Nonprofit leads effort to purchase arts space
No matter if you call the neighborhood Greenmount West or Station North, the active community alongside Green Mount Cemetery is one of the most resilient and busy parts of Baltimore today.
The neighborhood is a highly diverse mixture of longtime residents and artists. While it contains a stylish new brewery, the Guilford Hall, it also has a legacy community of numerous Section 8 rent assisted residents.
For many years, the blocks of Oliver, East Lanvale and Lafayette avenues sat unnoticed. A segment of “The Wire” was once filmed on Guilford Avenue here. Now, after years of careful renovation, three-story houses sell for $300,000 to $400,000.
Over the past 20 years, the 400 block of E. Oliver St. has encountered major change. Its traditional, old industrial uses were at the end of their life two decades ago.
The decaying, nearly dead industrial section was surrounded by long-term residents and other uses.
But it was a great location, near Penn Station and the Maryland Institute College of Art. Soon artists arrived for lofts and studio space. Then came new
A hand-created sign that reads “Reduce, Reuse, Renew Your Membership” hangs on a wall behind Lynn McCann, director of development at the community tool library called “Area 405,” which is now for sale.
schools, the Baltimore Design School and the Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School — as well as new housing at two versions of City Arts Apartments on Greenmount Avenue.
In 2001, a group of partners including Jim Vose and his wife, Stewart Watson and Steve Freel, came upon 405 E. Oliver, the vacant former C.M. Kemp industrial plant, which, at one time in a 19th century existence, had been a brewery.
They purchased it, cleaned it up and renamed it Area 405 after the street address.
Now the partners want to sell the property, which has matured into a keystone of the arts scene in Greenmount West-Station North.
While the artists who pay rent for studios in Area 405 are concerned about their futures, a substantial movement is in the works to preserve Area 405 as the place it has always been, or maybe better.
Leading an effort to purchase Area 405 is the Central Baltimore Partnership, a neighborhood-based nonprofit whose mission statement says it aims “to galvanize the renaissance of Central Baltimore.”
The partnership works with neighborhood associations from Oakenshawe in the north to Penn Station in the south.
The partnership is teaming up with developer Ernst Valery, who is also active in the parts of the community nearer Pennsylvania Station.
Ellen Janes, the director of the Central Baltimore Partnership, said, “The Central Baltimore Partnership incorporated the Station North Arts District under our umbrella.”
The 300 and 400 blocks of East Oliver
Street really define the area, Janes said.
“To us, they are some of the most treasured arts blocks in the city,” she said.
Central Baltimore Partnership has already made an appraisal on Area 405 and offered that price, according to Janes.
“We brought in architects Ziger/Snead to see if parts of the building that are unused can be made to complement what is there now,” she said.
“There are options — a live/work space for artists or new additional studios. We also want to keep the building active at street level — with the [Station North] Tool Library a central component and the events space.”
Janes is confident the group can raise the money to buy the space.
“We are getting a really promising response, including from state elected officials,” she said.
“Local foundations have reached out. The building has enough of an income to sustain its operations while improvements are being made. I’m excited. National curators come to Area 405 to meet with the artists there.”