Park Heights: Exploring Baltimore’s neighborhoods
“You might have heard today that there were three shootings that happened over there on Cold Spring. Part of that stuff is what we’re trying to weed out. That element, as long as drugs continue to rule …”
Julius “Julio” Colon is aware of the perception – and, as noted in the quote above, the reality – of Park Heights. In his role as president and CEO of Park Heights Renaissance, Colon sees evidence of urban blight every day. Vacant buildings throughout the neighborhood. Forty-some liquor stores dotting long stretches of Park Heights Avenue and Reisterstown Road. Significantly higher-than-average rates of teen pregnancy, HIV infection and recidivism among residents.
- Vacant rowhomes are plastered with hopeful campaign slogans from the Park Heights Renaissance firm and artwork in the 4700 block of Park Heights Avenue. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- Rowhomes along Dupont Avenue in Park Heights. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- Storefronts after hours in the 5200 block of Park Heights Avenue. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- Dorothy O’Bannon and her daughter Labree O’Bannon, 4, watch the demolition of the 4900 block of Denmore Avenue in the Park Heights neighborhood. The area will become the CC Jackson Park and Athletic Fields. Ms. O’Bannon is president of the nearby Langston Hughes Neighborhood Association. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun/Dec. 14, 2011)
- As with many vacants in Park Heights, and around the city, one or two in between will be occupied while the others are boarded up and blocked off. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- Forty-some liquor stores sit along stretches of Park Heights Avenue and Reisterstown Road, more than most areas of the city per-capita. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- (Sun archives)
- Orthodox Jews walk past the Chanukah House on Park Heights Avenue on their way to synagogue on Dec. 15, 2006. Every year, the owners of the house make their home into a Chanukah attraction with traditional symbols and fun modern displays like “Herschel Harry Potter and his Golden Dreidel Snitch.” (Sarah Nix /Baltimore Sun)
- The example block of Park PHR partnered with Baltimore’s Affordable Housing Corporation on Monteverde, a $30 million project that resulted in a 301-unit apartment building for “seniors and non-elderly disabled residents.” Up the block, about 10 formerly abandoned and dilapidated rowhomes were renovated inside and out. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- Pockets of Park Heights have undergone redevelopment through the years to demolish and rebuild rowhomes. Here, one remains boarded up while others have been revamped. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- A shopping center in the 4400 block of Park Heights Avenue. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun)
- Vacant rowhomes are plastered with hopeful campaign slogans from the Park Heights Renaissance firm and artwork in the 4700 block of Park Heights Avenue. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- Vacant rowhomes are plastered with hopeful campaign slogans from the Park Heights Renaissance firm and artwork in the 4700 block of Park Heights Avenue. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- A vacant lot turned into a community garden through Park Heights Renaissance, across from St. Ambrose Outreach Center on Park Heights Avenue. (Kalani Gordon/Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- A bicycle rider rides past a Drug Free Zone sign posted on a light pole at the corner of Woodland and Park Heights Avenues. The intersection is a known and active drug corner and is a hangout for area drug dealers. (Photo: Garo Lachinian/Baltimore Sun/August 1963)
- Police speak with men on a porch at the corner of Park Heights and Woodland Avenue, a historically drug-ridden corner of the neighborhood. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- Housepainters at work on a rowhouse in the 4200 block of Park Heights Avenue. (Baltimore Sun file/1972)
- A worker paints trim at a newly-revamped rowhome owned and redeveloped by Park Heights Renaissance. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- A rowhome along Park Heights Avenue and adjacent vacant lots. (Kalani Gordon/The Baltimore Sun/August 2014)
- A demolition contractor surveys homes waiting for demolition on Denmore Av, up the road from Park Heights Elementary School / CC Jackson Recreation Center, where money for slots proceeds are slated to benefit the Park Heights community near Pimlico Race Course Tuesday, June 14, 2011. (Karl Merton Ferron / Baltimore Sun Staff)
- The 5200 block of Park Heights Avenue as seen in 1973. (Baltimore Sun file)
- This is a view of the 3400 block of Park Heights Avenue, where $600,000 was supposedly spent on new facades. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun/Aug. 1, 2012)
- Volunteers work to transform a vacant lot into a community garden through Baltimore Reads, a literacy advocacy group. The garden, called the Literacy Garden, across from St. Ambrose Outreach Center on Park Heights Avenue, will provide a place for people to come to read. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun/April 2012)
- Elneeta Jones, left, principal of Pimlico Elementary/Middle School, talks with Jackie Peterson, right, community resource manager, in the school’s new Urban Garden, a hoop house (greenhouse) on the grounds of Pimlico Elementary/Middle School in the Park Heights area of the city. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun/May 9, 2011)
- Restoration Gardens opens to homeless young people between the ages of 18-24. The 43 unit project developed by AIRS/Empire Homes of Maryland (EHM) is the former site of the Talmudical Academy in Park Heights. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun/ Dec. 17, 2010)
- The Pimlico Race Course, just north of Central Park Heights. (Baltimore Sun file photo)
- The Pimlico Race Course, just north of Central Park Heights. (Baltimore Sun file photo)
- A new plan for a much-needed revitalization of Park Heights is in the works. The blighted condition of the area is apparent from the streets around Pimlico Elementary School. (Elizabeth Malby/Baltimore Sun/11/23/04)
- Youths play basketball at Park Heights Elementary School / CC Jackson Recreation Center, where money for slots proceeds are slated to benefit the Park Heights community near Pimlico Race Course Tuesday, June 14, 2011. (Karl Merton Ferron / Baltimore Sun Staff)
- A new plan for a much-needed revitalization of Park Heights is in the works. The blighted condition of the area is apparent from the streets around Pimlico Elementary School such as Pimlico Rd. and Virginia Ave. (Elizabeth Malby/Baltimore Sun/11/23/04)
- The Caribbean Festival at Druid Hill Park kicks off with a parade on Park Heights Avenue. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun/July 2010)
- The Caribbean Festival at Druid Hill Park kicks off with a parade on Park Heights Avenue. Dancers with the M & M Band, the winning band of last year’s parade, perform during the rain along the parade route. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun file/7/10/10)
- The 3600 block of Park Heights Avenue where officials in 1980 wanted to place storefronts. (Baltimore Sun file/The Caribbean Festival at Druid Hill Park kicks off with a parade on Park Heights Avenue. Dancers with the M & M Band, the winning band of last year’s parade, perform during the rain along the parade route. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun file/7/10/10)
- The heavily commercial Pimlico neighborhood, seen in Feb. 1972. (Baltimore Sun file photo)
- The Park Heights fire company, whose building is still standing today. (Baltimore Sun file photo)
Central Park Heights
» Border streets: Reisterstown Road/Pimlico Road/Belvedere Avenue/Keyworth Avenue
» Neighboring areas: Pimlico, Arlington, Glen, Greenspring, Cylburn, Towanda-Grantley, Park Circle
» More coverage: Preakness and Pimlico, more news from Park Heights
Those are Park Heights’ realities. It’s Colon’s job with PHR and part of the nonprofit’s mission to change those realities, revitalizing the neighborhood through funding from private foundations, corporations and slots money. The Pimlico Community Development Authority, which receives slots and racetrack impact funds, recommends to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake how those funds should be allocated. Colon is tasked with seeing those recommendations through in the Park Heights Master Plan area (Park Circle to Northern Parkway, Wabash to Greenspring Avenue). There is plenty of work to do in one of Baltimore’s most historic neighborhoods.
“We have to change the image, we have to market more, the positive things in this community and what the resources are,” said Colon, a New York City native with a master’s degree in real estate finance and management from NYU. “And of course we have to eliminate the bad element, but there’s that everywhere in this city. The thing is, there is progress being made.”
Much of that progress has been made off the main streets of Park Heights. On Violet Avenue, PHR partnered with Baltimore’s Affordable Housing Corporation on Monteverde, a $30 million project that resulted in a 301-unit apartment building for “seniors and non-elderly disabled residents.” Up the block, about 10 formerly abandoned and dilapidated rowhomes were renovated inside and out.
“This is the example that we’re looking to follow in Park Heights by revitalizing blocks,” Colon said. “What you find in Park Heights is pockets of abandonment. It is scattered throughout, but it’s not like every part of this particular target area. We’re looking at doing cluster developments – bringing enough sites together so that we can put it out to the city as an RFP to get a developer to redevelop the area.”
Several blocks away, the Jean Yarborough Renaissance Gardens – a 60-unit, income-restricted apartment for seniors – was opened in January. It represented collaboration between the African-American and Jewish populations in the neighborhood, the latter of which is mostly located above Northern Parkway and outside the Park Heights Master Plan. The building was erected on the site of The Ranch, an area of Section 8 housing that was notorious for violence and drug-related crime.
Back on the main stretch, the 4600, 4700 and 4800 blocks of Park Heights Avenue, on the east and west sides of the street, are preparing for demolition over the next two years followed by eventual reconstruction. Colon has already begun the acquisition process.
“People have been waiting for this,” he said. “See some of these houses, they’re worth what, 30, 40 thousand dollars? Some people leave with about on average $150,000 in relocation. [They say], ‘I’m going to buy a house, move into a major redevelopment area, and I’ve got 150 grand. What an investment!’”
Other highlights of the neighborhood include a seven-acre park and turf field, built in partnership with the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, and the Lillie May Carroll Jackson Charter School, which is set to open in the old St. Ambrose Catholic School building. Improvements are also in the works or already in progress at the Baltimore Junior Academy, Pimlico Elementary/Middle and Arlington Elementary/Middle.
Though the development area still has major anchor institutions in Pimlico Race Course (opened in 1870), Sinai Hospital (built as the Hebrew Hospital and Asylum in 1866) and nearby Cylburn Arboretum (1954), the area has undergone major transformation through the decades. What was once one of Baltimore’s great ethnic melting pots is now almost completely segregated.
Colon hopes that improved schools, reconstruction and redevelopment will help to attract new residents, noting that 41 homes were purchased in the area in 2013. The neighborhood is considered a food desert, but some commercial development has taken place, most notably at the Hilltop Shopping Center, which has a Subway, a Little Caesars Pizza and a PNC Bank, in addition to the city’s lone MVA location.
There’s still much to be done throughout Park Heights, but Colon believes PHR is on the right track in its development efforts, and the neighborhood has turned a corner.
“I’m very optimistic. This is going to be just like the Lower East Side,” said Colon, referring to his old Manhattan stomping grounds. “When you come over here, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, and I’m retired and drinking margaritas on the beach, you’re going to be saying, ‘Wow, why didn’t I invest in Park Heights?’”
This is part of an ongoing series from The Baltimore Sun about the history, culture, and future of Baltimore’s neighborhoods. Have a suggestion for what neighborhood to explore next? Let us know.