As part of a massive infrastructure project between Baltimore City and the B&O Railroad, the “tiny town of industrial workers” known as Masonville, The Sun reported in April 1953, “has fallen before the wrecker’s bar.” “Its two tree lined streets—Matson and Mavin—no longer resound to the cries of children playing in safety just off the heavily traveled Chesapeake and Frankfurst avenues,” the article continued, detailing Masonville’s doomed fate.

To expand operations at its ore and coal piers in Curtis Bay, B&O had bought out Masonville property owners, eventually deeding the land to the city for road and rail expansion. Later, the southern portion of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel I-895 highway would be built there.

Myril Johnson, now 83, was 10 when his parents sold their wood-framed Masonville rowhouse and moved to nearby Brooklyn. After the close-knit town of 200 residents all had been forced to relocate—many were related by blood or marriage—he and his cousins often rode their bikes back to their old neighborhood.

On one of his last trips, after his Matson Street home had been leveled, he chucked a brick at the street sign, basically all that still stood on the block, knocking it down and toting it home (see above photo.)

Founded in the 1890s, Masonville was famous for its swimmable cove—although as manufacturing sprouted, the water was said to turn blond hair green—its ever capable Masonville Athletic Club baseball nines, and its Five Sisters Tavern, popular among shipyard workers and merchant marine sailors. Today, the Masonville Cove environmental center sits on the reclaimed waterfront.

“Those aren’t things I remember, though,” says Johnson, sitting at his Linthicum kitchen table and turning the pages of a family scrapbook, which includes a photo of his 20-year-old Masonville uncle, who was killed at Iwo Jima. “People were hardworking and poor. They’d made it through the Depression. They looked after each other. If someone had a problem, an illness or whatever, other people would help them, gravitate toward them.”

One of a handful of surviving Masonville natives, Johnson hesitantly recalls a story about his now-deceased older brother, who had suffered from polio as a child. As a teenager, his brother and his friends would climb onto slow-moving train cars in the winter and push coal off the side until the railway police spotted them. At night, they’d return, filling up sacks to carry back so families could heat their homes.

“Was it stealing? Yes,” Johnson says, choking up for a moment, acknowledging teenage boys are known to do worse things on occasion. “There’d be 70, 80, 90, 100 cars full of coal going overseas, and they just wanted to give some to people in the neighborhood to stay warm.

Can I make a suggestion?” Johnson adds, humbly. “I think this story should be titled, ‘Gone, but not forgotten.’”

From his desk inside Port Covington’s City Garage, ecologist Brett Berkley often feels the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River luring him and his co-workers out for a lunchtime walk. But while his GreenVest team works daily in support of this South Baltimore shoreline, their offices within a stone’s throw of its changing tides, that doesn’t always translate to as much facetime with the water as they’d like.

Even on a cold winter day in this otherwise visibly polluted, post-industrial landscape—interstate ramps, light and heavy rail lines, BRESCO’s towering waste incinerator, the muted drum of traffic rumbling across the Hanover Street Bridge—a brief escape outside can be quite restorative.

Despite its ailing state, the Middle Branch shoreline presents an alluring view into the natural landscape amidst the pulse of a busy city: squawks of gulls, gentle laps of waves, glimpses of ducks floating by or nesting osprey, an occasional blue heron gingerly plodding the surrounding grasses and sands as it fishes shallow waters.

“It’s very cathartic,” says Berkley, an ecologist and senior vice president for GreenVest, a Bowie-headquartered consulting company specializing in ecological resilience, restoration, and planning. “And that’s the whole point of what we’re trying to achieve here.”

With a full supply of reusable, dredged up muck from the Port of Baltimore, Berkley and a team of engineers, scientists, and other technical experts and contractors will spend the next few years restoring dozens of acres of depleted shoreline along this long neglected waterfront.

The city, partnering with the nonprofit Parks & People Foundation and the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership (SBGP), the casino revenue-funded economic development authority for this area, has tapped this technical team to help ignite a climate-resilience and biodiversity renaissance, with ripple effects for surrounding communities, too.

Their collective Middle Branch Resiliency Initiative (MBRI) looks to eventually add more than 50 acres of new wetlands, boosting the waterfront’s ability to mitigate increasingly frequent flooding and creating transformative new habitat for wildlife. And it will occur just offshore from some of the city’s most under resourced neighborhoods, which have grown more and more cut off from the rest of Baltimore by industry and infrastructure.

The MBRI is one of many layers in the grand vision of the Reimagine Middle Branch Master Plan, developed starting in 2019 and formally approved by the city’s Planning Commission in February. Led by renowned New York landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations, of the High Line fame, the plan’s better-known elements include 11 miles of shoreline trails, new parks, boat launches, fishing piers, and a since-completed recreation center for its neighboring Cherry Hill community, to name a few.

Neighbors are keenly aware of what has been lost to the shoreline’s long-term degradation, says Ethan Abbott, SBGP’s transformational projects manager. It’s a painful reality to gaze upon a riverfront underperforming, with littered beaches, spotty grasses, and diminished habitat for aquatic life.

“I think knowing that you have natural resources that are not of the quality that they should be, and what they deserve to be and that you deserve to have as a community, it’s very demoralizing to see,” he says.

But by prioritizing the plan’s wetlands restoration, Baltimore is at the forefront of cities pursuing an ever-elusive vision for a sustainable, equitable, and naturalistic waterfront. Re-establishing these areas just offshore—some 90 percent of which have been lost to erosion, dredging, and rising sea levels over the last 150 years—could transform the Patapsco as we know it, resulting in a rare influx of natural capital.

Waterfront edges today are generally considered yet-to-be developed sites for offices, residences, commerce, or even public parks. The MBRI has a different plan, aiming to instead help communities to reconvene with the water’s edge. The vision of the MBRI, and Reimagine Middle Branch more broadly, is to restore this waterfront with immediate benefits for neighborhoods, and without displacing those already living there.

“Cities across America have rediscovered their waterfronts and realized that, in order to be competitive in the 21st century, they need to be able to provide high-quality environmental and recreational amenities,” says Brad Rogers, SBGP’s executive director. “At the same time, there are cities that face resiliency challenges, and there are cities struggling with longstanding issues of environmental justice and racial justice. I would say we’re the only place where all three of those are being layered on at the scale we’re talking about.”

Few spots are better candidates for this work than the unremarkably titled “Site 5A,” just northeast of Hanover Street and Frankfurst Avenue in South Baltimore’s Brooklyn neighborhood.

BALTIMORE IS AT THE FOREFRONT OF CITIES PURSUING SUSTAINABLE, EQUITABLE, AND NATURALISTIC WATERFRONTS.

From her office on Hanover Street, Meredith Chaiken has seen the fallout of this depleted, marshy area becoming increasingly inundated during heavy rains and tidal overflows.

“That space is shared by a lot of people and it floods all the time, so it takes a tricky situation and makes it worse,” says Chaiken, executive director for the Greater Baybrook Alliance, a nonprofit community development corporation serving Brooklyn, Brooklyn Park, and Curtis Bay.

Soon, though, it will be transformed. In October, federal, state, and local officials announced nearly $48 million in funding, including almost $32 million from a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant, to fund the MBRI’s first of multiple phases. It starts with Site 5A, followed by three areas outside MedStar Harbor Hospital in Cherry Hill, and a fifth fronting BGE’s Spring Gardens energy facility in Westport.

The design for Site 5A, created by GreenVest and Baltimore-based engineering firms BioHabitats and Moffatt & Nichol, is up to 10 acres, incorporating a medley of habitats—low and high marshes, subtidal zones, mud flats, “scrub shrub” (or woody vegetation) areas, clusters of taller trees—all surrounded by forested edges and collectively rising up in elevation toward the road. The marsh’s base will be rebuilt with recycled materials, composed largely of sediment stored in the Maryland Port Administration’s Masonville Cove and Cox Creek containment facilities.

Berkley explains that this dredge from the port channels, after being tested for toxic contaminants, will be reused as a foundational building block for the aquatic habitat restoration, providing a base for the wetlands. That base will then be capped by sand and topsoil to host plants, grasses, and trees.

Construction is set to start this fall; GreenVest and SBGP are still finalizing permits and designs with city, state, and federal input, while stockpiling dredge, plantings, and other materials. But the process is moving along, Berkley says excitedly. The first wetland will take an estimated nine to 12 months to install, with others expected to follow within the next half-decade.

At the neighborhood level, amid growing anticipation, some residents have wisely asked how to keep these marshes from withering away like others before them, says SBGP’s Abbott. Fortunately, “we are working with our design team to make sure that those elements are already taken care of,” he says.

Berkley explains that the new wetlands incorporate a “custom-vented design,” likening its layout to “dendritic connections like the branches of a tree.” Once in place, this frame will promote gradual accumulation of more sediment, known as accretion, so that it won’t simply wash away. It also allows the marsh to be “self-organizing,” he says: Tides can move through freely, yet it will be stable enough to weather coastal storm surges.

The promised benefits extend beyond keeping water levels low along a flood-prone shoreline. Sediment-depleted habitats not only fail to mitigate or clean polluted water; they also fail to sustain robust ecosystems. Conversely, more robust wetlands and healthier waters on the Patapsco can support everything from micro-organisms to insects, fish, and birds of prey—something representative of “the historic habitat continuum,” Berkley says. “We’re trying to reset the system from the base of the food chain up.”

He visualizes a swell in biodiversity: growing numbers of winged predators—cormorants, green and great blue herons, eagles, egrets—feeding on schools of hickory shad and white perch returning to the Middle Branch from other stems of the Patapsco out in Howard or Carroll counties. (Another positive byproduct: fewer “fish kills,” caused by pollution and effectively low water oxygen—a regular occurrence around the harbor.)

Habitat restoration has positive implications for the humans living nearby, too, notes Zeevelle Nottingham-Lemon, executive director of the neighborhood revitalization nonprofit Cherry Hill Strong. Generations of Baltimoreans have grown used to physical separation from the water, littering without grasping the implications for waterways, and not observing functional ecosystems at work.

“It’s a connection that has to be made,” says Nottingham-Lemon. “I think one of the important things is that this doesn’t just happen around Cherry Hill and around these neighborhoods, and also that people understand why this is happening and what we can do. Understanding the things that we—the big ‘we’—have done to degrade our environment, and the fact that we have gotten to a point with technology and science that we can restore some of that—and some of that natural balance of the world around us to thrive—is huge.”

The history of local shoreline debasement dates back some 300 years here. In 1723, English merchant John Moale began mining his property at the mouth of the Gwynns Falls for iron ore while cutting down trees to power an industrial furnace. The land was also tapped for clay used to build Baltimore’s iconic rowhouses. Industry had yet to fully define the waterfront at the time of Lewis Brantz’s 1819 “Survey of the River Patapsco and part of Chesapeake Bay,” which depicts a soft shoreline with a generous delta and broader stems of the Patapsco River flowing in.

But a marked shift was underway by the mid-19th century, with the 1855 debut of a gas production plant at Spring Gardens near Westport, followed by the Carr-Lowrey Glass Company factory’s arrival next door in 1889, and a coal-burning power station in the early 1900s.

A network of rail tracks grew along the water’s edge, and on the peninsula across the water, the former War of 1812 stronghold of Fort Covington was redeveloped with mills, a distillery, and a wharf. The Western Maryland Railway would transform this area into a sprawling railroad terminal with much-desired water access, leveling the land and dredging up hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of shoreline sediment in the process. The Great Fire of 1904 also left its mark on the landscape, as journalist Dan Fesperman reported in The Sun nearly a century later: “Cleanup crews shoved much of the rubble right into the Middle Branch, filling marshes and narrowing the shoreline.”

By the 1930s, recreational access that Baltimoreans had enjoyed at famous sites like the Ferry Bar, a former beach and resort with boardwalks and piers, was significantly diminished. A 1932 aerial photograph depicts the Middle Branch more as we see it today: industry clusters in Westport and Brooklyn, the circa-1916 Hanover Street Bridge in full view, a since-abandoned freight swing bridge in active use between Port Covington and Westport, and a harder, if still-forested edge at what today is Middle Branch Park. Cherry Hill and Brooklyn are seen bordered to the east and west, respectively, by Reedbird Landfill, which was used as a city waste-dumping ground for the better part of a century.

“WE’RE TRYING TO RESET THE SYSTEM FROM THE BASE OF THE FOOD CHAIN UP.”

In the 1940s and 1950s, the city set aside 275 acres near the landfill as federal public housing for returning Black World War II and Korean War veterans, in the process founding Cherry Hill as Baltimore’s first planned Black suburb. Despite their proximity to the water, residents here and in neighboring communities like Curtis Bay and Brooklyn grew only more cut off as new industry, roadways, and rail tracks buffered the shoreline over the 20th century.

The Reimagine Middle Branch planners studying this history find it mirrors a familiar arc of urban waterfront development. There’s industrialization, where “you go from soft, green edges to bulkheads and factories and ports,” says Megan Born, a landscape architect and urban designer with James Corner Field Operations. Industry relocates elsewhere, usually to deeper water, and facilities become obsolete. Then, around the late 20th century, “you see the decline where we move from an industrial city to a post-industrial city.”

Amidst this arc, highway construction proceeds. On the Middle Branch, it occurred at a large scale, with new I-95 interchanges and flyovers carving up the waterfront. “The city, state, and federal highway system were prioritizing moving suburban folks through at the cost of the people in South Baltimore,” Born says.

Residents bear the burden of this physical separation and, ironically, quality-of-life pitfalls stemming from shoreline’s depletion, like flooding and resulting mold at home. Communities have periodically been promised change—the city’s earlier adopted Middle Branch Master Plan from 2007, for example, focused on restoring habitats, creating more recreation spaces, improving transportation, and more—and Rogers concedes that, fairly, neighbors have planning fatigue from unmet promises.

But there have been noticeable changes since Reimagine Middle Branch’s design process began in 2019. As new amenities materialize—the state-of-the-art, $23-million recreation center that opened in Cherry Hill last year, for example—there’s more cause to be hopeful.

“Actually starting to see projects that are coming to fruition is really exciting to [residents],” says Odessa Phillip of Assedo Consulting, a public outreach partner for Reimagine Middle Branch. “That’s what’s going to bring them back to the waterfront, and it’s what’s going to expose them to something they don’t know about with the ecology and the way that it serves them.”

Nottingham-Lemon has also seen an “intentional recognition” among partners to rebuild trust with strong public engagement. Examples include the Mobile Project Hub, which brought seven pop-up informal engagement sessions to surrounding neighborhoods and events last spring; Splash!, which drew hundreds out to paddle, row, and fish at Middle Branch Park in September 2021; Voices of the Middle Branch, a social media video interview series; and a partnership with the Environmental Justice Journalism Institute, which is producing a documentary and also putting young people to work with scientific data collection on water quality at a marina near Westport.

Arguably more important are ongoing check-ins with communities as the project advances. It can be difficult to include everyone—work and technology are real barriers for many residents—but the leaders of Reimagine Middle Branch have “seeded a system” of public involvement, says Nottingham-Lemon.

“What I think is really important is that they’ve taken an important historical scan and understand the need for leveraging this type of investment in South Baltimore.”

A walk along the Captain’s Trail at Masonville Cove offers a glimpse of the MBRI’s innate promise. The wildlife refuge, created by the Maryland Port Administration a mile west of Brooklyn, abruptly whisks visitors away from Frankfurst Avenue’s heavy industry to organic shoreline. A few birders are out walking, binoculars in tow, on a brisk February Saturday.

The Cove’s pair of nesting bald eagles—Baltimore’s first-ever known coupling—are perched on a branch about 50 yards away, overseeing it all, and there’s a gentle breeze in the air. The marsh’s pungent, muddy, brackish scent gets stronger toward the water, and suddenly you’re standing on soft Patapsco beachfront with a panorama of the Outer Harbor.

For most of the last century, this was a dumping ground for building debris, decrepit ships, scrap metal, timber, and more, but a cleanup effort and port-led restoration has revived it since the early 2000s. Taking up some 50 acres sandwiched among the port’s Fairfield Terminal, a CSX heavy-rail yard, and Vulcan Materials’ construction aggregates factory, Masonville Cove today is the city’s de facto proof-of-concept for urban wetlands restoration.

Baltimore, much like its Dutch sister city of Rotterdam, has been honing its craft with ecological restoration and sediment reuse for decades, from the filling-in of Hart-Miller Island State Park near Middle River beginning in the late 1970s, to the reconstruction of Poplar Island on the Eastern Shore starting in 1998, to the large-scale cleanup of Masonville Cove, next door to the port’s dredge containment facility.

The Middle Branch Resiliency Initiative is the next evolution, leaders say, in integrating scalable restoration with neighborhood life. Its success will be measured not merely in how it looks, mitigates flooding, or attracts new wildlife, but also in its ability to establish renewed human-nature connectivity.

“We should be able to see the Patapsco, feeling the presence of the water more than what we’re able to right now,” says Chaiken, of the Greater Baybrook Alliance. “The water should be a tremendous resource for the community, and it should be a piece of life in this community. The restoration and improvement of that green space, I hope it touches everybody.”

Once upon a time, the area south of Federal Hill but north of the Hanover Street Bridge was basically a no-man’s-land for those seeking fine food and drink. Sure, there were odd corner bars here and there (which we love), but to get an expertly mixed cocktail or a beer other than a Boh, you’d have to go elsewhere.

In 2018, Andrew Carter and his business partner, Jesse Selke, recognized that void, and wanted to fill it. AJ’s on Hanover was born.

“At the time there wasn’t really a push for food in the neighborhood,” Carter says. “We decided to capture the niche market with an
upscale tavern—not the experience if you went to a Cindy Wolf or an Atlas Group restaurant, but not stuff that’s dropped out of a bag.”

Four years later, AJ’s has become a popular spot, maintaining its feel as a neighborhood gathering place while offering a menu that is a bit elevated.

When we stopped in on a cold Tuesday night in November, it was hopping. Trivia, no doubt, was a big draw, but so were the crushes and crunch wraps that make AJ’s unique.

First, the drinks. Crushes are a Maryland favorite, and thus almost every bar feels compelled to offer them. However, only a handful of places do them right, and AJ’s is among them. The key is the ice.

“We have a special crusher that takes it down to almost snowball consistency,” Carter says. “It’s just a little thicker.”

There are several interesting varieties, including Key lime pie and a seasonal apple cider version, but the most popular is the SoBo lemon stick crush. Made with Deep Eddy Lemon vodka, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, and soda water, it’s served with a peppermint stick. Crushes are often associated with summertime, but this one has a comforting sweetness that makes it feel like a great drink for the winter holidays, too.

Also perfect for cold weather is the Cool Bean, made with Jameson Cold Brew, Kahlua, hazelnut liqueur, brown sugar simple syrup, and cold brew coffee. It’s tasty even for a non-coffee drinker, but fair warning: If you consume one at night, your bedtime could be affected.

After the pandemic, Carter and Selke wanted to change AJ’s approach to food. With the help of a consultant, they came up with an idea we find inspiring. Along with the requisite burger and four varieties of decadent mac and cheeses (the bacon broccoli one is excellent), they added crunch wraps to the menu. If that term sounds familiar, it should.

“I love them, I get them from Taco Bell all the time,” Carter says. Now, many of his customers get them from AJ’s.

Essentially a sandwich stuffed into a tortilla, the crunch comes from a fried tortilla strip in the middle. The salmon version we tried also had bacon, which provided even more crunch. It’s a fun riff on fast food, taken to the next level.

Carter estimates that about 75 percent of AJ’s customers live within walking distance of the bar. If they were thirsty or hungry back in the day, they’d have to hoof it a lot farther.

“Kamala Harris’ nephew-in-law gets photographed at the inauguration wearing Dior Air Jordans that retailed for $2,000, but are reselling for $10,000 on the secondary market,” says Roberto “Berto” Fontanez. He pulls one from the shelf at his storefront, 9/10 Sneaker Boutique, in South Baltimore. “If you can find them,” he adds, pausing and smiling. “They’re limited edition. Demand increases. That’s my business model.”

Fontanez lifts another shoe, a colorful, $2,800 LeBron James-inspired “What the MVP” high-top from the shelf and explains how the secondary market works for special-edition shoes like Air Jordans and Yeezys—Kanye West’s popular Adidas collaboration. Essentially, it goes like this: Someone gets their hands on still-in-the-box, super-fashionable sneakers, which they’ve purchased after winning a virtual raffle (nobody camps out in line anymore when shoes drop) or acquired through other fortunate circumstances. Then, they bring them to 9/10 for resale. On rare occasion, a relative of one of the city’s NBA stars or an area DI college ballplayer drops by with in-demand shoes to turn around a quick buck.

Buyers and sellers can post or find sneakers on Instagram or eBay. It’s just more fun to come to 9/10. On the television, there’s a steady loop of ’90s videos from artists like Nas and DMX, there’s a legit mini-Michael Jordan museum in the window, and along one wall, there’s a lineup of retro video games, the epic Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam, among them.

With the back-and-forth conversation, braggadocio, and trash talk—“I sold those shoes to that dude and I don’t even work here”—the vibe is more corner barbershop than Dick’s Sporting Goods. In fact, there is a leather barber’s chair here. It’s used, like an old shoe-shining chair, for a fast, professional sneaker clean. (Shoes can also be dropped off for reconditioning.)

Ravens and Orioles have shopped here, but sneakerheads come from everywhere. “China, Brazil, Australia—they’re visiting Baltimore, the Inner Harbor, they follow us on Instagram and stop by,” Fontanez explains.

If it’s not clear, yet, these basketball shoes are not for playing basketball. They’re for a date, a party, prom, or simply a post to Instagram. The only real time a problem arises is when a kid drags in his mother, whom he hasn’t informed, naturally, that this isn’t a regular mall shoe store. Mom gets a look at the prices—most range between $200-400 and others more than $1,000—and freaks out.

The origin story of 9/10, whose name riffs on would-be sellers hyping the condition of shoes they want to sell—“9/10” unofficially means worn a max of five times—begins with Fontanez and his mother. He was born in 1980 in Chicago and well, do the math, Jordan had led the Bulls to six NBA titles and launched a cultural revolution with Nike by the time he graduated high school.

Fontanez’s parents, both Puerto Rico natives, worked two jobs, and along with his siblings, he got one pair of new shoes each year. Except in ninth grade, when his pleading convinced his mother to buy him Nike’s new Diamond Turfs that year, thus setting a life course in motion. At 19, he began working at the sporting goods store Finish Line.

Five years ago, after moving to Baltimore and managing several of their local stores, Fontanez decided he’d had enough of the corporate world. He went out on his own, initially opening in a tiny space in downtown Towson. Then, he relocated to Pigtown and finally, Light Street.

“I was nervous about moving to the city into a bigger space,” Fontanez says. “My partner quit right before we opened in Towson and stayed with Finish Line. I was married with three kids.”

He soon received a sign that eased his anxiety, however. Shortly after opening in Pigtown, someone cleaning out a nearby home asked if he bought memorabilia. Fontanez told him he did not. The guy described the Michael Jordan poster he’d found anyhow. “I had a lot of Jordan memorablia, but I didn’t have the ‘Jordan Wings’ poster, a horizontal poster that is two-feet tall and six-feet wide. Framed originals today go for a $1,000 or more. That’s the one he’d found.

“That poster was in my dentist’s office in Chicago when I was in school, and I’d stared at it for hours over the years,” Fontanez continues. “The guy who randomly brought it in? He didn’t know what it was worth. He asked for $20. I gave a $100 and had to force him to take it. It’s in the window.”

With an eye toward his autumn years, 49-year-old James Baldwin recently moved from his rowhome in the city to a single-level house in Ruxton. But in many ways, he left his heart in Otterbein.

A roughly 12-block historic enclave just steps west of the Inner Harbor, the neighborhood was built out in the mid-1800s as a home to those in the shipping trades, though at least one of the brick rowhouses dates as far back as 1796. The buildings survived the great fire of 1904, but the neighborhood suffered a gradual decline in the 1950s and 1960s, then was renewed in the 1970s.

What sets it apart now, though, is how popular it has become. And Baldwin, a Realtor since 2006, should know: “I lived there for 21 years and became sort of a specialist in the neighborhood on my team at Berkshire Hathaway. I still do a lot of business there,” he says.

And he’s the first to admit that he misses his old stomping grounds a bit.

Like a lot of trends, the real-estate boom in Otterbein is COVID-related. Since the pandemic, Baldwin’s business has at least doubled there, while stats from BrightMLS saw sales increase a whopping 128 percent.

“There are three reasons it’s become so popular, and one of them is Washingtonians,” he says. “For many, there’s no longer any need to go to the office every day, and if they had to, the MARC train is right there in Camden Yards, while the airport is 10 minutes away. At that point, affordability becomes a tremendous factor,” he notes, “since a $500,000 house in Baltimore would cost about $1.5 million in the District. They’re also looking for something a little more real, with more charm, than the District. So I keep hearing from Washingtonians that Baltimore is the next big thing.”

Another reason, he says, is young families spurred by the pandemic to relocate, but who don’t want to leave the city. And Otterbein lures them with everything from its several pocket parks, easy permit parking, and walkability to its private-membership swim club, contracted security patrols, and its active association, which focuses on landscaping, parks, and events.

And there’s yet another group of eager buyers: “We’ve seen a number of sales to young professionals who’ve been living in expensive apartments nearby, but who can’t use many of the amenities they’re paying for because of COVID,” says Baldwin. “Maybe they walked their dogs in Otterbein, met the neighbors, and fell in love with the place. Of course, these very low interest rates are a big draw for them, too.”

“But even after the pandemic, it’ll continue to be super-popular.”

When Kenneth Moss was 6 years old, he grew his first tomato at the Filbert Street Community Garden. Now, a decade later, the Benjamin Franklin High student, pictured right, gives back to the soil with the Baltimore Compost Collective, a local service that collects food scraps from South Baltimore neighborhoods to create compost that fertilizes the Curtis Bay community garden.

The process is simple: Every Sunday, the collective’s 77 customers—scattered across Federal Hill, Riverside Park, Curtis Bay, and Locust Point—leave their food scraps in a bucket outside their home, which is picked up and replaced by Moss and fellow youth composters. After transporting the week’s spoils to the garden, the team, led by manager Marvin Hayes, turns the waste into compost—or “black gold soil enhancer,” as they call it. Each week, the collective diverts 400-500 pounds of food scraps from the incinerators.

“We call the garden the ‘Wakanda of South Baltimore,’” says Hayes, who runs the collective through his Open Society Institute-Baltimore Community Fellowship. “[Curtis Bay] is one of the most polluted communities in the country, so we hope to be the small engine that will start to move Baltimore and its waste program forward.”

Although the team composts and takes care of the garden’s livestock year-round, the “black gold” is primarily used during the warmer months by neighborhood residents who plant everything from carrots to thyme in the community garden.

“We live in a food desert; it’s about a 30-minute drive to get to the market,” says Moss, who lives in Brooklyn. “The garden introduces people to healthy vegetables.”

While the collective checks many community-building boxes—youth job creation, sustainable living practices, and improving health outcomes of residents, to name a few—Hayes says they hope to show Baltimoreans how composting could transform the city.

“A lot of people don’t know about the benefits of composting until they come to a little garden in Curtis Bay,” Hayes says. “Baltimore needs this. People here deserve a greener, healthier way of life.

In recent years, people interested in moving to South Baltimore had two primary rental options—apartments or rowhomes. But in September, the 28 Walker Development team added a new alternative to the mix with Baltimore’s first co-living apartment building, Wheelhouse.

This sleek property on South Charles Street allows residents to rent by the room in one of its 29 furnished apartments, ranging from studio to four-bedrooms, which come equipped with everything from a flat-screen TV to a silverware set.

Similar to co-living spaces in other cities, residents are encouraged to interact with one another in Wheelhouse’s common areas, including a coworking space and a shared kitchen.

“Living in a studio or a one-bedroom apartment can be challenging for young people today because they are pretty pricey, and while you can usually find an affordable room within a rowhouse, you have to have a group of people ready to rent together,” says Scott Slosson, director of development for 28 Walker. “We created a rental product that was a hybrid of the upside of both South Baltimore options.”

That being said, all of Wheelhouse’s perks, including a bike for every resident, come at a price, as the cost of a private bed and bathroom lease runs between $797 and $1,117. Slosson says the concept is marketed toward renters like Maame Aba, one of the building’s original tenants, who had recently moved to Baltimore and was looking for a built-in social community.

Wheelhouse hosts weekly events ranging from fitness classes to whiskey tastings for its tight-knit group of residents to connect. “[Wheelhouse] is, and has, the potential to be a great social living place for like-minded people,” Aba says.

As of January, the building was filled to about 40 percent capacity. 28 Walker is building a second co-living location in the development across from The Shops at Canton Crossing, testing another neighborhood full of high rental prices and millennial renters. “We want to be responsive to the changing ways that people live and work, and our hope is that [Wheelhouse] hits the sweet spot,” Slosson says.

In between brewing the signature Green Machine IPA and Forte pilsner, the team at Diamondback Brewing in Locust Point has been firing up the oven, rolling out dough, and testing recipes in an effort to make their dream of having an in-house food program a reality.

Though the prep space that the owners have built inside the modern-industrial brewery is only about 50 square feet, co-founder Colin Marshall assures that its size has no effect on the flavors: “The kitchen is small,” he admits, “but the taste that comes out of there is pretty mighty.”

This Wednesday, Diamondback will debut its inaugural menu featuring 12-inch Neapolitan pizzas, hand-twisted Bavarian pretzels with Green Machine beer cheese, and large charcuterie boards meant for sharing. The new eats are launching in conjunction with expanded hours at the taproom, which is staying open until 8 p.m. on Sundays and will begin opening on Tuesdays starting next week. (In addition, Diamondback’s new food license has one drawback in that dogs are no longer allowed inside.)

Marshall says that offering food has been a priority since 2016, when the brewery opened and began hosting local food trucks and pop-ups on busy nights. But it took some time to come up with a plan to execute a menu made in-house.

“It’s been in the works since we opened,” he says. “But, in the past six months, we have really been working through the concept, deciding what we’re going to serve, and figuring out how we would begin to keep it sustainable moving forward.”

Taproom manager Ryan Belton and baker/bartender Cassidy Johnson—industry veterans who were both brought on within the past year—further helped to solidify the path toward pizza. Given the tiny kitchen space, the two thought it was best suited for a small menu of simple, well-executed fare.

With flavors ranging from a margherita with fresh basil to the “Inverno” topped with lemon and ricotta, the deep-crust pies are formed using dough handmade by Johnson. They are then covered in Belton’s signature, herby red sauce and custom five-cheese blend by local distributor The Great Cheese before heading inside a TurboChef pizza oven.

“Theoretically and also conceptually, we just kind of thought, ‘If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it well,’” Marshall says. “It can’t just be filler, like ‘Hey, we have food now.’ It needs to be something we would all enjoy ourselves if we were eating it elsewhere.”

Of course, the food menu is also meant to align with the beer program. Just as the draft lineup rotates monthly, the pizzas will also change based on which toppings are in season.

“You can always count on Forte and Green Machine, but the other seven or eight beers on tap are changing from month to month,” Marshall explains. “The same goes for the pizza—you’re always going to be able to get a cheese, but with summer coming along you might have a lighter, zesty citrus option as well.”

To further the seasonal approach, the brewery hopes to craft the summer menu using leftover vegetables from its Community Supported Agriculture program with One Straw Farm—one of the many neighborhood initiatives that Marshall hopes to continue as Diamondback evolves with its new menu and taproom hours.

“We want more of the community members around here to frequent us,” he says. “Being out on the peninsula, we’re a bit isolated, but we’ve definitely got that neighborhood feel.”

A politician’s best bet days before an election? Make sweeping job-creation claims at a corporate gold-shovel show. Then hope nobody fact-checks you.

That’s a bit what it sounded like recently, when, two weeks before election day, local, state, and national elected officials from both parties joined economic development officials and company officials to announce “Cybertown, USA.” In essence, a cybersecurity firm and venture-capital companies that invest in tech startups are setting up shop in Port Covington, the massive mixed-use mini-city on a large waterfront tract in South Baltimore that’s the brainchild of Under Armour founder Kevin Plank.

Try on some of these claims for size: “Maryland is home to the world’s most advanced cybersecurity and data science . . .”; Baltimore is positioned to be the cyber and innovation capital of our nation”; and the jobs announcement “helps solidify Baltimore and Maryland’s reputation as the cybersecurity capital of the world.”

(That’s from Mike Janke, co-founder of DataTribe, Gov. Larry Hogan, and congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, respectively.)

Granted, it’s always good news that three companies are locating here: DataTribe, a globally known cybersecurity startup studio with offices in Maryland and Silicon Valley; AllegisCyber, a leading Silicon Valley-based early-stage cybersecurity venture-capital firm; and Evergreen Advisors, a Columbia-based investment banking and corporate advisory firm focused on assisting emerging-growth and middle-market companies.

And one of Port Covington’s draws for the tech industry in the years ahead may be that it boasts a secure, redundant, private fiber-optic loop to provide gigabit-speed internet connectivity and site-wide public Wi-Fi service. The development is also unique in that it will be built from the ground up with a cybersecurity-hardened infrastructure.

But how does the Baltimore region really stack up nationally when it comes to cybersecurity and other I.T. jobs?

We checked out sources that don’t need ballots to maintain their bank balances: The folks at Money magazine say we fall about in the middle of the pack in terms of I.T. job growth—109 percent growth annually—on a list of 20 cities outside of Silicon Valley (which is still the leading location).

When it comes to cybersecurity jobs, Tripwire says that Columbia is near the top of the list in the nation in per-capita terms, but behind Jersey City, NJ. And who wants to live there?

And metro Baltimore is nowhere on Forbes’s list of seven cities destined to be cybersecurity capitals of the world (though Washington, D.C., is, as is Silicon Valley).

That may be partly because, compared to most metro areas, the I.T. sector is a relatively small share of the overall economy in Baltimore, says economist Dr. Jacob Cosman, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School whose specialties include real estate, retail business, and spatial competition in cities.

“The share of jobs in I.T. in Baltimore looks less like Seattle or San Francisco and more like Cincinnati or Las Vegas,” he says. “Conversely, education and healthcare comprise a larger share of the workforce in Baltimore than most other metro areas.”

In fact, he says, though Tech jobs in Baltimore are relatively well-paid, and might then have outsized importance to the region’s tax base, “the concentration of I.T. jobs and I.T. firms is nowhere near the real centers of innovation and technology like Seattle and Silicon Valley,” he says. “The concentration of I.T. in Baltimore is not even near the level in smaller centers like Boulder, Madison, and Raleigh. Without that high density, it’s difficult to build the pool of specialized workers and financing that would accompany a legitimate hub of innovation.”

So why can’t Baltimore make all these dreamy geek-capital claims come true?

“The biggest obstacle is that other cities already have easy access to specialized workers and financing because they have a pre-existing hub of I.T. activity,” says Cosman. “In addition, it’s more difficult to attract highly paid, highly mobile workers to Baltimore because the city offers fewer of the amenities that high-income workers want. Some of this is geography—Baltimore will never have temperate winters, beaches, or easy access to wilderness—but some of that might change as the city develops more entertainment and cultural amenities.”

Of course, if we can curb our enthusiasm a bit, the Port Covington development is still good for the city, Cosman says.

“Even if the announcement makes some very optimistic claims, the fact that established firms want to occupy the office space in Port Covington is still overall good news,” he says. “The city government took a risk on the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars to finance development there. We can debate whether that was really the best use of the city’s scarce fiscal resources, but the city government has made that decision to commit those resources, and at least it seems like there is some demand for the development the city has financed. This is probably not Cyber Town, USA, but it is much better than empty space.”

Last night, Mayor Catherine Pugh, City Council president Bernard C. “Jack” Young, interim police commissioner Gary Tuggle, City Councilman Eric Costello, and dozens of South Baltimore residents packed the gazebo at Riverside Park for a community meeting to address gun violence in the city.

During a subsequent Safety Walk down Riverside Avenue toward Digital Harbor High School, residents stopped to take a moment of silence for all of the city’s homicide victims this year. Among them was Timothy Moriconi, a 25-year-old who was fatally shot while walking home from a relative’s house in Riverside around 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 27.

The tragedy, which Baltimore City Police Department chief spokesperson T.J. Smith called “a deplorable act of violence,” is part of a recent spike in homicides throughout the city, which has seen more than 200 this year.

In the wake of the shooting, the Federal Hill community has bonded to memorialize Moriconi’s life with candlelight vigils, while also pushing for a higher police presence in the neighborhood.

“A lot of people’s emotions are shifting toward frustration and anger,” says Brian Acquavella, a Federal Hill resident, who owns Blue Agave and One Star Country Club in the neighborhood. “We feel very hopeless. How do you prevent something like this happening at 7:30 on a Thursday evening on a highly populated street? We can’t prevent anything. This is up to our leadership in Baltimore.”

On Tuesday, October 2, Acquavella and the team at One Star are hosting a fundraiser from 4 p.m. to close, donating 100 percent of all food and drink proceeds to the family of Moriconi, who was a regular at the bar.

“He was a great customer and became friends with a lot of the staff,” Acquavella says. “When you see someone a couple days a week, it’s hard to not become friends with them.”

In an attempt to raise as much money as possible, the bar will not be offering any particular food or drink specials.

“It’s not about us,” Acquavella says. “We’re not keeping any of this money or trying to drive business, we’re just trying to make as much as we can for that family. We’re going to open our doors like normal and hopefully we can bring a lot of people in.”

Bartenders have even pledged to donate their tips to the family, and some staff members are coming in on their day off to assist with the crowds. Acquavella says that his team is an example of the resilience of the Federal Hill neighborhood, which has been known to come together in the wake of tragedy.

“That is a shining light in all of this,” he says. “South Baltimore is never going to be a place where everyone gets along and has the same views 100 percent of the time. But when tragedy does happen, this is definitely a neighborhood that will do anything for anybody when needed. That’s what I love about it here.”

A procession of golf carts drove onto Lot J in South Baltimore this morning, transporting a number of city officials onto a festive green carpet. Among them was Mayor Catherine Pugh, who made a few brief remarks and even participated in a putting contest while posing for cameras.

The fanfare was all to celebrate the upcoming arrival of Topgolf, an interactive driving range with locations scattered all across the country—plus a few in the United Kingdom.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am to be able to stop by here and play a little bit of Topgolf every now and then,” Pugh said. “But I’m even more excited about the visitors that are going to come here. It’s yet another attraction that’s going to make a difference in terms of economic development and creating more jobs.” 

Expected to debut in 2020, the golfing facility will take over the current home of The Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) and the adjacent Lot J on Stockholm Street near Horseshoe Casino. The Board of Estimates recently approved a move to a larger home on Giles Road in Cherry Hill for BARCS, which has long been planning to expand its accommodations for animals in need.

“I want to say to Topgolf, welcome to Baltimore. I just wonder what took you so long getting here,” said City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, with a laugh. “I’ve been saying for weeks ‘When are we going to get it? Are we going to get this land deal done? And finally, we got it done.”

Topgolf is part of a larger vision to transform South Baltimore’s Warner Street corridor (from Horseshoe Casino down to M&T Bank Stadium) into a bustling entertainment district with food and drink, family-friendly sports, and live music venues. Charm City’s famed rock club Hammerjacks, which announced plans to reopen in the area back in 2015, will also be an anchor in the forthcoming development when it opens its doors next year.

Overseeing the plans is CBAC Gaming, a partnership between Caesars Entertainment, Rock Gaming, and Towson-based developer Caves Valley Partners (CVP). CVP partner Arsh Mirmiran says that the hope is for the district to mirror other entertainment corridors in big cities like Chicago and Atlanta. He anticipates the Topgolf franchise to play a big role in attracting visitors from other counties.

“That’s going to be their Baltimore City, Anne Arundel County, Howard County, and Baltimore County destination, and I think downtown will also use it a lot for corporate events,” says Mirmiran, who has visited the Topgolf location in Las Vegas. “It attracts a really good mix of people. The diversity of age, gender, and golf ability is insane.”

The high-tech concept uses microchipped golf balls that allow participants to compete against one another. Golfers aim for light-up targets on the 215-yard range and earn points for accuracy and distance. Though it may seem like a pro’s paradise, the facility offers various games and scoring systems to accommodate all skill sets.

Topgolf COO Craig Kessler assures that beginners shouldn’t feel intimidated: “Everyone should come out and give it a shot,” he says. “Even if you don’t pick up a golf club while you’re at Topgolf, there’s something in it for you.” 

The social component highlights live music and a full food and beverage program with its own scratch kitchen. A sample menu lists shareable eats like warm pretzel bites and tortilla chips with beer cheese fondue, as well as flatbreads, salads, sandwiches, and vegetarian options. Kessler says that the kitchen will also be adding some locally inspired eats to the menu when the Baltimore location debuts. Bartenders will pour local and domestic beers, and shake up seasonal cocktails like a spring sangria or pineapple-mint margarita. 

Construction on the new facility is slated to begin in the fall, with a grand opening estimated for 2020. Officials are looking forward to what an amenity like Topgolf can do for the city’s appeal.

“The location here is pretty special,” Kessler says. “To be in the hub of the urban environment located next to the stadiums and the casino, there’s really nothing like it.” 

Mirmiran, who is also currently overseeing redevelopment plans for Cross Street Market in Federal Hill and the multi-phase Stadium Square project in Sharp-Leadenhall, is eager to continue his efforts in South Baltimore. He says it won’t be long before visitors start to notice an altered skyline while traveling into the city from I-95.

“As you’re coming into town from a visibility standpoint, you’re going to see a bunch of new buildings,” he says. “It’s almost like an entire extension of downtown.”

Standing in an open warehouse, surrounded by aisles and aisles of shovels, rakes, and wheelbarrows, Noah Smock sifts through a thick stack of papers, each representing a charitable organization that has borrowed tools from his South Baltimore supply in recent weeks.

Smock is not a manager at Lowe’s. He is the executive director of the Baltimore Community ToolBank, an inventory of some 5,000 tools that can be rented by schools, churches, charities, and other local organizations for a mere three cents on the dollar. The cost-effective strategy helps these do-gooders and underserved communities take on projects that they can’t afford. “The people we serve are often tasked with solving difficult problems with very few resources,” says Smock. “These tools allow them to realize impossible dreams.”

Since launching in 2012, the local nonprofit has partnered with some 500 organizations, including the Y of Central Maryland, Parks & People Foundation, and Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, which used the tools for everything from daily tasks to large-scale projects, such as tree plantings, playground restoration, and urban farming.

This past summer, with the help of the ToolBank, the South Baltimore Partnership conducted major neighborhood cleanups, which president Betty Bland-Thomas says would have otherwise been impossible. “I couldn’t afford to buy shovels, power tools, gloves, and weed whackers for 25 people,” she says. “The ToolBank has been a blessing.”

The nonprofit was once “promise rich and cash poor,” as Smock puts it, but it now has two full-time employees, a 20-person board, and plans to empower some 50,000 volunteers in 2017. The work is sustained by grants and donations from the likes of DeWalt, Home Depot, and other foundations, but mostly, the community.

In return, Smock and his team do their part to beautify their own somewhat gritty South Baltimore neighborhood, having added bright blue murals and two rain gardens to the warehouse-lined Wicomico Street. “We want to strengthen and celebrate our communities,” says Smock. “To me, tools are empowerment.”

On Wednesday, the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership (SBGP)—an economic development authority funded by revenue from Horseshoe Casino—announced it would be awarding more than $2 million to support community projects and local parks in South and Southwest Baltimore.

The first-ever round of grants totaling $650,000 from SBGP was awarded to 30 recipients including Cherry Hill CDC, Citizens of Pigtown, Federal Hill Main Street, and Living Classrooms Foundation. The amounts are divided into three levels—up to $5,000, up to $50,000, and up to $100,000—and will be awarded twice a year.

“Neighborhoods and nonprofits across the district asked us to help them make a difference,” said executive director of SBGP Brad Rogers. “And we’ve got their backs.”

Some of the higher tier recipients include the Youth Resiliency Institute that received $100,000 for its Cherry Hill Arts and Music Festival and Living Classrooms Foundation that was awarded $90,000 to support its School Leadership in Urban Runoff Reduction Project.

Smaller grants were awarded to projects like the Pigtown community garden, a mobile pantry by Fishes and Loaves, and Southwest Baltimore Charter School—the venue for the announcement.

“Our aging school building has needed audio-visual equipment for so long,” said Erika Brockman, executive director of the Southwest Baltimore Charter School. “With this $5,000 grant, we will be able to finally take care of the problem.”

SBGP is tasked with spending its portion of the funding from the city’s casino revenue on projects that improve the life of 16 South and Southwest Baltimore communities—including Cherry Hill, Westport, Federal Hill, Otterbein, and Lakeland—as outlined in the group’s master plan.

“The needs in the community are very real,” Rogers said. “We have set an audacious goal—to have the best parks in Baltimore. Period. Because our neighborhoods deserve them.” 

Rogers explains that the goal of SBGP is to allocate 20 percent of funds for grants, 30 percent for enhanced services in the community, and 50 percent for bigger picture projects. All proposals and applications for funding allocation are vetted and approved by SBGP’s board of directors including neighborhood leaders, local business owners, and city officials.

In the coming 2018 fiscal year, SBGP will disperse about $6 million along with another $6 million from the Local Development Council—a committee also created to manage the city’s casino revenue.

Rogers also announced on Wednesday that SBGP is investing $1.4 million to improve public spaces in collaboration with the Department of Parks and Recreation. The funds will be used for maintenance and programming in local parks, but specific plans has not yet been decided.

Although plans are still being finalized, Rogers believes the overarching goal has already been fulfilled in the South and Southwestern Baltimore communities, and he is optimistic about the future of the projects.

“It’s incredibly exciting,” he said. “What you have, for the first time, is a large number of neighborhoods unified around a common goal with the resources to make it happen. We’re all committed to moving forward together.”

On Wednesday, Sagamore Development announced that global investment firm Goldman Sachs would commit $233 million to the Port Covington redevelopment. The 235-acre, mixed-use project on Baltimore’s waterfront is a move that Goldman Sachs’ Urban Investment Group (UIG) has been eyeing since 2016.

“This is not only an opportunity to invest in infrastructure and lay down the framework for what will be millions of square feet and dozens of buildings, said managing director for Goldman Sachs UIG Margaret Anadu, “but do so in a way that’s really going to benefit Baltimore residents.”

The $660 million tax increment funding (TIF) that Sagamore received last year from the city is cited as a key factor in the UIG’s decision to invest. Anadu said the TIF signified the project was supported by the city and displayed strong public-private partnerships 

“With the approval of the TIF, that said the city and state were behind this,” she said. “Then you have Sagamore as the quarterback—they are relentless.”

A key factor in the collaboration between the private and public sectors was the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) signed last year between Sagamore, the city, and SB7—an organization that represents the South Baltimore communities of Brooklyn, Cherry Hill, Curtis Bay, Lakeland, Mt. Winans, Westport, and Port Covington. The agreement ensures that the communities in South Baltimore continue to thrive culturally, economically, educationally, and socially during the 20-year redevelopment process of Port Covington.

The $233 million investment will uphold the promise made in the CBA to invest in infrastructure—roads, utilities, and parks for the community—during all phases of the project. Goldman Sachs said they wouldn’t play a huge role in the planning process beyond the monetary impact.

“We will have a voice in the direction of the project,” Anadu said. “But we will primarily serve as investors, leaving day to day on-the-ground execution to the Sagamore team.”

Plank Industries CEO, Tom Geddes, said the project would bring thousands of new jobs to the city, nearly 1.5 million square feet of office and retail space, a 200-room hotel, and apartments.

Of the 235 acres, a portion will remain untouched during the redevelopment, and that includes Under Armour’s 50-acre headquarters, as well as City Garage, Nick’s Fish House, Sagamore Spirit Distillery, and the newly opened Rye Street Tavern. 

“You won’t see a lot of activity on the site over the next 12-18 months,” Geddes says. “But there will be a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work on planning and design going on getting the site shovel ready.”

The prospects of this new investment have Mayor Catherine Pugh optimistic about the new partnership and what it means for the city’s residents. 

“This investment, especially from such a prominent partner as Goldman Sachs, means more jobs, more opportunity and more economic growth for Baltimore City,” she said in a statement. “Investors are seeing what we already know about Baltimore—we’re a city on the rise, and an economic hub with a strong, diverse workforce.”

This move comes as Sagamore is in the process of drafting a proposal to Amazon to move a second headquarters to the Port Covington development. Last week, the online retail giant released a statement requesting bids for the new location by October 19. If selected, it would bring 50,000 new jobs and a $5 billion investment in office space to Baltimore.

“We think Port Covington would be a phenomenal location for Amazon,” Geddes said. “Having the vote of confidence of an institution like Goldman Sachs is nothing but helpful.”

Geddes is hopeful that the new partnership represents progress for Port Covington and delivers on the commitment made to bring outside investments to the city.

“We could not be happier that we have Goldman Sachs as our partner,” Geddes said. “It was important to us to find an equity partner that shared our common vision for urban economic growth, job creation, and local workforce development here in Baltimore City.”

What is it about Baltimore and its corner bars?

No matter how sleek our skyline gets or how posh our bars become, we can’t quite part with our watering-hole stalwarts. When Idle Hour (201 E. Fort Ave., 410-468-0357), the South Baltimore dive that opened in 2003, announced it was closing due to a structural issue in December 2014, the community came out in droves. Customers wrote hundreds of comments on Facebook including, most memorably, “We’re all pulling for you, from the bottom of our livers.” There were fundraising parties at Little Havana and the Ottobar. And fans donated more than $48,000 to an Indiegogo campaign.

Overwhelmed by the generosity, Idle owners Brendan Finnerty and Randall Etheridge agreed to match nearly all of the funds and give back to the community the only way they knew how: by reopening their sticker-covered doors.

After months of build-out, permit pains, and delays, Idle Hour reopened in June. The best part? Not much has changed. The narrow bar is still dimly lit, the record player is still spinning vinyl, the bathrooms are still painted red, and the signature Chartreuse bottles are still lined up behind the bar.

In this town, the green, herbal liqueur that hails from France is practically synonymous with Idle Hour. (They’ve even started a Chartreuse Bottle Club.) It’s an acquired taste, but your best bet is to just order a shot of the pine-flavored stuff with a beer. Though there is no formal menu per se, Idle Hour’s inventory is thoughtful with local beer options from The Brewer’s Art and Union Craft. Another pioneering pairing is Idle’s pickle back, aka a shot of Jack Daniel’s followed by a shot of pickle juice. Trust us, it’s delicious.

Of course, the bar underwent a few changes, like replacing gas lines dating back to 1916, refinishing floors, installing new lighting, and adding an autograph wall that people who saved Idle Hour can sign. Among the doodles and hearts, someone scrawled a simple message: “Welcome back boys. It’s been too long.”