Sandtown Winchester

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.

A one-alarm fire destroyed a vacant rowhouse in West Baltimore yesterday morning and damaged four other dwellings, the Fire Department reported.No injuries were reported.The fire of undetermined origin broke out about 10 a.m. in a vacant dwelling at 1112 Stockton St. in Sandtown-Winchester and was extinguished about two hours later, the Fire Department said. Nine pieces of equipment responded."The fire started on the first floor of 1112, burned up the stairway and then spread across the entire top floor," Battalion Chief Frank Giotis said.

Martin E. Jasmin, a Hecht Co. salesman and tailor, died of a stroke Friday at his home in Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. He was 56. Mr. Jasmin, who was known as "Jazz," was born and raised in Sandtown-Winchester. He was a 1965 graduate of Carver Vocational-Technical High School, where he studied tailoring. During a career of more than 30 years, Mr. Jasmin worked in alterations at Steven Windsor Tall and Big Men's clothing store and Cushner's Men's Shops. He also worked in alterations at Hutzler's, Hochschild-Kohn and Macy's department stores.

With tours of rehabilitated homes in the new Sandtown-Winchester Square wrapped up yesterday, city leaders acknowledged a neighborhood drug problem and promised an aggressive effort to rid the area of dealers and addicts. "We're going to have to work as partners with the community to ensure that while we're building the new units and bringing in new homeowners that we make sure the neighborhood is healthy as well," city Housing Commissioner Patricia J. Payne said. "We'll be working with all of the stakeholders in the community to do that."

A new community center will be opened and the Rouse-Hobbs garden and streetscape mural will be dedicated at 9: 30 a.m. today at Winchester and Gilmor streets in the Sandtown-Winchester area of West Baltimore.The mural and garden honor the late William L. Hobbs, a pianist and orchestra manager who worked with Community Building in Partnership in Sandtown-Winchester, and the late developer James W. Rouse, who established the Enterprise Foundation, which helps provide affordable housing for the poor.

A $5.2 million grant awarded to Baltimore Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will help finance the construction of 300 homes in Sandtown-Winchester, city housing officials said yesterday.The funds will be used to attract $30 million from sources including the city and state governments, financial institutions and foundations. That money will be used to build and renovate houses in a so-called Homeownership Zone to be called Sandtown-Winchester Square, said city housing spokesman Zack Germroth.

A nonprofit legal services agency has been awarded a $627,500 grant to begin a push by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to rehabilitate or demolish nearly 700 vacant properties in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood.The work by the Community Law Center kicks off a pledge made by Mr. Schmoke in March that every vacant and boarded house in the Sandtown-Winchester area will be either renovated or demolished within one year.The Board of Estimates awarded the grant earlier this week. The city's Department of Housing and Community Development will use the money to place 350 properties in receivership and for title work on 250 properties the city wants to acquire.

Leroy Montgomery Taylor, a retired technician who had worked in animal research at Edgewood Arsenal and was active in the restoration of Sandtown-Winchester, died of cancer Sunday at Mercy Medical Center. He was 80. The longtime Windsor Hills resident was born in the city and raised in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. He was a 1939 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School and enlisted in the Army in 1942. He served with the Army's Medical Sanitation Corps in the Pacific until being discharged in 1946 with the rank of private.

As a $100 million urban renewal effort continues, Sandtown-Winchester remains a 72-block community of contrasts.More than 300 people live in new or renovated homes with many of the amenities of suburban living. But more important than their mud rooms and manicured lawns is the community pride that comes with ownership, many homeowners said.The homeowners' desire to plant front-yard flower gardens or -- before the drought -- to scrub and wash brick facades, has left neighbors in nearby crumbling rowhouses desperate for the same chance to start anew.