Sandtown Winchester

A decade-long vision for an inner city Baltimore neighborhood will be realized today when Sandtown-Winchester residents dedicate a $5.4 million community center. Mayor Martin O'Malley is expected to be on hand when residents get their first look at New Song Center, a 30,000-square-foot facility at 1501 N. Gilmor St. in West Baltimore. A school, a health clinic, a jobs program, and offices for Sandtown Habitat for Humanity will share the space with two youth choirs. Susan Tibbels, who with her husband Allan helped found New Song Urban Ministries, a nonprofit organization that helps coordinate the programs, said the center marks the realization of a dream.

Doug Stanton, 40, barely recognizes the Sandtown-Winchester he grew up in and recently returned home to as executive director of its Neighborhood Development Center. The pride that engulfed the neighborhood has been supplanted by crime, illegal drugs and questions about whether millions of dollars in rehabilitation money will turn the West Baltimore community around. Stanton, who is orchestrating the community's physical redevelopment, wants to make it better. "People were proud to live in Sandtown," he said after a recent lunch at Heaven's Gate, a soul food restaurant on North Avenue.

Doni Glover wants to help raise West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester community out of its economic doldrums. Glover, 35, a Sandtown resident for eight years, has helped create a Web site he hopes will serve as a catalyst for change in his community by encouraging people to use the Internet. "You can find jobs on the Internet, houses, cars," he said. "The Internet provides access to opportunities." Glover said he also created the site because, "There's a lot more to Sandtown than most people know."

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."

Three months ago, Roosevelt Grandy paid $390 a month for a three-bedroom, one-bath rowhouse on Carey Street. Now Grandy, 44, owns a renovated three-bedroom, 1 1/2 -bath townhouse on North Calhoun Street, and his mortgage is $60 less than his rent. Grandy, who grew up in West Baltimore, is among scores of residents who are realizing homeownership through programs that provide low-interest loans, require nominal down payments and keep people in the city. He lives in Sandtown-Winchester Square, a $30 million redevelopment project that when complete will include 322 rehabilitated townhouses in one of Baltimore's most depressed areas.

Charles V. "Chick" Lord, a Baltimore investment banker who was a trustee, fund-raiser and devoted volunteer for New Song Academy in Sandtown-Winchester, died Thursday. He was 58. The longtime Roland Park resident took his own life. In recent months, he had been suffering from and was treated for clinical depression. Until founding C.V. Lord & Associates LLC, an investment firm last year, Mr. Lord had been a managing director of BT Alex. Brown Inc. for 17 years. Earlier, he had worked for Noxell Corp.

Police have identified a man shot and killed Friday afternoon as 22-year-old Tomar Baker, of no known address. He was found shot six times in the 1700 block of Presstman St., west of North Mount Street in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore. Homicide Detective Joseph Jefferson said police have no suspects and have established no motive in the city's 38th homicide of the year. Pub Date: 2/27/00

An 18-year-old man was shot and killed yesterday afternoon in the middle of a West Baltimore street, according to police who said they know of no motive or suspects in the city's latest slaying. Few details were released last night. Agent Ragina L. Cooper, a department spokeswoman, said the man was found in the 1700 block of Presstman St., west of North Mount Street in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. He had been shot several times. Cooper said the victim has been tentatively identified, but his name was not released.

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.

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.