McCabe Avenue was once having a rough time with its neglected housing, but there is hope in the air this spring. Some 26 vacant properties along the street are being substantially renovated, thanks to the Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake. Its volunteers and the families coming to the homes are making a substantial difference.
McCabe's effort is part of a larger movement. It is an example of the collaboration focusing on a broad stretch of North Baltimore called the York Corridor Collective. Its component pieces represent a coalition of people and institutions all resolved to making a stronger place. Some may call it Govans, Woodbourne-McCabe, Radnor Winston or Belvedere Square. Look for Habitat's green and blue paint on its work. It's convincing.
York Road is one of Baltimore's traditionally strong transportation routes, but it's an equally strong residential spine, too. We tend to judge the street by its commerce and its array of retail businesses. But dozens of east-west streets intersect Greenmount Avenue and York Road, as the street is known above 42nd Street. It is one of the most populous and unpretentiously stable parts of the city. A rough patch can be only a few blocks from thriving successes. The community feels the loss of the supermarket it once had at York and Woodbourne.
I met with Christopher Forrest, secretary of the Winston Govans Neighborhood Improvement Association. He is also the York Road Partnership's president and spends night after night at the community meetings required to keep the momentum going.
"Now is the time to make it stronger and better," said Forrest, who is raising his five children with his wife, Antoinette, in one of Beaumont's large frame homes. "I am blessed to be on top of an organization that has so many great leaders within it."
Employed at Fleet Financial in Hunt Valley, he came to Baltimore from Baton Rouge, La., as a Coppin State University wrestler. He first rented a home on East 29th Street off Greenmount Avenue and has remained within the grasp of York Road.
Of that thoroughfare, which cuts through so many neighborhoods, he says, "Sometimes there is a divide; sometimes there is not."
He, and others like him, are committed to a goal to sustain the liveableness and the attractiveness of these neighborhoods.
One of those players is Loyola University Maryland, which owns three commercial properties along York Road, including the former Sherwood Ford auto dealership.
"As the York Road Initiative started to take shape, we met with the stakeholders and a theme emerged that we should look at the corridor as a zipper, something that pulls sides together, rather than something that demarcates. The zipper concept has been a driving force," said Terrence Sawyer, Loyola vice president for administration.
The Goldseker Foundation gave a grant that helped create a planning document. It's called The York Corridor Collective Urban Design and Commercial Strategies plan, a 133-page report that sets a vision for this part of Baltimore. That report is now being circulated among the interested parties, including city agencies. The plan's work boundaries are 39th Street on the south to Northern Parkway.
Sawyer said that Loyola is not just interested in street merchants, but rather focuses on the whole community — its schools, recreation, parks and what he calls "civic capacity." He sees the local schools, which include Govans and Guilford elementaries and the Tunbridge Charter School, as playing an important role in the area's future.
As the people in the collaborative have their hands full, other neighborhoods along Greenmount Avenue to the south are also making fabulous strides. In recent weeks, I've seen Harwood, Barclay and Greenmount West rebound.
"One of the great things about Baltimore is the heritage of its neighborhood associations," said the Rev. Brian F. Linnane, president of Loyola University Maryland.