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By Will Morton Special To The Sun

May 1, 2005
John and Cindy Paré moved to Riverside Park a year ago and found a home only a 15-minutes walk to the Inner Harbor and even closer to many shops and restaurants. They also found a place where he could walk to work at the National Federation of the Blind.

In paying $270,000 for a fully renovated, two-story rowhouse on Webster Street, the Parés typify the newer residents of this South Baltimore neighborhood, where prices have shot up 40 percent since 2002. Even so, homes can run $100,000 cheaper than in Federal Hill, just a few blocks north. And they're still close to downtown, interstates and the essentials for urban life.

"We can walk to so many places, including the grocery store," said Cindy Paré, 54, a freelance photographer. "Even the vet."

Bounded roughly by Light Street, Fort Avenue, Key Highway and Interstate 95, the neighborhood has at its heart 28-acre Leone-Riverside Park. Nearness to downtown has made it a darling of developers, who are building half-million-dollar homes.

Meanwhile, longtime residents are selling their unrenovated homes to investors or young professionals and then paying cash for houses a few minutes away in Baltimore County, said Debbie Lamar, a Realtor with Long & Foster Real Estate Inc. "You can walk to the harbor, and you still feel like you're in a community," she said. "It's city living, but not city living."

Two- and three-story brick-front rowhouses, most built between 1880 and 1910, dominate the neighborhood. Formstone covered many of them in the mid-1900s. Last year, houses sold for $246,568 on average, up from $176,484 in 2002, according to Live Baltimore, an independent nonprofit organization that promotes living in the city.

"The houses have gotten very expensive. I couldn't afford to buy my house anymore," said Jeff Ratnow, 33, president of the Riverside Action Group neighborhood association.

The neighborhood of 5,500 residents is also getting younger, according to U.S. Census data. From 1990 to 2000, only the 25-to 34-year-old age group grew in number and now makes up nearly a third of the population.

Standard urban problems of crime, trash and tight parking top the list of complaints among both old and new residents.

"You have to have somebody on every block who will clean up each day, sometimes twice a day," said Carole Ludtke, 62, who moved from the neighborhood in 1964 but returned in the mid-1990s. "I can't understand paying $300,000 or $400,000 for a house and go in and out every day and see bottles and trash around your steps," she said.

The corner of Heath and Light streets is known as a drug marketplace, but the head of the neighborhood Citizens On Patrol group, which walks the area at night to deter crime, said drugs are less of a problem than when she moved to Riverside Park in 2002.

"It has gotten better because residents have gotten more active and have been working very well with the police department," said Shannon Sullivan, 29, a public relations consultant. Vehicle break-ins are the neighborhood's only real crime problem, she said.

Car break-ins are the most common crime, according to the city's Web site, followed by burglaries.

To cope with the parking crunch, the neighborhood association debated a plan to add angled parking to four blocks and make some streets one-way. Vocal opposition prompted the group to drop the plan, but many residents still complain. "Parking is a nightmare. It's very, very difficult," said Mary Braman, 52, who moved to the neighborhood in 2000.

Despite the neighborhood's problems, residential renovation and development continue at a brisk pace.

The former National Enameling & Stamping Co. building on Wells Street is being renovated into 190 one- and two-bedroom apartments renting for $1,000 to $1,400. The first apartments in the 1890s-era NESCO building are expected to open in a year, said Steven Bloom, partner with developer PMC Properties Group of Philadelphia. The complex will include a parking lot for about 250 cars.

Two other major developments in the neighborhood are targeting the other end of the real estate market.

Along Key Highway, developer Southern Land Co. is spending $30 million on 2.3 acres currently occupied by the Leonard Jed Co., an industrial supply company. Southern Land owner David Altfeld said he plans to demolish the building and replace it with 49 four-story townhouses with parking for four cars each. The developer also plans to widen Gittings Street and bury power lines.

On Webster Street, Cromwell Builders of Lutherville is constructing 12 three-story rowhouses, 10 of which have already sold for more than $500,000, owner Mike Ponsi said.

Residents say relations with developers and city planners have improved from a time when builders didn't even consider the neighborhood.

"We've really got a good rapport with the city," said Leeann Ratnow, 32, a seven-year resident and wife of the neighborhood association president. "Now developers are having to come to the community beforehand."

Standing at the center of the neighborhood is its best feature: Riverside Park itself. It features a large public swimming pool, basketball court, playing fields, playground, paths and a gazebo that looks a like a carousel whose animals have escaped.

Last year, the city replaced the dilapidated playground for about $100,000. Then in early February, someone set fire to some of the wooden equipment. Within two weeks, neighbors and nearby businesses donated about $7,000 to pay the insurance deductible, said Mary Braman, head of Friends of Riverside Park. The mayor's office later pledged to pay the deductible, said Braman, who plans to use the money for future playground needs.

Longtime resident Carole Ludtke praised the activism of her newer neighbors.

"What they're doing for this park, you never saw that in the '60s," she said. "Everyone expected the city to do that."