylvania avenues, has already changed her life. She became a homeowner two years ago through Sandtown Habitat for Humanity, took a job with the nonprofit group and in April was named its co-executive director.Today Sandtown Habitat caps its third annual "blitz-build" week.

The Enterprise Foundation has received a $500,000 grant from the Fannie Mae Foundation for its "neighborhood transformation project" in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester area.The grant will be used as the Enterprise Foundation and the city, in partnership with community leaders, try to improve housing, schools, health care and other services in Sandtown.The gift comes as former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are to be in Sandtown today to help renovate vacant houses as part of a Habitat for Humanity International project.

VISTA, the 1960s-flavored anti-poverty agency, is coming to the West Baltimore neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester to aid a 1990s-style assault on urban problems.The Enterprise Foundation and Volunteers in Service to America are to announce in Washington today a partnership that would bring 17 VISTA volunteers to Sandtown, a community of 10,000 people beset by poverty, joblessness and crime. Seven other cities would receive two volunteers each under the plan.Most or all of the Sandtown volunteers would be recruited from people already living in the neighborhood, said F. Barton Harvey III, chairman of Enterprise, the Columbia-based nonprofit group founded by developer James W. Rouse.

The city housing commissioner has selected a Pasadena operator of three suburban nursing homes to complete and manage a boarded-up West Baltimore facility that was originally to be Baltimore's first black-owned, nonprofit nursing home.FutureCare Health and Management Corp. was chosen over four other developers -- two of them nonprofit -- to run the N. M. Carroll Health Care Facility at 1000 N. Gilmor St. in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood."The city's priority was to provide quality health care to the community while avoiding any drain on the city's coffers," Daniel P. Henson III, the commissioner, said through a spokesman.

The empty lot in West Baltimore is usually a desolate spot, the sort of place people visit to leave an old mattress in the bushes or sneak a drink at night. But this week, chain saws buzzed, trucks rumbled and residents shoveled compost at North Fulton and Lorman streets in Sandtown-Winchester as workers set up a 3,300-square-foot organic greenhouse, breaking ground on one of the city's biggest entries in the fast-growing national movement known as urban farming. The farm, now called Strength to Love Farms, will eventually be able to grow more than 150,000 pounds of fresh produce a year, all to be sold and distributed locally, according to Alex Persful, president and chief horticulturist of the urban agriculture firm Big City Farms.

A man killed Saturday in Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood is the 200th homicide victim in Baltimore this year, according to records maintained by the Baltimore Sun. Police identified the victim as James Johnson, 22, of the 6800 block of Harlem Avenue in West Baltimore. He had been found in the 1300 block of Laurens Street just after 1:30 p.m. with multiple gunshot wounds to the upper torso and head, according to police, who responded to reports of a shooting. He was taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 2 p.m. The shooting happened at the intersection of Laurens and North Carey streets.

A shooting in Sandtown-Winchester Monday seriously wounded a 19-year-old man. Police responded to reports of shots fired shortly after 10 p.m. in the 900 block of North Calhoun Street at West Lafayette Street. They found the victim suffering from a grave gunshot wound to the neck. He remains in critical condition at an area hospital, police said. Mary.gail.hare@baltsun.com Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

Over the span of two hours late Monday, Baltimore police investigated three shootings, according to the department's Twitter account: •Police reported about 9:30 p.m. that a male was shot at the intersection of East Preston and North Aisquith streets in Oliver. •Another shooting was reported about 10 p.m.: a male in the 4800 block of Liberty Heights Avenue in Gwynn Oak. •About 11:40 p.m., police reported that a man was shot in the 1600 block of Delano Court in Sandtown-Winchester.

Llewellyn Washington Woolford Sr., a retired Social Security Administration attorney who was a past Howard County Human Relations Commission chairman, died of stroke complications Feb. 22 at his Columbia home. He was 81. Born in Baltimore and raised on Robert Street, he was a 1947 Frederick Douglass High School graduate. He earned a bachelor's degree at Lincoln University and a law degree at Howard University, where he was a founding editor of its law journal. Family members said that while a student at Howard, he witnessed Thurgood Marshall in a moot court argument of the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education case.

Twenty-eight young people started rehabilitating homes and building their leadership skills yesterday as part of an effort to revive the troubled, 72-square-block Sandtown-Winchester area of West Baltimore.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke stopped by yesterday for the ceremonial opening of YouthBuild Sandtown's first two projects, rowhouse renovations in the 700 block of Cumberland St."This project shows that what others see as signs of despair, we see as signs of hope," the mayor said.YouthBuild Sandtown is a two-year project funded by a $995,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.