Grass is growing where Memorial Stadium once stood, but the state of nature won't last long. Next month, crews will begin readying the 30-acre site in Northeast Baltimore for senior housing and recreation space.

By fall, construction is expected to start on 71 units of subsidized housing for the elderly, followed next spring by work on a new YMCA. They are the first steps in a $47 million project known as Stadium Place that will change the look of 33rd Street.

Mayor Martin O'Malley led a pep rally of sorts yesterday for the project, whose developer gained control of the land from the city last week. In addition, O'Malley announced details of the plan for Ednor Gardens-Lakeside to join the mayor's Healthy Neighborhoods initiative. The public-private effort uses financial incentives to encourage improvements in neighborhoods considered vulnerable to decline.

"We believe this is going to be one of our great comeback stories and one of those areas that really becomes a hot asset in our housing market," O'Malley said afterward.

Earlier, the mayor had addressed a crowd of about 100 in front of neat rowhouses on 36th Street. Where residents once stared at the stadium's upper deck, they now gaze at the downtown skyline.

Thanks to a $105,000 grant from the Morris Goldseker Foundation, the neighborhood will be able to tap the expertise of a program manager and a rehabilitation-planning consultant, and will be able to take advantage of renovation incentives for improvements such as exterior painting. The Greater Homewood Community Corp. will oversee the effort.

Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano predicted that 72 houses will be spruced up over three years and property values will rise faster than the city average.

Meanwhile, Stadium Place should begin to take shape with the first apartments completed in the fall of next year and with the YMCA opening in early 2004.

Three years ago, then-Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke chose Govans Ecumenical Development Corp. to redevelop the site, spurring a debate over the appropriateness of its plans. A more recent debate arose over whether to preserve the front wall bearing the memorial inscription. O'Malley eventually ordered the wall demolished; some of the lettering is to be made part of a veterans memorial at Camden Yards.

Last week, GEDCO gained control of the land from the city under a $1-a-year lease. As pieces of Stadium Place are built - more than 400 residential units, many of them subsidized, are planned - the city will receive between $1.3 million and $1.5 million for the property, said Julia Pierson, GEDCO's executive director.