LIVE
Named for its purple spring blooms, Southwest Baltimore’s Violetville has a unique medley of mid-20th-century rowhomes and older single family dwellings, from quaint cottages to more spacious houses on generous lots. Residents here prize their community’s diversity, neighborly bonds, the recently renovated elementary/middle school, and the revitalization of 10-acre Violetville Park. This locale sits along the city-county line directly off I-95, providing easy access to BWI Airport, MARC stations, downtown, and more.

DINE
Wilkens Plaza across from nearby St. Agnes Hospital has no-frills but reliable carryout options like Friends Deli and Great Taste Chinese. Less than 10 minutes driving puts local favorites in Arbutus (Fish Head Cantina) and Catonsville (State Fare, The Beaumont, Atwater’s) within easy reach.

SHOP
Giant Food and Weis Markets are reliable grocery options just down the road off of Wilkens Avenue. Rheb’s Homemade Candies, a fourth-generation family business tucked away near St. Agnes, sells truffles, chocolates, and other handcrafted sweets.

PLAY
Violetville Park offers plentiful greenery as is and is getting an upgrade courtesy of devoted nonprofit Friends of Violetville Park and Baltimore City Recreation and Parks. Recent or pending improvements include new basketball courts, a pollinator garden, and playground renovations, and future phases call for new walking paths, tennis court renovations, and more. Carroll Park is also just down the road for golfing, baseball, basketball, the skate park, and more.

ARTS/CULTURE
Friends of Violetville Park is planning its first Spring Fling this month, with community planting events, live music, children’s games, and other fun. Close by seasonal draws include the springtime Sowebo Arts and Music Festival in Hollins Market and the Cherry Hill Arts & Music Waterfront Festival at Middle Branch Park in July.

Neighbor Spotlight
Linda Delp, 66, is a Violetville native who moved back to her childhood home in 2021 and leads a neighborhood gardening club.

“My parents moved from here from Lancaster County to start a small Mennonite church. They had four kids and they’d been wanting to get back into farming, so they started looking for a place that had some land. I grew up in Violetville and played down at the park, knew our neighbors.

“When I finished college, I moved to Los Angeles and lived there for decades. In 2021, during the pandemic, I moved right back here to the home where I grew up. I had never owned anything before, so my first homeownership experience was a 100-year-old house with an acre of land, and I came from apartment living in LA.

“Building ties with neighbors, that’s my favorite part of living here. Any city—Baltimore, LA, wherever—has communities and you can make it your home. I love being back here, I really do.”

NEIGHBORHOOD STATS
Population: 2,403 Occupancy Rate: 92 percent Owner/Renter Split: 65 percent/35 percent Median Home Purchase Price: $132,750 Estimated Monthly Mortgage: $905 Estimated Rent: $1,300 Walk Score: 59 Transit Score: 47

—Sources: Baltimore City Department of Planning, Live Baltimore 

When Joseph and Amanda Burton got married in October 2020 at the height of the pandemic, it meant that a honeymoon immediately following their wedding was out of the question. But a year later, the couple (who met while in cooking school at the Baltimore International College) were finally able to celebrate their nuptials in Paris—and it was life-changing.

While exploring the famed open-air Marché Bastille, Joseph (a classically French-trained chef) and Amanda (who worked in sales for Marriott) came across a rotisserie chicken stand. “We purchased half a chicken from the rotisserie guy, and he cut it with scissors,” says Joseph. “We sat in the lobby of our hotel and ate it. For years, I’d been hearing chefs say that the chicken in Europe tastes totally different than the chicken here. I finally understood—it was the best chicken I’d ever tasted.”

When the couple returned stateside, they decided to replicate what they ate in Paris by opening their own rotisserie restaurant, Rooted Rotisserie, in the historic Hollins Market neighborhood.

“This is a concept in Baltimore that’s lacking,” says Joseph. “With my background in classical French cuisine, I knew the techniques and I know French flavor—the key is to make a really rich brine and let it rest in the brine for 24 to 48 hours.”

How did you come up with the name for the restaurant?
Amanda Burton: Joe likes farms, and he likes to plant things. He is an authentic chef who likes to use authentic ingredients. We are rooted in faith, rooted in community, and rooted in hospitality. Being rooted became our core value and suited the rotisserie really well.

How did come to settle on this space?
AB: One of our clients who bought dinners from us during the pandemic worked construction in the area and told us to check it out. We thought a restaurant was a big endeavor. But when we saw the space, we fell in love with the brick arches and brick floor. It lent itself perfectly to French fare and looked as historic as the streets in Paris.

How did you learn to cook?
Joseph Burton: I spent a lot of time with my great-aunt, Mary Lee Felton. She had garden plots at Druid Hill Park. After school, we’d weed, plant, and harvest vegetables and then make different soups at her home. Whatever she didn’t use, she’d deliver to a different family member’s home. A kid that age wants to run around with friends and doesn’t want to garden and make soup. I didn’t enjoy it at the time, but I learned a wealth of information that has helped me later in life.

Tell me about the menu.
JB: I wanted the menu to feel very French and family-oriented. I wanted it to feel homey in a sense that maybe you’re going to your well-travelled grandma’s house for the holidays. The menu I came up with is the French classics, the duck confit in confit potatoes, the braised short rib, and the rotisserie chicken.

What did you want the space to feel like?
JB: I wanted it to feel like you’re coming to my family’s dining room. My aunt is at the helm of this place—she’s what sparked joy at a very early age in my culinary career. We’ve incorporated loads of pictures of her throughout the restaurant to allow her to be there and allow guests to see her.

AB: We created an ancestry wall with photos of our parents and grandparents. It was important to have them watching over us.

In the woods next to the Stillmeadow Community Fellowship church in Southwest Baltimore, Pastor Michael Martin has another sanctuary he eagerly shares with visitors. The church leaders poses meditative questions—”What do you hear?” “What do you see?” “How does it make you feel?”—as he walks parishioners, neighbors, and other participants in Stillmeadow’s “daytime retreats” through the 10 acres of once-neglected, church-owned property overlooking busy Frederick Avenue. Here, freshly planted and fast-growing saplings, carefully carved-out walking trails, and streamside sitting areas invite each person who passes through to pause.

“Cars become white noise, and you shift from what you’re used to,” says Martin from his office inside the church. “All of a sudden, you can hear the trees and the breeze. You hear birds—and now, you hear different birds. And you can see different trees. You can tell that there are different things going on in this park. And then you get down to the water, and it’s flowing and making that cooling sound [and you think], ‘Hey, I didn’t remember I liked this. This is beautiful and I’m really affected by all of this.’”

Just a few years ago, this small woodland tract was an arboreal graveyard, strewn with dozens of ash trees leeched of life by the invasive emerald ash boring beetle, which in the late 2010s wiped out much of these woods. Rampantly growing vines and ravenously grazing deer were also playing a part, killing off other native species and the next generation of trees before they could mature and fill in the void of the dead ash grove.

But you’d never know that today, what with the hundreds of new poplar, willow, elm, and oak trees, some just two years old but already topping 30 feet, that are deepening their roots in carefully maintained, protected plots uphill from the church. Starting with an inspired vision from a parishioner and nurtured by an outpouring of collaboration and resources, the Stillmeadow woods have been given a second chance. And in just a few years, they have already become a nationally renowned proving ground for ecological resilience.

Since 2020, the U.S. Forest Service has been working with the church to use the self-proclaimed community “peace park” to research the potential of smaller-scale reforestation in city environments. They’re not only planting native and climate-adaptive tree species, but also studying soil resiliency, testing planting cycles, trialing groundcover materials, and even training new generations of urban foresters here in Baltimore, with an ultimate goal of establishing long-term networks of community caretaking.

Can small, degraded urban forests like this one regenerate in healthy, sustainable ways? And can they establish a framework for their communities to be invested in them for years to come? That’s what the dozens of people now involved in this project hope to find out. Elementary, middle, high school, and university students have poured out in droves to pitch in, clearing dead trees and invasive plants, planting saplings, laying down woodchips, maintaining trails, and more, while forging their own bonds with the park in the process.

And of course, there’s Martin, the church parishioners, and their neighbors, who are spreading the naturalistic gospel through tree giveaways, community education, and by ho- listically reconnecting with the land.

Baltimore, a city of many famous firsts, is a fitting setting for this pioneering ecological restoration. Stillmeadow is its own tale of environmental justice, natural reinvention, and community-led caretaking. It’s an instructive case study in how forestry and environmental resilience research can and should—focus more on resource-deprived communities in cities, says McKay Jenkins, a restoration volunteer and partner at Stillmeadow.

“What Baltimore is showing the rest of the country is that the environmental restoration impulse has to extend into the city,” says Jenkins, a local environmental journalism professor and author of the forthcoming The Maryland Naturalist handbook and field guide. “Cities are obviously human communities but also ecological communities, and always have been. Environmental justice is not just air pollution. It’s a holistic view of the way that communities should be able to live.”

“Stewardship” was the assignment that drew Pastor Martin from his longtime home of Los Angeles back to Baltimore in early 2017. The Michigan native and Morgan State alumnus was up to the task of bolstering the spiritual health, membership ranks, and financial standing of Stillmeadow, a 34-year- old church located in the Beechfield neighborhood south of Leakin Park. But he soon learned that the assignment was bigger than the church itself.

Nine months after his arrival, Martin first journeyed into the woods up the hill, led by one of his parishioners, Patrick Healey, who hacked a path through the brush with a machete. This had long been just “the woods” to Stillmeadow’s congregants. But Martin saw an opportunity in the winding expanse that they wandered through together.

“We kept going and we got down to the creek—I was like, ‘Oh my goodness,’ it just wouldn’t end,” he says. “I’m a city boy, but even that experience told me, this is a lot here.”

Another parishioner, Troy Burke, coined the idea for a “peace park” in those woods. The vision was a space for trauma resolution and quietude in a historically underserved, often-overlooked, majority-Black neighborhood. Why should Southwest Baltimore residents have to escape to rural areas to be in a space for solace and contemplation, wondered Martin. “We could do this in our own way here in the city limits.”

Nature set things in motion the following spring. In May 2018, Stillmeadow became a hub for food and water distribution as well as disaster response coordination following a two-day flash flood that overtook Frederick Avenue, inundating the local stream, known as Maiden’s Choice, and sending a seven-foot surge of water down the thoroughfare, dam- aging more than 140 homes. The church received a measly $250,000 in federal aid and otherwise sparse attention compared to Old Ellicott City, a wealthy white suburb also destroyed by the flooding.

But the new relationships that arose from this catastrophe would pave the way for the Peace Park project. Among the connections that Martin made in the aftermath of the flood was Morgan Grove, a research forester at the Baltimore Urban Field Office of the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Catonsville, where he has worked since 1996. The federal agency would soon commit $90,000 over three years, plus staff time and planting materials, while also coordinating with the church on a plan for silviculture—the cultivation and management of trees—to respond to the uncovered ash tree blight.

Bonnie Sorak, director of Baltimore City and County outreach for Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake, was another connection. The regional nonprofit helps faith-based entities—churches, synagogues, mosques—secure funding for environmental projects and programs that will improve the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Religious congregations make excellent tree-planting partners for a few reasons, starting with the fact that many religions view trees as the source of life itself, says Sorak, who is Jewish. “It resonates with people of multiple faiths…We call trees God’s cure-all.”

Places of worship also tend to have an audience receptive to participating in community-based projects. “After I started engaging with [Stillmeadow], they learned that they were part of the problem—by no means can they solve the flooding on their own, but also, if you have a large roof and a large parking lot, you’re creating stormwater runoff,” be it into the city streets or, ultimately, the Bay, says Sorak. The decimation of the ash grove in the nearby woods hadn’t helped either. A single tree can absorb hundreds, if not thousands, of gallons of runoff each year, but trees left to rot can’t contribute.

“IT RESONATES WITH PEOPLE OF MULTIPLE FAITHS…WE CALL TREES GOD’S CURE-ALL.”

And then there’s the property aspect: Many churches and other such sanctuaries have significant land holdings around their buildings that provide their own opportunities for native plantings, rain gardens, and other stormwater capture and green-space projects. “With the vast amount of land that spaces of faith own and manage and steward, they can have a huge impact,” says Sorak.

Other partners joined the mix—among them Jenkins (who has recruited his own University of Delaware students as volunteers and helped obtain grant funding through the school), as well as the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Annapolis-based Nature Sacred, Baltimore Tree Trust, Blue Water Baltimore, Civic Works, the National Wildlife Federation, and various city and state agencies, to name a few. After roughly two years of planning, the church held a grand opening ceremony for Stillmeadow Peace Park in October 2020.

And so began a years-long commitment to restore a neglected urban forest into a thriving ecosystem once again, beginning with cyclical plantings of thousands of new trees, constant maintenance of invasive species and overgrowth, and phased improvements each year.

Since 2021, they’ve planted more than 2,500 trees in phases, including 970 this past fall. The park now has a community vegetable garden, a small trail network, multiple meditation areas, and various programs for visitors of all ages. Future plans call for replacing impervious surfaces, including in the parking lot down below.

The ensemble of collaborators, which Grove describes as a “jazz band,” is growing stronger each year, with new resources pouring in and momentum increasing as the trees establish themselves. The Forest Service, for its part, gave the project a big boost with a $2-million forestry grant this past December.

Even so, it’s going to take multiple generations to complete, and the many partners and volunteers know that they are in it for the long haul. And while it might not be a solution to prevent more natural disasters from occurring in the first place, a healthier forest will provide outsized ecological, community health, and other benefits, says Grove.

“To get this whole forest going is not going to solve the flooding issues. As for the flooding issues—just look up,” he says. “But this forest is going to solve a whole bunch of other problems. It’s like when you walk into the doctor’s office and you’ve got this one problem, but the doctor actually says, ‘Hey, you’ve got all these other things you need to pay attention to.’”

When most people think of the U.S. Forest Service, it’s about fighting wildfires or managing vast expanses of woods out West. The agency has 193 million acres under its purview, including 154 national forests, 20 grasslands, and myriad other public lands.

But small patches like Stillmeadow are vital areas of study for the federal agency’s nine urban field stations. Baltimore’s Urban Field Office is the oldest city research station among them, and Baltimore is actually “one of the birthplaces of urban ecology,” explains Nancy Sonti, an urban ecologist who works alongside Grove studying the social and ecological benefits of trees in cities. Since 1997, Baltimore has been the subject of the Forest Service’s multi-decade Baltimore Ecosystem Study, which examines the city and its metropolitan area as a social-ecological system.

In New York City, where Sonti began her career studying street-tree growth and human engagement with urban green spaces, “I was used to thinking all green space was good,” she says. But vacant or neglected land does not provide the same advantages as a well-tended forest.

When a space becomes overrun by invasives or loses significant canopy, its utility diminishes in many regards, such as its ability to capture greenhouse gases like carbon or foster native plant species, which better thrive in local environments and sustain a biodiversity of native wildlife. Conversely, its function improves if it’s well-loved; trees can grow to their full potential, shade out invasives, and capture more storm-water in their root systems.

A growing body of research indicates that, aside from improving air quality, providing cooling in heat-absorbing cities, and mitigating damages caused by heavy rainstorms, trees can also simply make us happier and healthier. Studies have linked urban tree canopy to lower stress levels, reduced blood pressure, and increased participation in physical activity. A 2020 study by Cornell University researchers, for example, determined that spending as little as 10 minutes in natural spaces could make an impact on the moods and heart rates of college-aged students.

Stillmeadow has drawn so much federal interest because, with the hillside’s ecosystems disrupted by deer populations and invasive plants, as well the need for community stewardship, “this is representative of many forests in the Mid-Atlantic,” says Grove. For these reasons, the Forest Service and its partners are using this land as a test ground for different silvicultural techniques in urban settings. And so far, the findings have been promising.

“We’ve seen really incredible tree growth,” says Sonti, with the researchers trialing everything from where and when to how they’re planted. “We’re learning to sort of trust that the land is resilient, and we can regenerate biodiverse forest.”

Sociologically, there have been early lessons in building community networks, too. Partnerships are bearing fruit, like the Forest Service collaboration with Turnaround Tuesday, a local work-training nonprofit that graduated an inaugural class last summer of five young adult foresters, some of whom are now employed by Baltimore Tree Trust, or volunteer engagement with students from nearby schools, such as Beechfield and North Bend Elementary/Middle, Edmondson-West-side High, Friends, Gilman, and Mount Saint Joseph.

“It’s really different than saying this project is only going to be controlled by researchers,” says Sonti. “Everyone feels invested in its success.”

Martin was initially cautious about providing a de facto federal research lab on Stillmeadow’s grounds. There’s a sordid history of researchers unethically studying minority communities, particularly Black residents, using them as guinea pigs, profiting from findings, and disappearing without sharing the benefits—most infamously in the Baltimore tale of Johns Hopkins Medicine and Henrietta Lacks. But after several years, “everybody is learning healthily,” he says.

On a soggy December morning, Jenkins and Grove are gathered in the Stillmeadow parking lot, ready to show off what this jazz band had composed so far. With them is Lenwood Hayman, a Baltimore social psychologist recently hired by the Forest Service to serve as a liaison for the community.

“This was a shitshow,” says Grove, before gushing, “It looks so beautiful!”

There, in the parking lot, he gazes up at the newly landscaped south-facing hillside next to the church, now adorned with fresh plantings atop a shallow wall of rock repurposed from the 2018 flood. Volunteers spent long days here clearing out English ivy and porcelain berry, and planting new native species such as red oak and shadbush, and their work shows.

Today, while ambling through the grounds, Jenkins and Grove light up as they reflect on each part of the journey: the more than 100 dead ash trees cut down to start anew; the five plots of young local oak, disease-resistant elms, and willow and poplar trees, slowly helping to restore the decimated canopy; the 45 cubic yards of wood chips heaved up and poured out using wheelbarrows; the small garden at the foot of the hill, which in 2021 temporarily housed 850 tree saplings in two-gallon pots; even the stubbornly reappearing Japanese honeysuckle and wineberry down near a sitting area overlooking Maiden’s Choice.

“We can’t get behind with clearing the invasives,” Grove laments. “I’m gonna be out here every Saturday.”

The logs lining the trails are solemn remembrances of the earlier generations of ash trees killed by the boring beetle. Many bear serpentine scars from the larvae. These insects—an Asian pest now infamous, loathed, and detected by foresters in 36 states, plus Washington, D.C.—burrow into the trunks, eat away at tissues beneath the bark, and lay their offspring within. Tens of millions of ash trees have fallen victim nationwide, becoming like hollowed-out “straws with sawdust in them” before they ultimately snap in two, says Jenkins. Still others remain dead in place as existing habitat at Stillmeadow, easy to spot in the tree line with their severed trunks.

Grove likens those carefully placed trail markers to fallen soldiers. It’s a similar approach to that taken on the Green Road at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, where logs from deceased trees were incorporated into a therapeutic trail network for veterans, he says. “In this community, it’s a reminder of not just soldiers—it’s also your children, your brothers, your sisters in Baltimore who have been lost.”

And with its visibility along Frederick Avenue, the restored hillside serves as its own powerful symbol as well.

“Living in Baltimore, it’s much like any other city—there’s all kinds of chaos all over,” says Hayman, a former professor at Morgan State University’s School of Community Health and Policy. “But if we’re able to see examples of folks working in chaos and still finding purpose…then hopefully when folks drive by, they not only see a renewal of a forest, but they can find a renewal in their spirits.”

“IT’S NOT JUST THE EXPERTS THAT ARE GOING TO FIX THIS. WE ALL HAVE TO REALIZE THAT WE’RE DOING THIS TOGETHER.”

And it’s working, says Martin. The church has facilitated giveaways of hundreds of trees to local residents with Blue Water Baltimore. A communal journal placed in the park is filling up with observations and reflections. People are there every week now. And multiple generations of parishioners are deepening their ties, from wide-eyed youth taking field notes to seniors reconnecting with the land via activities like daytime nature walks and nighttime bird-watching “owl prowls.”

“Everybody is remembering being 10 years old in Georgia, Mississippi, going down to the Eastern Shore every summer,” says Martin, glowing. “It feels not just nostalgic, but so natural and normal.”

In this sense, Stillmeadow has become a symbiotic project. Martin’s church benefits from an improved ecosystem that’s more resilient, biodiverse, and inviting for its entire community. The Forest Service can apply research findings from this project to similar communities in other cities. And both partners and volunteers are learning firsthand about not only the history of environmental degradation in Black urban areas like this one, but also—hopefully— how to help reverse it during a time of ever-worsening climate change.

All signs indicate that periods of prolonged drought, as well as more intense rainfall and temperature swings, are part of the new normal in the Mid Atlantic, putting more stress on communities and their native ecosystems.

“This kind of dynamic is going to happen more frequently and more chaotically in more places,” says Jenkins. “The more communities can anticipate that, they can learn how to use their various resources—scientific, but also community resources—because they’re big, complicated problems and they take a lot of voices.”

Standing on the trail overlooking Maiden’s Choice, water gushing in from heavy rains the night before, Jenkins considers the interconnected nature of so many social challenges confronting Baltimore communities: cycles of poverty, stunted economic development, and ecological neglect. Fixing these problems calls for many minds and bodies working together. In this way, this forest restoration project is no different.

“It’s not just the experts that are going to fix this,” he says. “We all have to realize that we’re doing this together.”

“I have lived in one house in Baltimore for nearly 45 years. It has changed in that time, as I have—but somehow, it still remains the same… It is as much a part of me as my two hands. If I had to leave it, I’d be as certainly crippled as if I lost a leg.” —H.L. Mencken

The sofa arrived on a dreary, wet evening this past winter after residing in the Annapolis office of former Maryland Senate Majority Leader Mike Miller for the past decade. The rain and damp weather didn’t diminish Brigitte Fessenden’s enthusiasm one bit.

“It was wrapped in a plastic cover and carried in by two women,” says Fessenden, president of the Society to Preserve H.L. Mencken’s Legacy, with a smile. “I think Mencken would’ve enjoyed watching that while he smoked his cigar.”

Shuttered for 23 years and recently reopened pre-quarantine, the longtime home of the journalist, essayist, and cultural critic known as the Sage of Baltimore faces Union Square in southwest Baltimore. In fact, the prolific Mencken, author of such works as Happy Days, Notes on Democracy, and The American Language, did much of his entertaining in the sitting room, where the sofa offered respite to F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others.

“It’s one more piece of the puzzle,” says Fessenden, who has spent much of the past year meticulously researching, recollecting, and reinstalling Mencken’s original chairs, lamps, carpeting, bookshelves, piano, and paintings and placing everything back where it was when the former Baltimore Sun newsman lived in the three-story rowhome.

The attention to his study alone, a palpable step back in time, is striking. (It was here where Mencken’s “councils of war” plotted strategy against various government book-banning efforts and where Mencken persuaded Clarence Darrow to defend John Scopes in the Scopes Monkey Trial.) Mencken’s own lightweight, early 1900s L.C. Smith & Bros. typewriter, for example, has been restored to remarkable condition—evocative of a refurbished Stradivarius—with functioning type bars, spool, roller knob, and keys.

Nearby sits his favorite brand of thin replacement leads for his pencils, his sharpener, his memo pads—produced by the “Universal Atlas Cement Co.”—a box of Pilot brand staples, a bottle of Sheaffer Skrip ink, and five-cent mailing labels. His wooden chair is solid, upright, and worn—like those of all serious writers.

After the unexpected 1997 closure of Baltimore’s City Life Museums, which previously operated the Mencken House, the three-story brick home basically sat vacant. For the most part, the home’s belongings have been kept in storage by the Maryland Historical Society. Since his death in 1956, Mencken artifacts have scattered far and wide, including to the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s H.L. Mencken Room, private collectors, and the Smithsonian. Fessenden only recently discovered Mencken’s famous red suspenders in a wrongly marked box. “That made me happy,” she says with another smile.

That it took the city more than a dozen years to disperse a private $3-million bequest to fix the place up would not have surprised the acerbic Mencken. “Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under,” he once said.

Mencken’s legacy, of course, is complicated. There is no denying his stature as one of this country’s original thinkers. There is also no question he displayed anti-Semitism and used the racist pejoratives of the time. But Mencken also published black writers as founder of the groundbreaking American Mercury magazine. At the moment, there is the hope that the restoration and reopening of his home will not just attract visitors there, but will spark renewed interest in his work.

Going forward, there is additional hope the Mencken House can serve as a foundation for continued neighborhood development around the graceful, 2.5-acre city park at its doorstep. There’s even aspirations Mencken can become a Baltimore institution in the way the Edgar Allan Poe, whose home, of course, is a popular destination, has become inseparable from the city’s identity. But obstacles remain.

“Not all geniuses are movie-star good-looking,” says Jeff Jerome, former curator of the Poe House and now outreach coordinator with Mencken House, referring to the challenges of promoting the image of the portly, middleaged, sometimes dour, and often sarcastic writer. “At least Poe was weird-looking.”

Walking into a brand new restaurant always fills us with a sense of excitement and curiosity. I hope the food is good. I wonder if we’ll get a good waiter. I hope the check isn’t too steep at the end of the night.Thoughts start to flood your brain as your stomach growls and you make your way to the table.

My husband and I find our seats at a communal table with a group of strangers and are greeted by the smiling face of 18-year-old Cee-Cee. “Welcome to The Bowl,” she says, holding a mini-clipboard dressed in a Washington Redskins jersey. We quickly learn that this is a Super Bowl-themed restaurant and all the wait staff, considerably younger than your average restaurant workers, are dressed in jerseys and referee-style shirts.

The one-room dining hall is packed and it’s not just because of the great food. This restaurant is a hot spot in the Carrollton neighborhood of Baltimore because of its unique format. Only open on the last Sunday of the month, the menus and themes are always rotating—and it’s totally free. Not to mention, the menu items—like buffalo cauliflower bites, potato skins, mac n’cheese, and fried chicken—are all created and prepared by the children bustling around at the restaurant.

No, this is not your ordinary downtown dining experience. What began as a small group of people going out weekly into the poorest zip code in Maryland to feed the community has evolved into a program that helps to bring culinary skills, job opportunities, food resources, and mentorship to the youth of Southwest Baltimore. This monthly restaurant is just one way they make it all happen.

Housed in the the former Samuel F. B. Morse Elementary School is The Food Project, a subsidiary of local nonprofit UEmpower of Maryland that brings resources to underserved communities. The Food Project’s co-founder and director Michelle Suazo, together with her business partner chef Tom Koukoulis of Cafe Mezzanotte and other culinary professionals, set out to create a safe space for youth ages 8-18 to learn how to make healthy food and empower themselves at the same time.

With an idea in mind, along with willing volunteers, The Food Project was ready to get started in December 2016, but had no place to settle or call their own. That is until former councilwoman Rikki Spector came into the picture.

Right around that same time, Spector had been assaulted and carjacked by two young boys when she got a call from Suazo, asking if she would be willing to help the boys who robbed her. Suazo told Spector that she and her team had been trying for months to get help for the kids in the neighborhood where her assailants are from, but no one would listen. To anyone else, this would seem like a bold thing to ask of an 80-year-old woman who was just attacked, but lucky for Suazo, Spector was willing to step in.

“Apparently, they had been working with those boys for two years,” Spector said of UEmpower. “So we went to juvenile court to speak on their behalf. It didn’t take long to realize that the juvenile system is failing these kids and failing us.”

The median household income in the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood is less than $25,000. Nearly half of families live below the poverty line. Lead paint violations are more than three times the city average, and the children are nearly twice as likely to be murdered as anywhere else in Baltimore. Suazo found that, given the choice, the kids she encounters would prefer to be off the street and find other ways to make money. She just needed get them resources.

Spector, who is still well-connected in the city, remembered that when she was on the city council, Baltimore received a million-dollar tax bond to bring city schools “into the 21st century.” During this process, the city had 29 schools that were being declared surplus, and Samuel F.B. Morse was one of them.

“They were going to close this school and the rec center attached. That would have been a huge mistake,” Spector said. “I got my hands up in front of the mayor and the city council and said, ‘No, let us recycle this.’”

Suazo was able to get the space rent-free for the first year, complete with a kitchen, and a cafeteria. The rest of the building is home to the nonprofit “I’m Still Standing” that helps homeless veterans. After a major facelift with some fresh paint along with furniture and supplies donated by The Baltimore Sun, The Food Project now had a place to call home.

“Once we got the space, everything started to come together,” Suazo said. “It was really exciting to get all the kids together to help make this place their own.”

One of the first projects to come from their newly acquired kitchen was Seedy Nutty, a healthy snack made of peanuts, pecans, and pumpkin, sesame, and sunflower seeds. Seedy Nutty’s founder, Rosanne Skirble, discovered this treat during Passover visiting a cousin in Israel and, after marketing and selling herself for a few years, gifted the business to The Food Project to help with social enterprising for the children.

“My journey to retirement had left me with a business that turns out is a lot of hard work,” Skirble said. “I have sown the seeds for another entrepreneur who can take Seedy Nutty from its sweet spot among locals to a broader market looking for a healthier way to snack.”

This business is more than just the production of a snack. Suazo says the kids are learning about food safety, working on a team, marketing, and branding. The children do it all—they bake the snack, package it, and deliver it for resale. They even revamped the logo on the packaging making it unique, eye-catching, and a bit whimsical. Since moving under The Food Project, Seedy Nutty has grown and can be found at Whole Foods in Silver Spring, Center Stage, and Under Armour Brand House in Harbor East. But that is just the tip of iceberg.

“We also share a space with BeMoreGreen social enterprises, Healthy Juice People, Alkaline Bodies, and City Weeds who are teaching the kids how to make fresh-pressed juice, prepare meals, and grow microgreens,” Suazo said. “The idea is that the more social enterprises we can build out of the kitchen, the more jobs we can create for the community.”

When Suazo initially envisioned this program, she thought of food as a common ground that every person shared, no matter class or social status. With the help of volunteers, she provides not only a free meal each month, but also a weekly after-school educational enrichment for the attendees and also social services for the adults in the area.

“This program is unbelievable, if they had one of these in every corner of the city, it would make such a huge difference,” said Vicki Hannah, one of the volunteers at The Food Project. “This is a safe haven for the kids. There’s never been a place for these kids to gather and this fills that void.”

Each day, there is a different type of programming that explores a new aspect of the culinary industry. Mondays are reserved for learning about restaurant development and financial literacy, Tuesdays they host a guest chef like Catina Smith of Just Call Me Chef or Mente Lawson of Blackwall Hitch.

Wednesdays are a special treat for the children because they get to Be A Chef For A Day with chef Monica Lapenta, making pasta and sauces from scratch. This is also the day that behavioral therapist Jerel Wilson of the nonprofit “For My Kidz” comes to mentor the children with his weekly “Table Talks.”

“I help the kids stay engaged in something positive like workshops and also check up on their grades,” Wilson explained. “I mentor them and intervene on the negative stuff and try to help them through whatever issues that may arise. Living in this area can be really tough for these kids.”

Later in the week, local urban farmer and founder of City Weeds and #BeMoreGreen Dominic Nell, better known as Farmer Nell, comes and talks about the importance of nutrition and healthy living. Each week he brings in different fruits and vegetables and teaches kids about urban farming methods.

“Jerel and Farmer Nell are heaven-sent,” Suazo said. “The kids love them and they are also so good with them. They are great positive role models for the youth in this community who are typically used to seeing black men in a negative light.”

Fifteen-year-old Kalik Wise is one of those young men. His story is no different from the rest of the children that attend the program daily: he lives in a crime-ridden neighborhood with no real outlets except being outside or playing basketball. But he began coming to the program back in November and found that it was a great place to escape the troubles that he encounters in his neighborhood.

“I live in Southwest Baltimore and it’s just a lot of drama—shootings, drugs, people on drugs, all that stuff,” Wise said. “I keep coming back [to The Food Project] because it’s fun and we are learning cool stuff. If this wasn’t here, me and my friends would always be in trouble.”

Similarly, “Cee-Cee” Ward, our friendly server, began coming to the program just a month ago and has already been reaping the benefits. Every week, the volunteers help her with resume building and job searching. (She landed two job interviews as of press time.)

“I didn’t think I would like it when I first heard about it,” she said. “I had some friends that came and decided to check it out. It’s been a really big help for me. It’s also nice to get work experience so that, when I get a real job, I have the upperhand.”

Wise working at the restaurant. —E. Brady Robinson

Ward poses with her clipboard. —E. Brady Robinson

Ward, along with the nearly 30 other students in The Food Project, will get an opportunity to gain more experience with the next monthly restaurant on February 24. This month’s theme is called “Black Love,” in honor of Black History Month. As with previous restaurants, the children will use what they’ve learned in the program to create a menu and branding for their next group of patrons.

“It’s a gift that keeps on giving,” said Spector, who still works with her two assailants at The Food Project. “It’s been a journey. But this is what happens when you have resources for the kids in this neighborhood and allow them to take ownership.”

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.”