Baltimore Community Association: Southwest Partnership – �鶹��Ƶ

Hollins Market Plaza

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:41 +0000

The Hollins Market neighborhood was originally known as the Hollins Park Community. Today, the neighborhood is known as Hollins Roundhouse. Hollins Market (a public market) is a contributing historic property within the Hollins Market Historic District. The public market was founded in 1836 by Joseph Newman, a piano manufacturer, and his brother Elias Newman. The market was destroyed in 1838 by a severe windstorm, and rebuilt, completed in 1839. Hollins Market takes its name from a prominent Baltimorean, John Hollins, who was instrumental in securing a modern water supply system for Baltimore City in 1804. Originally the public marketâ€s structured buildings and three blocks of street vendors made the market the biggest of its kind in Baltimore City. Now the market consists only of inside stalls. According to a healthy foods assessment of Baltimore City Public Markets there is an epidemic of chronic health problems faced by inner city residents including childhood and adult obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure due to poor food choices and the limited availability of healthy foods. Findings suggest several strategies to promote healthy eating including increasing the availability, affordability, and promotion of healthy foods and/or restricting or de-marketing unhealthy foods. During a site visit at Hollins Market, it appeared that large amounts of unhealthy prepared foods, produce, and meats are being sold and the market is only 50 percent occupied at the present time. The Hollins Plaza Project will address this chronic health epidemic by offering services at the public market that will improve food choice. Hollins Market Plaza will not be a stand-alone project. It will be integrated into a major redevelopment project in the Poppleton neighborhood, just a block north of the Hollins Market neighborhood. The Poppleton communityâ€s CenterWest Project will be an immense economic driver in the entire Southwest Baltimore community. This four-phase $800 million redevelopment project will include 1,700-1,800 housing units and 100,000-200,000 square feet of commercial space. The Hollins Market Plaza will start and finish before CenterWest is completed. The anticipated residents, employees and visitors of CenterWest will also be customers of Hollins Market Plaza. The communityâ€s housing stock is elegant, Italianate-style homes built for influential Baltimoreans and small alley houses on 30-foot wide streets built for working class and poorer Baltimoreans. The neighborhood is a few blocks away from Downtown, the Inner Harbor, major hospitals such as UMD Hospital System and Bon Secours, the Stadium District, and the University of Maryland BioPark.

Housing Opportunity in Southwest Baltimore

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:40 +0000

The housing group focused on a variety of factors or variables to assess housing issues in the Southwest Partnership neighborhoods. Our goal was to identify areas of lowest and highest housing opportunity in the Partnership area by analyzing variables related to the characteristics and quality of housing. These variables included housing conditions, year built, housing value, gross rent, cost burden, vacant housing, and vacant housing compared with median age. The resulting GIS maps are an opportunity index to determine the areas that are in need of attention. The group determined that the Mount Clare and Franklin Square areas are the hardest hit due to their high vacancy rates. In alignment with Southwest Partnershipâ€s goals, the group also determined that more affordable housing should be added to the Union Square area, as it has the highest median value. Lastly, the group determined the Partnership should assist its cost-burdened residents by connecting them to financial assistance programs, job training, or other opportunity programs to help them increase their income.

Southwest Partnership Project Economic Development Team

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:40 +0000

The Southwest Partnership has made significant progress in exploring the existing status of commercial development in their seven neighborhoods. This project will support this work using geospatial analysis and visualization to further the Southwest Partnershipâ€s economic development goals. Data provided by the Southwest Partnership on existing businesses was geocoded and represented on a map of the seven neighborhoods and their immediate surroundings. The businesses in the Southwest Partnership area were categorized according to a display-friendly schema. The three main layers presented are vacant parcels with commercial and industrial zoning, business locations by category, and transit lines and stops. Major observations include the residential nature of most northern and southern neighborhoods, with the most concentrated and varied business activity in the central Hollins Market neighborhood and its borders. This neighborhood is also well-served by transit, is commercially zoned, and contains multiple vacant properties, suggesting its suitability for future business development. The report concludes that geospatial portrayal of business locations and types can contribute to future economic development strategies in the Southwest Partnership. However, several further steps would help solidify the information base. More accurate and comprehensive business information with respect to operating status and confirmed type of business conducted at each location is necessary, likely by visual survey. Additionally, resident feedback about new businesses and locations will help validate the analysis presented here that summarized existing types, gaps, and possible locations for future enterprises. The user-friendly, online GIS format of the final map product should prove useful in both presenting the analysis to the Southwest Partnership and form a basis for future work.

Healthy and Safe Neighborhoods

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:40 +0000

For this project the Healthy and Safe Neighborhoods group worked with Baltimoreâ€s Southwest Partnership (SWP) to create mapping resources for their seven partnering neighborhoods. The primary focus was to investigate the health and safety of Southwest Baltimoreâ€s current neighborhood using the most recent ACS (American Community Survey) and Census Data as well as open source data provided by the City and the SWP, to determine if certain conditions influence one another. Like much of Baltimore, the Partnershipâ€s neighborhoods have been isolated and neglected due to white flight, racially restrictive zoning, redlining, and â€œdecades of disinvestment.â€1 By using GIS mapping to visualize the neighborhood conditions and GIS analysis to pinpoint areas of opportunity and concern, we hope to help SWP focus their resources to attract new residents and investment, particularly from its neighboring partners and anchor institutions. Recently planners have used GIS to map areas of opportunity and spatial mismatch where, for example, employment needs do not match resident skills. Using crime data provided by the SWP and the City, this report compares street conditions and demographics in Southwest Baltimore with contributing factors or variables that would affect the neighborhoodsâ€ health and safety. The following variables were mapped: racial demographics, median household income, vacant houses, crime density by type and time of day, urban tree canopy, street conditions, street lights, and illegal dumping sites. Analysis showed that the neighborhood trends reflected issues facing Baltimore City as a whole, so the study area was expanded to provide context and draw comparisons between the City and the SWP area. Both Baltimore City and the SWP area have overlapping clusters of aging infrastructure, low income, crime, and vacancies abutting areas of wealth and security. In the end, the limiting factors on the analysis were due to incomplete data sets, which SWP recognizes and continues to build.

Job Accessibility in Southwest Baltimore

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:40 +0000

Job accessibility is a question of how many jobs are available in a given area, and whether or not area residents are physically able to get to them via car, transit, or other modes of transportation. In addition, it is a question of whether these jobs are a â€œgood fitâ€ for the residents who have access to themâ€”whether or not these jobs offer wages that are competitive and whether or not these jobs require skills and experience consistent with employeesâ€ training and education. This study develops a preliminary understanding of the employment challenges and opportunities facing Southwest Partnership (SWP) residents by mapping selected Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) and American Community Survey (ACS) data related to employment and commuting. It finds that SWP residents live close to a substantial number of jobs at all wage and skill levels, with average commutes that are consistent with City-wide averages. Nevertheless there is room for improvement. In particular, SWP residents would benefit from programs that match local residents with nearby opportunities and improved multimodal transportation access. It concludes that the SWP should continue to highlight its potential as a central, relatively well-connected area where improvements in infrastructure and educational attainment levels can have a big impact. Targeted improvements in these areas could both enhance the quality of life for existing residents and attract new residents to the community.

Workforce Development in Southwest Baltimore: Mapping the Context, Challenges, and Opportunities

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:40 +0000

The Southwest Partnership (SWP) is a group of 13 partners striving to make â€œdeliberate, positive changesâ€ in the SWP area, which includes the neighborhoods of Barre Circle, Pigtown, Franklin Square, Hollins Market, Mount Clare, Poppleton, and Union Square. Workforce development is an important aspect of any urban area, and in order to meet SWPâ€s vision of an â€œawesome, healthy, architecturally beautiful, diverse, cohesive community of choice built on mutual respect and shared responsibility,â€ it is especially essential to develop and sustain training and educational opportunities, a healthy job market, and access to those jobs for local residents. Working in partnership with the SWP, the project team therefore addressed the topic of workforce development within the SWP area, and throughout the Baltimore City as a whole. We analyzed demographic factors that contribute to residentsâ€ ability to work, job and industry data that sets the context for the area and City, and existing programs from a variety of providers. The goal was to better define workforce development challenges, as well as identify local opportunities. Our research and maps revealed that residents of the SWP area do face more significant challenges than the residents of Baltimore City as a whole, but also revealed that there are existing opportunities that residents can access, which are presented in an interactive map now available to the public. This report also makes a series of recommendations and suggests further research that can help the SWP achieve its goals.

Anchor W, Baltimore

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:40 +0000

The Southwest Partnership neighborhoods located adjacent to downtown Baltimore, are Barre Circle, Franklin Square, Hollins Roundhouse, Mount Clare, Pigtown, Poppleton, and Union Square. Neighborhoods in Southwest Baltimore have a proud legacy of industrial enterprise. In the middle of the 20th century, dozens of factories, warehouses, and shops near Carroll Park employed thousands of West Baltimore residents. Unfortunately, shifts in traditional industry left long-term vacancies and abandonment of industrial properties, leading to a declining population in Southwest Baltimore.

SOWEBO Village

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:34 +0000

[...]

The Oasis at Druid Lake

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:34 +0000

[...]