The Rev. Calvin Keene (pictured above, right) would often overhear dealers in the street outside selling crack cocaine when he was at work in his office in the Oliver neighborhood of East Baltimore. He’d lived there his entire life and, despite the drug dealers, hadn’t realized how alarmingly unsafe it had become until a 2002 firebombing left community leader Angela Dawson and her five children dead—an act of retribution for Dawson alerting police to drug activity on her street.

Fast forward to today, when the nonprofit ReBUILD, which Keene helped to spearhead, has rebuilt not just the neighborhood but its community ties and spirit, essentially making it a healthier, happier place to call home.

Keene can now say with pride that the neighborhood is not what it used to be, as he’s watched it transform before his eyes.

“When I grew up in Oliver, everyone knew my family and my family knew everybody. Councilman [Robert] Stokes lived three blocks away from me—that sort of thing,” Keene says. “It’s returning to becoming a neighborhood where people know one another again.”

ReBUILD grew out of the effort by several groups to reconstruct the Oliver neighborhood after the firebombing incident. They’ve gone on to redevelop and reduce vacancy in more than 700 East Baltimore properties.

“It starts with going to people in these communities and asking what’s working? What’s broken? Let’s build on what’s working,” says Sean Closkey, the founding president of ReBUILD. “You have to start by not displacing folks, because then you’ve actually made the hole you’re digging bigger. If you just fix these houses, it really works well.”

Closkey says the work they have done has had unbelievable effects. Since ReBUILD initiated its efforts, Oliver’s homicide rate has been cut almost in half, vacancies have gone down, and house prices have gone up—without displacing anyone.

When ReBUILD started, Oliver was considered an area of concentrated racial poverty. Now it’s a mixed-income neighborhood that has attracted coffee shops and grocery stores, as well as new residents.

ReBUILD transforms some lots into green spaces and playgrounds, which have two benefits: green spaces reduce the supply of homes in an area, thereby upping the desirability and value of homes that remain; and the neighborhood becomes more interest- ing and beautiful, which also attracts buyers. They don’t stop there. As they work to rebuild neighborhoods, literally and figuratively, they jump in anywhere they think they can help residents. At the start of the pandemic, Closkey learned of families in East Baltimore who had no food.

“Hunger is not like housing,” he says. “If you don’t get food after a couple days, there’s a real problem.”

He immediately called Keene, and they assembled a team of volunteers. At first, they were just making a couple hundred food deliveries. As the operation grew, they began feeding over 1,000 families each week for two years through the pandemic—124,100 meals over 101 weeks—discontinuing the service in May 2022.

“We are a group of people who simply respond to what’s in front of us,” Closkey says. “We have a motto: There’s nothing wrong with Baltimore that can’t be fixed by what’s right with Baltimore.”

In 2018, as an associate public health professor at Morgan State University, Lawrence Brown was honored with the Open Society Institute-Baltimore’s “Bold Thinker” award for sparking discussion around the city’s racial segregation. The same year, The Root named him to its annual list of the most influential African Americans ages 25 to 45.

After serving as a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the West Memphis native returns to Morgan this year to launch the school’s Center for Urban Health Equity. Brown’s new role coincides with the release of The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the political and economic forces behind Baltimore’s bifurcated white and Black neighborhoods, and the modern-day segregation at the center of so much of the city’s inequity.

In 2015, you coined the term “The Black Butterfly” to describe the geography of East and West Baltimore. How did that term originate?
I had been teaching undergraduates about the segregation of space in the city and was trying to think of ways to get people to understand the concept. It was something the undergraduates—18, 19, 20 years old—could hang their hat on. The Black Butterfly is half a term of art and half of social science. [The street artist] Nether picked up on it and used it in a mural and [painter] Chris Wilson has used it in his work. The research in the book kind of came later, after others had already run with it.

This book is not directly focused on the struggle for voting rights or even of-the-moment concerns about the need for police reform. It’s a story of systemic racism in the built environment—infrastructure, housing, and neighborhoods.
I sum up the book in one sentence—you can’t make Black lives matter if you don’t make Black neighborhoods matter. There is a lot of activism and advocacy around Black lives and police violence. I wanted to expand the scope and say we shouldn’t just care about Black lives when they die at the hands of police, but we should care about all of the factors that lead up to early Black deaths . . . [including] health inequality. For every one of those [violent incidents], there’s 10,000 children, like Freddie Gray and Korryn Gaines, who are poisoned by lead. There’s people who die of asthma, HIV, or now COVID. If we’re saying Black Lives Matter, we have to care about Black neighborhoods, because that’s where Black people live.

In Baltimore, it seems the protests around the Port Covington tax increment financing (TIF) plan signaled a breakthrough moment in terms of how city government and public dollars foster segregation and inequality.
Port Covington was a turning point, in terms of organizing. There were marches and protests around the death of Freddie Gray. Now, there was organizing over a TIF. We had like 800 people come out to City Council work-group meetings at the War Memorial building that summer. It was 2016, the year after the Uprising, and here the city was giving a massive $660-million TIF to this billionaire at the corner of the “White L.” The public awareness [and outcry] was a tremendous step forward.

One of the most enlightening parts of the book is the look back at The Sun’s vociferous support of housing segregation.
The impetus for many white homeowner’s associations was the “Negro Invasion” [a characterization in the Baltimore Sun]. That was the rhetoric that was weaponized.

No one has ever described  Jack  Young as an orator. Standing at a podium slapped with the city seal next to a basketball-size crater on North Collington Avenue in February, Young  takes all of 90 seconds to introduce his “Mayor’s 50-Day Pothole Challenge” before handing things over to Department of Transportation director Steve Sharkey.  

“One of my top priorities is to clean up this city . . . I encourage all residents to report potholes  to 3-1-1  so that  together  we can improve city roadways,”  he says,  reading from notes for the television cameras and promising to fill 5,000 potholes  in  just under two months. And that’s it, other than fielding a couple of softballs from the media. Which is not to say the man  who assumed Baltimore’s highest office after Catherine Pugh was  forced to resign over corruption  charges  is an individual of few words.  Grabbing a shovel, the former City Council president immediately starts chatting up the asphalt crew. 

To his credit,  Young later seeks  out the only neighbor on the block who turned out for this photo opp.  She  informed  him, of all things, that the city’s big street sweeping trucks came by  too  often—“four times a week”—often  leaving potholes in their wake.  Young had never heard this complaint before in  Baltimore,  and  he asked the woman if she spoke for her community. She assured him, in fact, she  did. (“I go to meetings.”) “Okay, we’ll move the sanitation trucks,” Young responds with a wry glance toward Sharkey. “I’m sure some other neighborhoods could use them.” 

Young  may not be the most gifted public official in front of a microphone. The  entire city can recite his gaffes—“I’m  not committing the murders, and that’ s what people need to understand”—but  no one can deny he has a sense of humor. Or that he doesn’t love the city and look out for its workaday  people. He  seems to have half of East  Baltimore on  speed-dial. 

“I could use him on my crew,” cracks one of the  Department of Public Works  crew leaders patching North  Collington. “Seriously, the mayor doesn’t put on any front. He’s the same with everyone.” 

The night before the launch of  the  pothole challenge, the University of Baltimore School of Law hosted a symposium:  “The City Charter: Does  It  Work for a 21st Century Baltimore?”  Former mayor  and current UB  president Kurt  Schmoke, Johns Hopkins University professor emeritus Matthew  Crenson, City Council president Brandon Scott, former mayor Sheila Dixon, City  Councilwoman  Mary Pat Clarke, and City Councilman Bill Henry, who is running for comptroller, debated potential structural changes to the City  Charter. It was wonky stuff ranging  from  ranked primary voting to changes in the makeup of the Board of Estimates. Some of the proposals have been introduced before the City Council and could ballot referendums this fall.

Young was not there. Nor was he  really  missed. The panel discussion thing isn’t his strength. If Baltimore voters decide in June they want  Young in office for the next four years, it won’t be because of his  strong debate  performances, bold vision, or  charisma. But because they want someone who will listen  and fill their potholes.    

His ascendance to the mayor’s office has been anything but jackrabbit fast. Or likely.

Bernard C. “Jack”  Young got his nickname because he was as quick as a  jack rabbit  as a kid. It stuck, even if it did eventually get shortened. “I  had to have it legally changed to get ‘Jack’ listed on the ballot because people don’t  know  me by anything else,” he says  with a  smile  at  his campaign headquarters at the corner of North Charles Street and North Avenue. He is 65 years old, married for 40 years, father of two, grandfather to four, and proud product of Old Town.

One of 10 kids born and raised by a blue-collar dad and stay-at-home mom (who is 91 today), he delivered the  News-American  and worked in a  local  supermarket as a teenager. He did not attend college, but  instead went to  work  first for the DPW at the Sisson Street dump—“the smell gets to  you”—and then got jobs  in the cafeteria and mailroom at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.  Eventually, he moved over to radiology, first as a file clerk, later advancing to an administrative post where he oversaw the department’s transition from film to digital imaging.  Not that he was always happy as an East Baltimore employee with the way he was treated by Hopkins’  higher-ups.

His  ascendance to the city’s highest office has been anything but  jackrabbit fast. Or likely.  

The similarities between  Young and  Clarence “Du” Burns,  the last mayor to come out of East  Baltimore, are  remarkable. Like  Young , the self-made “Du”  did not attend college, was  known  by his one-syllable nickname, and rose to office from the City Council president’s chair when William Donald Schaefer won the governor’s race. Constituent service was more than a matter of pride to  Burns;  like  Young,  it was in his  lifeblood. Both  loved the City Council, its craziness, daily battles, and real human contact, without the security detail.  Both  started out slowly as  interim mayor and were initially  homesick for their old job. 

Young, however, seems to have gotten his feet underneath him  quicker  than Burns, and has appeared more intent on utilizing the full potential of the city’s  powerful mayoral system. It’s not a coincidence that Young’s first involvement in city politics was handing out flyers for Burns to earn a few bucks. He knew  him  from Dunbar High School, where he went and where  Burns worked as a locker room attendant.

“Du talked to us about getting things done for people,”  Young says, explaining his inspiration for getting into politics more formally in the late 1980s, when he pulled night and weekend duty on the staff of then-City Council president Clarke. “You  could see not all politicians did that, but  that’s  what I wanted to do.”  Young then ran for a state committee position, which he eventually won.

At  42, he was tapped by the establishment Democratic powers-that-be—the start of so many political careers in Baltimore—to fill a City Council seat vacated by Anthony Ambridge in the spring of 1996. He won the seat in his  own right that fall, before much of  the  current City Council had  finished high school. 

Young hasn’t lost an election since. He has spent decades now showing up at neighborhood association meetings, writing down phone numbers, and keeping his word with constituents. (The  notable exception, of course, is  that he  said he  would not seek election for the mayor’s office after assuming the job on an interim basis.) Even as mayor,  Young is still  plugged in—perhaps too plugged in—to the day-to-day concerns of average Baltimoreans. Among everything else  going on in the city, he remains  a walking 3-1-1 call center. (Over the course of an hour-and-a-half interview, he showed off  a recent photo of an illegal trash dump texted by a voter, a crime tip from a concerned citizen, and a phone call from  a  contractor looking for temporary workers.) 

“He  is basically a  moderate,  politically,”  says  Clarke,  referring to  Young’s general policy  leanings, “but when it comes to people in  pain,  he  is a left-wing progressive.”  

He still has his  Dunbar High School I.D. and has  been the  de facto  Mayor of East Baltimore for years. 

“I paid  Jack  $2,000 a year as a staffer while his ‘real job’ was still as a clerk at Johns Hopkins, and he worked tirelessly for me on going to meetings and doing constituent service,” says Clarke, who has endorsed  Young.  “He’d pass on issues to our office and he followed up, making sure they were being taken care of,”  she  recalls with a chuckle. “If not, he wanted to  know  why.” 

In the end, his focus inevitably comes back to two things: “Crime and grime.”

When  Martin O’Malley left Baltimore for the  Governor’s Mansion in 2007, his departure set in motion a game of musical chairs at City Hall that shows no end in sight. To recap: then-City Council president Sheila Dixon assumed O’Malley’s job as mayor. Dixon then backed Stephanie Rawlings-Blake for City Council president. (For what it’s worth, Dixon  admits  Young had the backing among fellow members to become council president at the time, but she asked him to step aside so she could fulfill a promise made to Rawlings-Blake’s late father, Howard “Pete” Rawlings, the respected former  chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee in the House of Delegates.) 

Three short years  later,  when Dixon resigned after pleading guilty to stealing gift cards intended for impoverished families, Rawlings-Blake moved up the ladder and became mayor.  But instead of supporting  Young  to replace her as City Council president, she put  forward  her own candidate to take her position.  This time,  knowing he had the backing of the majority of council members, he played his hand.  Young says his relationship with Rawlings-Blake,  who chose not to run for reelection in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death and the subsequent  uprising, was never the same. He’d  made room for her  to skip the line, but didn’t return the favor. “I felt betrayed,” Young says. “I did. I’d been a team player.” 

Pugh, as if anyone needs a reminder,  resigned last May.  She  was recently sentenced to three years over fraud and tax evasion charges related to her  Healthy Holly children’s book  scandal,  and  here we are.  For those counting, that’s four mayors in the past 10 years with a good chance of a fifth new mayor winning the primary election later this month.  We all know Sheila Dixon happens to be running again as well.

For months after Pugh’s resignation,  Young maintained that he was only a placeholder and would not run for a  full  term. He sounded sincere, but it was a shaky promise all the same. Meanwhile, the musical chairs has continued.  Young did everything he could to hand the City Council president’s keys to ally Sharon Green Middleton. But he lost a  hard-fought backroom battle to  35-year-old Brandon Scott, who pulled the  young City Council  his way.

Naturally, Scott  used his new platform to  launch  his own bid for  mayor. It’s a crowded field of, get ready, 24 in the Democratic  primary, with at least a half-dozen viable candidates and several others capable of grabbing votes.  Political appointments to vacant seats may still be handled the old-fashioned way—with a combination of patronage and arm-twisting—but gone are the days when  Young was coming up and the local Democratic clubs decided who could run for office and  who needed to wait their turn. 

Initially, this year’s Democratic primary  looked like it would shape up along similar lines to  the 1987  race when Burns faced a  young, rising star named Kurt  Schmoke.  Young, it was thought early on, would need  all of his nearly $1-million war chest to stave off a challenge from Scott. “There was the perception that  Du  was part of the older establishment and  Schmoke  would make  the  public schools  his priority, which Schaefer had largely ignored,” says  Crenson, the retired Hopkins professor and author of  Baltimore: A Political History. “In many ways, there is the same perception of Jack, now, being part of the older establishment.”

For  Young,  that  means it’s a challenge  to run on experience given the record  of corruption and dysfunction in City Hall, including now the comptroller’s office, the police department,  DPW, DOT,  and  Office  of Information and Technology—all  beset by mismanagement, scandal, and leadership turnover in recent years. 

But then the race splintered in to  pieces. 

In an early March Sun/UB/WYPR poll, four candidates—former Mayor Dixon (16 percent), Scott (10 percent) former state Deputy Attorney General Thiru Vignarajah (10 percent), and former police spokesman T.J. Smith (9 percent) were all grouped close to the five-point margin of error. Well-funded new candidate Mary Miller, a former T. Rowe Price executive and Obama administration treasury official, came in fifth (7 percent), followed by Young (6 percent), and state Sen. Mary Washington (5 percent). Washington, a progressive leader in the General Assembly, has since dropped out of the race, saying she intended to devote her efforts to serving her constituents during the coronavirus pandemic.

Each candidate essentially has  a  narrow  lane.  Vignarajah, the former prosecutor, promises to “stop the bloodshed” in his television ads.  Scott promotes a more holistic agenda, including looking at all city expenditures through  a racial equity lens. Dixon admits to making “a mistake” and says  the city was safer and moving forward under her tenure.  Smith,  personable  and polished on camera,  says he understands how to reform the police department.  

In addition,  a well-funded new candidate,  Mary Miller, a former T. Rowe Price executive and Obama  administration  treasury official, has thrown her hat in the ring.  

Pugh won the  Democratic primary in  2016,  and,  for all intents and purposes, the  mayorship,  with just 36 percent of the vote.  This month, there  is a good  chance that  the  future mayor may win office with less than 25 percent. Whoever  does get voted in, victory will come with more skepticism than mandate. 

For his part,  Young admits  that  he ran himself ragged after Pugh  first took sick leave and then resigned. (Loyal to the end, he still calls her  a  friend.)  He overcompensated, he says, trying to keep up the appearance that the city’s basic functioning, such as it is, wouldn’t come to a halt.  That said,  Young possesses unique and instinctive, if  underrated, political skills. Close observers of City Hall  dynamics  marvel at his ability to reward allies and punish foes. (Recall,  for example,  how  he  removed former City  Council woman  Rikki Spector  from most of her committee assignments after she voted against two of his bills.)

His aforementioned gaffes—he linked climate change to volcanic eruptions, or vice versa, it wasn’t exactly clear, at a   mayoral forum—also tend to overshadow genuine accomplishments.  (More recently, he urged residents to stop shooting each other because the city is going to need all its hospital beds to deal with the corona virus). He  established the city’s Children and  Youth Fund  and opened local  recreation  centers on Saturdays for the first time since the 1970s. He also helped break the logjam of legislation and lawsuits around  Pimlico  and the Preakness Stakes, which now look like they will remain in town. 

Young also  bristles at the contention by some that he doesn’t possess the idea s to move the city forward. That said, in the end, his focus inevitably comes back to two things. 

“Crime and grime,” he says. 

Whether voters, even those who  know  him well, give him four years  in charge to tackle those things is an open question.  With primary date now pushed back to June 2, the spread of Covid-19 virus does provide Young, who has requested the National Guard deploy in the city to provide humanitarian assistance in partnership with local agencies, an opportunity to demonstrate crisis management and leadership ability.

On a recent late afternoon,  the dozen-plus folks waiting outside the  Henderson-Hopkins  elementary  school  for a bus to Annapolis on Baltimore Day—a chance for voters to see their delegation in action—each  said they knew  Young. Almost all had met him more than once  over the years. To a person, they expressed their appreciation for Young  stepping up in wake of Pugh’s resignation. None, however, were  committed to voting for him.  Most said they were undecided. 

“It’s just time for someone  younger,” says  one senior woman, a member of the Berea community association. 

Her friend, also a member of the Berea association, thought  Young hadn’t had enough of  an  opportunity to make an impact yet as mayor. “I’m not saying I’m going to vote for him, though,” she adds. 

If Baltimoreans felt  the city was humming along , Young’s chances of winning a full term would  be better. 

A  Democratic insider, who admires  Young, put it this way: “If  you  need someone to put their finger in a dike,  Jack’s  your guy,” he says. “I’m just afraid  Jack’s going to run out of fingers.” 

Since 2016, you’ve been leading the Baltimore Pumphouse project, which will transform a blighted brownfield site in Broadway East into a center for commercial and community activity by 2021. How will this project help to elevate the neighborhood?
What often happens when low-income black and brown neighborhoods are redeveloped is that the affordable housing and services get front-loaded, and millions of dollars are spent before a single business or retail establishment enters the neighborhood. At the end of the day, the programs and services on their own are not enough to provide the neighborhood with long-term economic viability. Without consumer spending, we end up with a neighborhood that’s fossilized in its poverty. So, we realized that in order to change the game, it can’t be about the project, it has to be about changing the market. By establishing a group of viable businesses here, we’re creating new value in the neighborhood without displacing any residents.

What are some of the challenges that your team has faced thus far?
This is not for the faint of heart; it’s a really hard project. When working in low-income black and brown communities, the total cost of development far outstrips the as-appraised value of the property. Meaning that I need so much more money to get the work done than anyone will say the property is worth. It requires a ton of grant funding and subsidies to solve that gap before anything can move forward, and traditional lending opportunities are not really an option.

Neighborhood residents are co-equal planners in the Baltimore Pumphouse. How does this approach differ from other neighborhood development projects?
The residents are truly our bosses. They are co-equal partners at the planning table, and they provide the push, pull, and voice that the project needs to get done and take off. The idea is not to ask residents for feedback on an idea, but to actually work together to create every idea. Sometimes developers will bake their ideas and then get feedback from the residents after its able to move forward. That’s not our philosophy, we see that as a much more paternalistic way to engage communities, and we value neighborhood agency above everything.

How do you hope this project acts as a model for future neighborhood development plans?
Here, we have traditional business and retail establishments coming back for the first time in 50 years, and we haven’t cleared a single community. In order for low-income communities to be successful, the business and retail establishments have to come in at a much earlier stage with the legacy families still in place. That’s what we’re trying to prove. So I hope developers continue to use the concept of solving the market challenges as opposed to just the project. There’s a different level of collaboration, creativity, and boldness that can be achieved when we’re think- ing about solving those larger market challenges instead of individual projects.

What has kept you motivated throughout this multi-year project?
When I bring my daughter to the site, where there are still vacant houses around, she is aghast. She looks out of the car window and goes, “Mama, that building is broken!” I don’t ever want her level of urgency to beat mine. I don’t ever want to get comfortable with any vacant house or building. We’re going to make it so that no three-year-old has to walk or drive past any vacant building, period.

For Karen Stokes, CEO of Strong City Baltimore—a 50-year-old nonprofit that prides itself on fostering civic engagement, job creation, and strengthening neighborhoods—there is one word that comes to mind when detailing the once-decrepit state of the organization’s new home at the A. Hoen & Co. Lithograph Building in East Baltimore. She describes its former condition as a huge “blight” on the neighborhood.

“There were literally trees growing on it and it was boarded up,” Stokes says of the local Collington Square landmark. “There are generations of mice that lived in the building.”

The A. Hoen & Co. Lithograph Building is more than 150 years old. It was most notably the home of the A. Hoen & Co. lithography business from 1902 to 1981. During its history, the innovative Baltimore company produced everything from National Geographic maps and food labels to Dr. Seuss books and Topps baseball cards.

“With all the places my father spent time, I feel his spirit most in that building,” says Tom Hoen, whose late father was at the helm of A. Hoen & Co. until it declared bankruptcy in 1981. “He recognized the value it had to Baltimore and to that community.”

The property, which surrounds an entire block on East Biddle Street, has been left dormant since the business shuttered nearly 40 years ago. Talk of its reconstruction dates back to 2016, when a 2018 target open date had been set, and the vision then has since evolved into what stands now.

However, with Strong City officially moved in as of this month, and more tenants on the way, the Hoen building is once again on its way to becoming a community anchor. This time around, the plan is for many different organizations to occupy the space and work together to create lasting change.

“This [project] has such potential,” Stokes says. “Strong City knows how to do neighborhood organizing. We are a place-based organization, so where we are physically located matters to us. We needed to show we had skin in the game in the neighborhood and physically be in a place where our mere presence could make a difference.”

The process to bring the building back to life involved nearly $30 million of private and public funding that included local, state, and federal capital and grants. For Strong City, the timing couldn’t have been better. When the organization—known as the Greater Homewood Community Corporation before 2015—recently turned 50, its staff began contemplating a move away from their longtime Charles Village headquarters. In its new home, Strong City will have a much larger space and multiple classrooms for its Adult Learning Center, which provides programs including GED studies, literacy training, and citizenship classes.

Stokes says the building won’t be completely full until the summer, when Associated Builders and Contractors, which will offer job training classes on site, City Life Community Builders, and Cross Street Partners, which oversaw the redevelopment of the building, take occupancy. Together, the organizations will form what will be known as the Center for Neighborhood Innovation (CNI), binding community leaders from all fields to solve problems in distressed neighborhoods.

“We want to find ways to create great new possibilities for neighborhood revitalization,” Stokes says. “Baltimore ought to be the best learning lab in the country for this.”

Strong City played a role in the renewal and commercial growth of Remington. In considering its move from the area, the organization saw an opportunity to take what it did in the now-bustling neighborhood—and what it does elsewhere in Baltimore—and apply it somewhere new.

That means educating the community about its efforts, eliminating housing vacancies, and collaborating with local businesses to help stimulate job growth. Stokes is encouraged by the recent rehabilitation of houses in the area in response to Collington Square activity, but cautions that it will take at least five years to see meaningful change.

“The first benchmark for us is doing a baseline analysis of where the vacants are—who owns what and how we can create a pathway for people to potentially buy and support small developers,” Stokes says. “We want to let people know that they can be a part of the rejuvenation of this neighborhood.”

Looking ahead, Stokes is excited to welcome all of the incoming tenants. There are also plans for a courtyard outside of the entrance, as well as a mini-museum in the lobby featuring lithographs and stone from the building’s past. It will be an homage to what the site once was, and point to what it can become.

“I’m excited by the idea that the physical plant that our family had been involved in for 150 years is being returned to a use that will provide value not only to the city, but to the community around it,” Hoen says. “It makes me smile to think that my father somehow feels that too. As a family, our only disappointment is that he isn’t around to see it.”

Visual Art

Shuttered Too: Steel Falls Beyond Baltimore

J.M. Giordano’s images chronicling the fall of the steel industry in Baltimore are currently on view at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, but take a trip around the harbor to Fells Point to the newly refocused Luann Carra Gallery and you’ll find this companion show highlighting the resilience of the communities steel built across Ohio and West Virginia. These stark black-and-white images both haunt and hearten. Through Oct. 10. Luann Carra Gallery, 1918 Fleet St.

Literature

Grand Reopening of the Central Library

Celebrate the return of the Central Library with a full day of music, art, lectures, games, food, and dancing along Cathedral Street and in the newly renovated library’s updated digs. Highlights include a conversation with Chris Wilson, Kondwani Fidel, and D. Watkins in Wheeler Auditorium and performances by the Black Cherry Puppet Theater in the Weinberg Children’s Library. Sept. 14. Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St.

Unscripted: A Celebratory Evening with Patti Smith

Punk icon Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids earned accolades for its delve into the decades-long relationship between Smith and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Now, Smith returns to her own past to recall the dreams and realities of a transformative year spent wandering the country. Join Smith at Goucher College for what’s sure to be an unforgettable evening of stories, song, and sage wisdom. 7-8:30 p.m. Sept. 25. Goucher College, Kraushaar Auditorium, 1021 Dulaney Valley Rd.

Music

Maryland Piano Masters: Daryl Davis & Lafayette Gilchrist

One of these two local legends on the bill would be enough, but the two together are a can’t-miss event. Join boogie-woogie pianist Daryl Davis and self-taught jazz-funk artist Lafayette Gilchrist for a night of dueling keys and styles from both past and present. 8 p.m. Sept. 27. Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

FIYAH Power Tour

Adbu Ali is a creative force to be reckoned with, and their latest album, Fiyahh!!, is chock-full of both poignance and power. Experience one of their singular live performances this month at the Ottobar as Ali celebrates this genre-blending release on home turf with guest Grace Ives. 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. Sept. 27. Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St.

Theatre

BIG Monsters: An Improv Puppet Extravaganza

Bring your nostalgia for the days of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, but leave the kids at home for this improvised puppet show for adults put on by the folks at Baltimore Improv Group. Expect musical numbers, felted faces, and lots of laughs at this BIG Lab experiment. 7:30-8:30 p.m. Sept. 25. The BIG Theater, 1727 N. Charles St.

Film

InFusion East Baltimore Film Festival: Are We Loud Enough?

Art, film, and conversation will come together to highlight East Baltimore voices at this two-day festival. View works by dozens of local artists at the opening night East Baltimore: Her Artists and Her People exhibition, or stop by Saturday for a full day of selected short films, documentaries, and performances. Sept. 20-21. MICA PLACE, 814 N. Collington Ave.

Founded in 1911, Porcelain Enamel Manufacturing—later known as Pemco International—made porcelain and enamel coating for kitchen tiles and household appliances for nearly a century in Baltimore before shuttering its massive Eastern Avenue plant in 2006. They also produced Howard Johnson hotel’s distinctive orange roofing tiles. Since closing, however, the vacant Greektown industrial site has been beset by vandalism, fire, and growing environmental concerns.

That’s about to change.

Yard 56, a 20-acre, mixed-use project at the former Pemco site, is expected to open its first phase—a retail center including an upscale Streets Market & Café grocery store and LA Fitness facility, among other shops and restaurants—by 2020. Plans for Phase II include a variety of office spaces, residential units, more retail stores, and a hotel. It’s exactly the type of development many residents of Bayview and Greektown have been clamoring for since the manufacturing giant moved its operations south, says Bayview community leader Mike Ball.

“This is going to completely change the landscape on this side of town,” Ball says. “We want to see a transformation happen in this neighborhood.”

Construction remains underway at the sprawling site, situated directly across from Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, but developers expect most retailers will be up and running between the end of this year and early 2020.

Ball grew up in Bayview and has lived in the neighborhood for most of his life. He’s seen the impact that developments like Canton Crossing and McHenry Row have had in their respective areas, and believes that Yard 56 can produce similar results, benefitting current residents while attracting newcomers to the community.

Ball adds he believes that plans for a new craft beer bar, The Brass Tap, will fill what he feels is a much-needed tavern space in community. Other announced tenants include Panda Express, Chipotle, Starbucks, and Nektar Juice Bar. As of right now, no locally owned tenants have been announced, but developers expect more announcements in the coming months.

“This isn’t just like we’re building a strip center with a grocery store,” says P. David Bramble of MCB Real Estate, which took the development lead on the project and worked with Bayview and Greektown community leaders, as well as citizens to tailor it to their interests. “This is a massive investment that is going to attract people from all over the city and outside the city.”

Yard 56 comes a few years after community leaders and activists blocked an effort by other developers to bring a Walmart to the Pemco location. “A Walmart would’ve swallowed up nearby small businesses and no one wanted that,” says Jason Filippou, a Bayview resident and Southeast Community Development Corporation board member. “People wanted investment. It wasn’t a NIMBY thing. But no one wants to lose the neighborhood’s identity. This will add density. It’s why people live in cities—it’s the convenience of being close to stores, shops, restaurants, and everything else.”

Bramble says he’s excited to see how the development evolves and fits into neighbors’ daily routines.

“By pushing uses together you create synergy, and start to create a sense of place,” Bramble says. “You’re not just going to a shopping center to buy some groceries and pick up your dry cleaning. Now you’re going to a place you can enjoy a restaurant or meet a friend, maybe go to a meeting and walk across the street and have a drink. You’re going someplace.”

It goes without saying, too, Yard 56 will be a marked improvement from what it is replacing—the dilapidated former manufacturing plant that Bramble called a “blight” on the community. The environmental remediation alone is estimated to cost $15 million.

If all goes as planned, the development will not just serve local residents, but the thousands of employees at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, providing a potential place to gather, as well possibly housing opportunities in the apartment units to come.

“I think you have to look at Baltimore as a city of neighborhoods, but we also have to be thinking one level above that,” Bramble says. “We’re making sure that you are really creating a place that people will want to come back to and spend some time. It will mean a lot to the city of Baltimore.”

What got you interested in writing? Were you a writer growing up?
Reading got me into it. I wasn’t a writer. I never thought about it, really. It didn’t really come across my radar. Mainly because the books I was given as a child didn’t really pique my interest or speak of my experience. When we’re little kids, everybody love Curious George and the Cat in the Hat. But when you get to middle school and they’re talking about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and the only black person in the book is a slave that’s following around these kids, it’s almost disrespectful—especially when you’re coming from a place where you’re seeing all types of black people in power. It might be street power, but it’s still power. It’s just something that you can’t really connect with. So me and a lot of my friends didn’t really take to reading. And we ended up going down the wrong path for the most part, because if you don’t read, you don’t learn how to think critically; if you don’t learn how to think critically, you make bad decisions; if you make bad decisions, you can easily end up on the wrong side of a gun.

The book that really did it for me was The Coldest Winter Ever, by Sister Souljah. I tore it apart. And then I started reading books like Clockers, by Richard Price, and then I found out that different writers I was reading were inspired by some of the Beat poets, so I started reading like, On the Road and Naked Lunch. And then I found out they were inspired by Dostoevsky, so—I just kept going and going and going. In the process, I started reading articles and I felt like a lot of articles being written by local newspapers wasn’t really giving justice to the people where I come from. I’d be reading quotes and be like, “Nah, we don’t talk like this.” I’d read how they were characterizing a black person and be like, “Nah, we don’t look like this. Y’all gotta do better. Y’all showing your biases through your writing, and if somebody digs up Baltimore 300 years from now and the only stories are some of these articles, then we won’t be portrayed the right way.” So I wanted to be a person to add to that.

Did anything trigger you to write this book?
Yeah, people kept calling me “the voice of the black people.” I did some pundit work, so I see other pundits jumping at the opportunity, poking their chest out, like, “Yes, actually, I am the voice of the black people.” And it’s like, “You’re really not. I see y’all at functions, and y’all don’t even really be around nobody black. I know people who reached out to y’all for help and y’all don’t even email them back.” So it’s like, how are you the voice of these people if you’re not even talking to them? It’s not fair.

And you make the point in your book that you’re only one voice that’s helping to round out the picture of black culture.
Yeah, and while elevating other voices. I’m not about monopolizing the platform and acting like I’m the only person who can do something when there are women who know these things better than me, there’s younger people who know these things better than me, there’s people out here who have different experiences to add to this whole collection of stories. All of us can help all of us win. There’s enough space for all of us.

Who are the authors we should be reading?
I think Kondwani Fidel, for sure. I think people should be reading Sheri Booker, Jason Reynolds, Lisa Jesse Peterson, Tony Lewis [Jr.]. They’re all different. Sheri’s a great poet and memoirist and journalist. She’s from East Baltimore. Jason Reynolds writes YA novels that should be respected across the board. They’re really, really good. He’s killin’ it. Mitchell Jackson is another one. He writes fiction, and his new book is nonfiction. These are people who love the craft. They write, and they’re good.

As a kid growing up in East Baltimore, did you have no positive role models at all?
Yeah, there were some—coaches, some people that owned barbershops and liquor stores, and some other people from the neighborhood. They had some things to offer young kids like me. But the art world—I didn’t really have that, even as an adult. I try my best to be accessible to a lot of younger writers in the city, because a lot of writers who have had some success didn’t open that door up to me, so I try to make that my job. I gotta be that person that I didn’t have. I owe up. If I don’t help and connect, then I’m not what I say I’m about, and where I’m from, that’s the worst thing you can be—a person who pretends to be one thing and is not that.

This poor black thing is like a bank debt—politicians and artists and affluent people can withdraw from it and they never gotta make a deposit into it. They can pull from it all the time. When it’s time to run for office: “I’m here for the people of Penn North.” That’s been a favorite since Freddie Gray died—the “people of Penn North.” But when it comes time for you to invest in the people, it’s like, “I’ll see you later.”

Do you think East Baltimore is more self-contained than West Baltimore?
They both have their problems. Serious problems. But West Baltimore just got a whole lot of national attention, so it’s kind of different. Like, I’ve literally interviewed with people, and they jump and just put “West Baltimore native.” [Laughs.] Not on purpose but just assuming, because West Baltimore has gotten all that attention for what happened to Freddie. A lot of people from East Baltimore have really good relationships with people in West Baltimore, and I think those relationships aren’t always talked about or promoted. The big thing is public transportation. To get from East Baltimore to West Baltimore could take a month. It’s one of the worst public transportation systems in the country.

In We Speak for Ourselves, you talk about getting your books out to high schoolers in the city and making visits. What do you do while you’re there?
I’ve been making regular visits to Baltimore City Public Schools for four years. We’ve donated thousands of books—to Baltimore and D.C. and to jails. My thing is, create the content that high schoolers can relate to and see themselves in. Make the books accessible, and make the visit, and allow them to keep the books. They need books at home. The more words you know, the better you do at life. I read a study that said kids who grow up with books in their homes tend to do better, even if no one reads them.

From Barnes and Noble, Red Emma’s, and Baltimore City Public School teachers, the one thing they always have in common is they say they gotta put my books up ‘cause people steal them. I don’t want people stealing, but the fact that they like it so much that they willing to risk their freedom for it, it says something. People should be able to have them. I like making money just like anyone else, but part of what I do is mission based. Let’s get the books in the hands of the kids.

Do you still feel like there’s a divide between D. Watk and D. Watkins, like you live somewhere between two worlds?
I think it’s gonna be better for the people that’s like, teenagers and early 20s. I don’t think it’s really gonna change for me. I don’t know if it’s an elite thing, but at certain places, I know what it’s like to be treated like a regular guy, and then I know how quick that regular turns off if they find out about my work. When people know about my work, they change instantly.

What was it like being at your reading at the Trump town in Florida?
Even experiences like that are transformative for me, because if I just watch the news, I would think these people are gonna be ready to square up as soon as I see them. But when I see them and talk to them, it’s like, “Damn, this dude’s a racist and he don’t even know it.” When I told him some things and tell some jokes, a lot of his perspectives will instantly change—because they’re not really talking to black people like that, they’re not being around black people like that. We have all these ideas of people that we’ve never had contact with, and social relations just suffer.

Was it important for you to include a call to action at the end of your book?
Yeah, because every time I go somewhere on these tours, somebody askin’ me what to do. I’m like, “Yo, you thinking too much.” The person with the biggest platform who’s giving speeches in front of a thousand people—you don’t gotta aim to be that person. You can just be a person that’s mentoring or helping one or two people, and you doing great work, and that’s enough. Sometimes you’re not gonna reach thousands of people. I’m fortunate to reach thousands of people, but at the same time, the most valuable work to me has been the stuff that I’ve been able to do for people from my block and local artists. That’s been my most powerful contribution to me.

If they need to borrow a coupla dollars, I can pull up and give it to them. If they need work or a résumé, I can help with that. If they need to understand how to get into college, I know some of these people at the admission office—I can walk them to these people. That’s what people need. People don’t need you to try to tell their stories for them. People don’t need you to walk around trying to understand their life. People need you to pull up on them and try to help the best way you can. If we all did that, everybody would be helping everybody, and that shit stretches far beyond color. Let’s help cure this shit. That’s the play. That’s the move.

D. Watkins will give a reading to launch his new book at 7 p.m. April 25 at Union Baptist Church on Druid Hill Avenue.

Chef Gregory Brown is a big believer in setting goals. Though he started his career in the telecommunications sector, his overall ambition was to open his own vegan restaurant.

“I didn’t want to be there,” he says. “So I started writing the things that I wanted to do in a vision book. Since I was vegan, I thought, ‘Why not open a vegan restaurant?’”

After serving his dairy-free dishes at big-name events like Artscape and AFRAM, Brown and his wife Naijha Wright-Brown—whom he met at his previous Verizon Wireless job—finally made that dream a reality when they opened vegan soul food spot The Land of Kush on Eutaw Street near the University of Maryland Midtown campus in 2011. Now, Brown is getting ready to cross yet another one of his long-term objectives off of his list.

“The goal has always been to expand,” he says. “It’s something that we’ve wanted to do from the beginning.”

Come fall, the co-owners will unveil a second Land of Kush location at the corner of Madison and Chester streets near the Johns Hopkins Medical campus in East Baltimore. The larger digs will provide the team with more breathing room to serve the spot’s signature vegan fare, including favorites like faux chicken salad, lentil burgers, and meatless crab cakes made with artichoke hearts.

“I like that our approach is a soft one,” Wright-Brown says. “We’re not bullies about promoting veganism. Our whole vegan soul food concept is strong—we have collard greens, mac and cheese, and other comfort dishes on the menu so people are drawn to try it. But you don’t have to worry about us beating you over the head saying, ‘You have to go vegan.’”

The inviting atmosphere, in addition to the food, has caused the restaurant to outgrow its 23-seat flagship location. As they were looking to expand, the owners were introduced to the new East Baltimore space by Harbor Bank CEO Joseph Haskins Jr. 

After dining at the restaurant, Haskins pitched the couple the idea of helping him transform the property—a former Chinese food carryout connected to a vacant rowhome—into a restaurant.

Brown estimates that the new eatery will be around 600 square feet larger than the original location, as well as offer nearly 75 seats. The duo is looking forward to developing and designing the space from the ground up—something that wasn’t necessary for the first property, which came equipped with refrigeration, light fixtures, and furniture.

Specifically, they’d like the interior to have an eclectic vibe that incorporates earthy tones and Afro-futuristic pieces by local artists.

“If I had magic hands, I would really create our current space how I see it, and it would look completely different,” Brown says. “Now we get the opportunity to really do that with the second location. We can create what we want it to look like.”

Brown is also excited to get creative in the kitchen. He hopes to experiment with more international dishes inspired by his wife’s Spanish heritage. 

“We’ll be able to do a lot more,” he says. “We’re looking to add some more innovative things to the menu that can give the community something new to dig into.”

The new restaurant is expected to open its doors in September. Aside from serving their meatless fare, the owners say that they are also looking to build relationships within the East Baltimore community—whether it’s through their all-ages cooking tutorials, job-training assistance, or vegan outreach programs.

“It’s not just a business for us,” Brown says. “We also want to be socially involved in the city. We all know the things that the city is going through, and we want to help to be the facilitators of its change.”

The cluster of dilapidated masonry buildings that sits swallowed in untamed vines on the corner of East Oliver and North Wolfe Streets will soon become a destination for economic opportunity in East Baltimore.

Though it’s been nearly five years since plans were announced to transform the old Eastern Pumping Station site into Baltimore Food Hub, a ground-breaking ceremony held earlier today officially kick started the $23.5 million redevelopment. The project will eventually yield a 3.5-acre campus with job-training facilities, communal incubator space, and an excess of land to be dedicated to urban farming.

Members of American Communities Trust (ACT)—the national development partner overseeing the redesign alongside local workforce nonprofit Humanim—were joined by upwards of 75 local community leaders and Broadway East residents to celebrate the milestone, as trains whizzed by on the adjacent Amtrak line overhead.

Among those in attendance were City Council President Bernard C. Young, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Jay Williams, ACT board president Bill Struever, Maryland State Delegate Maggie McIntosh, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who has made food justice a top priority throughout her administration.

“The food hub is a perfect example of what happens when purpose meets planning,” Rawlings-Blake said. “This site has been considered the front door to Baltimore that you see when you’re travelling by Amtrak. This is a critical component to making that entryway vibrant and vital, and it’s a true reflection of the future of our city.”

The socially conscious campus, which is expected to debut its first phase as early as summer 2017, will provide space for budding food businesses to thrive with amenities like a licensed commercial kitchen, tools for production and distribution, flexible office space for food companies and nonprofits, headquarters for food trucks, and its own teaching garden to be used to educate youth about urban agriculture—a model based off of chef Alice Water’s acclaimed Edible Schoolyard project.

As a part of the larger effort to eliminate the city’s food deserts, the hub will also be equipped with its own all-season food stand and garden center, which will be easily accessible to the public.

“This is a project that will empower the individuals within this community without displacing them,” Williams said. “It will make sure that the young men and women and senior citizens that inhabit this neighborhood don’t have to travel miles on the bus line or try to find a ride to get healthy, accessible food.”

The 15,000-square-foot kitchen incubator on site has been fully leased by City Seeds, Humanim’s culinary arm that specializes in job training for small food startups. Humanim itself will operate Baltimore Food Hub’s signature teaching kitchen, which will offer a number of community education and workforce development programs for city residents.

The groundbreaking comes at a significant period of regrowth for East Baltimore, which has recently introduced other socially minded projects including communal incubator space Open Works and the redevelopment of the historic Hoen & Co. Lithograph building in Collington Square.

“It’s not an accident, they’re all connected,” McIntosh said. “We need to continue the process of redeveloping these blighted areas to really grow the new economy.”

Also in attendance at the press conference was Reverend Donté L. Hickman Sr., who is certainly familiar with the concept of revitalization after his church-sponsored senior center, which has since been rebuilt, was burned down during the Baltimore Uprising.

“In the early 2000s, there was an article written that said that this was a neighborhood ‘dubbed without hope,’” Hickman said. “I always took issue with that particular article, because so many people who lived, and still live, here never lost their hope that this community could experience revitalization. I always considered it to be a neighborhood without help.”