An Audacious Plan for Baltimore’s Vacant Industrial Spaces

Reprinted from www.citylab.com

New “makers spaces” in a struggling neighborhood could bolster the local economy with small-scale manufacturing opportunities.

It was some tough timing for urban planner Andy Cook as he lined up a tour of vacant industrial properties in Southwest Baltimore late last month, trying to drum up interest among businesses and real estate developers.

The nation had been glued to news of the riots that followed the the death of Freddie Gray, who died in police custody. People were beginning to understand the despair present in Baltimore neighborhoods that residents themselves declared dead.

The Southwest Baltimore Industrial Opportunity Tour wound through similar landscapes of abandonment, in Mill Hill, Shipley Hill, and as far north as Rosemont, where big companies—and the smaller businesses of butchers, bakeries, and brewers—had long since left. It was audacious to suggest that a collection of 35 dilapidated buildings could somehow begin to fix what had been broken for so long.

Read the full article at http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/06/can-makers-spaces-revitalize-baltimore/396185/