Milwaukee. -- City officials are understandably euphoric over Baltimore's success in securing one of the federal government's six $100 million urban-empowerment-zone grants. Mayor Schmoke will now be able to spend the next nine months launching project after project in the city's empowerment zones as he campaigns for a third term.
But in the long run, how much of a difference will the grant make to the future of city neighborhoods? Are we about to witness the dawning of "The Baltimore Renaissance -- Part Two?" Or will the new money merely raise expectations of neighborhood revitalization that cannot be met under current circumstances?
The infusion of $100 million will give an important boost to Baltimore's community-development efforts. The great virtue of the "empowerment zone" concept is that the resources will be geographically targeted, not dispersed and diluted throughout the city. The new funds will bolster existing revitalization efforts in neighborhoods like Sandtown-Winchester and around Johns Hopkins University Hospital in East Baltimore, perhaps enabling them to achieve a "critical mass" of reinvestment necessary to at least stabilize these communities.
However, given the magnitude of inner-city distress in Baltimore, $100 million is not a great deal of money. By contrast, the state and city are allocating $150 million for a new downtown Convention Center, and the city's latest capital budget includes more than $50 million for projects such as the Columbus Center and the Children's Museum. The point is not necessarily to argue against these other projects, but simply to point out that urban revitalization is an expensive proposition, and that $100 million will barely make a dent in Baltimore's pressing needs in housing, health care, public safety and employment.
Baltimore's recent history underscores just how difficult it is to turn neighborhoods around, even with healthy infusions of federal dollars. Since the early 1970s, two communities -- Park Heights and Upton -- have received more than $100 million (in current dollars) in urban-renewal funds, block grants, "action grants," and job-training expenditures. This figure does not include city-financed capital improvements, to say nothing of federal infrastructure expenditures such as the Metro stations built in both communities.
No one would deny that many worthwhile projects have been accomplished in both neighborhoods. But no one would seriously argue that either community has been successfully revitalized, let alone stabilized; in fact, by most indicators, both Park Heights and Upton are much worse off today than they were in 1970. The history of community development in Baltimore offers a sobering antidote to unrealistic expectations that $100 million will inaugurate a "renaissance" in the new empowerment zones.
Moreover, as Newt Gingrich and his colleagues prepare to enact their "Contract with America," it is clear that Baltimore will not experience a net infusion of $100 million in federal funds. Deep cuts in programs at HUD, the Economic Development Administration and other programs that aid cities will reduce the flow of federal dollars to Baltimore. In some ways, the chief impact in Baltimore of the new empowerment-zone grants will be to mitigate some of the pain here that other cities will experience from the new budgetary climate in Washington -- a welcome development for Baltimore, but hardly a propitious circumstance for true community revitalization here.
Finally, the new grant comes at a time when Baltimore's tax base -- and hence its revenue to fund municipal programs and services -- continues to erode. Property values downtown, the bright spot in the city's economy, have declined since 1992. The continuing exodus of middle-class tax payers threatens further contraction of the city's precarious revenue base. In the long run, unless the city can rebuild its attractiveness to private-sector employers, the empowerment-zone grant will be of little consequence.
Ever since his first run for mayor in 1987, Kurt Schmoke's unofficial political motto has been: "Don't raise expectations too high." Now, however, as a result of his successful grantsmanship, expectations will unavoidably soar, far exceeding what can realistically be done with the resources the city will actually possess over the next few years.
Ultimately, despite the justifiable euphoria over the empowerment-zones grant, Baltimore's core problems will remain: a troubled school system, inadequate public safety, a culture of poverty and a regional economy that continues to pull employment and taxpayers from the central city to the suburbs. The new federal funds undoubtedly will offer important benefits to targeted neighborhoods. But until a meaningful regional-development plan is put into place, which recognizes the centrality to metropolitan well-being of a healthy Baltimore city and redirects resources accordingly, the prospects for long-term revival in city neighborhoods remains bleak.
Marc V. Levine is director of the Center for Economic Development and Urban Studies Programs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is completing a book, "The Rise and Fall of the Baltimore Renaissance."