South Baltimore’s Westport neighborhood redeveloping vacant homes, revitalizing community
(Irit Skulnik)
Doug Wise remembers how things used to be in Westport. He’d sit on his front porch, talk to his neighbors, sometimes read a book, or help the neighborhood kids with their homework.
That was 13 years ago. Today, the 50-year-old Wise describes his South Baltimore neighborhood as “the Wild West at noon — it’s dead quiet or really tense.”
Many residents have left the area after industries along the waterfront shut down, leaving a community with fewer people and 129 vacant units, said Lisa Hodges-Hiken, the executive director of the Westport Community Economic Development Corporation. But things may be changing again.
The Westport CEDC, along with project partners, are working to bring the neighborhood back to what it once was by redeveloping 20 of the area’s vacant rowhomes on the waterfront side of Westport.
The project recently got a funding boost of $500,000 in early July as part of the Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Initiative. The initiative is a state grant totaling $50 million to go toward redeveloping Baltimore neighborhoods with high vacancy rates. Westport was one of 16 neighborhoods to receive funding…
One project partner is the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership, and for executive director Brad Rogers, the project is an opportunity to collaboratively “create an environment that is stable, good for people raising children, good for seniors…and that supports the residents who have been holding on to their neighborhood for a very long time,” he said.
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Rogers said the ONE Westport development and the rowhome renovations go hand-in-hand.
“Both projects need one another to survive,” Rogers said. “You don’t want to end up in a situation where on one side of the tracks there are brand new houses, and on the other side there’s vacancy.”
Wise imagines the future of Westport as a place where kids can ride their bikes up and down the streets. Hodges-Hiken imagines turning Annapolis Road into a main street with retail and commercial options. Allen imagines a day when she can meet the new homeowners.
“I would just invite people to consider Westport as a place to live, as a place to open up a small business, such as a restaurant, a barber shop,” Allen said. “We want to regrow and rebrand.”