Can Baltimore Pull Off Its $700 Million Makeover Without Displacing Residents?

Baltimore’s Board of Estimates, the body that governs city spending, approved an arrangement with the state this week for the $700 million neighborhood revitalization program proposed by Governor Larry Hogan last month. The city has already started demolishing vacant buildings for the project, which has a goal of taking down 4,000 blighted properties over the next four years, and then converting them to green spaces for developers to later build new homes and businesses on.

Much of the focus will be in West Baltimore, in investment-starved areas like Sandtown-Winchester, Freddie Gray’s neighborhood, which has gone through urban renewal processes in the past. Those processes failed to improve the lives of those neighborhoods. Governor Hogan invoked the “Baltimore Uprising” in his announcement of Project C.O.R.E. in January. The state is pulling together roughly $600 million in bonds, tax credits, and federal grants to incentivize companies to eventually build new homes and businesses.