The Station North Arts and Entertainment District, one of the "middle" neighborhoods cited in the study.

According to a recent study by the Goldseker Foundation, “Great Neighborhoods, Great City: Strategies for the 2010s”, the secret to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s goal of attracting 10,000 new families (which would equal 22,500 new people) to Baltimore by 2022 hinges on neighborhoods. Specifically, those neighborhoods the study calls “in the middle”: neither totally stable, nor totally free of “distressed block groups.” Focusing improvement efforts on these neighborhoods, so the logic goes, will give us the most bang for buck, as they are the neighborhoods that combine room for growth with likelihood for growth.

This is a strategy that the Goldseker Foundation began advocating more than a decade before Rawlings-Blake declared her ambitious goal in December. So far, results have been mixed. Over the past ten years some of these neighborhoods “in the middle” have declined to the point that all of their blocks are either “distressed or middle market stressed block groups.” These neighborhoods are Better Waverly, Charles North, Coldstream/Homestead/Montebello, Coppin Heights/Ash-Co-East, Curtis Bay, Cylburn, Garwyn Oaks, and Mondawmin.

On the other hand, some middle neighborhoods have recovered to the point of having no distressed block groups, including Bayview, Ednor Gardens-Lakeside, Glen, Greektown, Lauraville, Levindale, Mid-Town Belvedere, Moravia-Walther, Morgan Park, Mt. Vernon, Old Goucher, Seton Hill, and Watherson. Read More →