CareFirst to join other tenants in former Target
‘Perfect match’ in West Baltimore will bring in 100 jobs to area
A lot has happened in the two years since Tim Regan went home to persuade his wife to let him buy the shuttered Target store at Mondawmin Mall in West Baltimore for a million dollars.
The redeveloped 127,000-square-foot building now houses TouchPoint Baltimore, the nonprofit that Regan — CEO of the construction company Whiting-Turner — founded with Exelon CEO Calvin Butler following the death of Freddie Gray from injuries suffered while in police custody and subsequent protests.
Edenbridge PACE, a Washington, D.C.based health care and support program designed to help seniors age in place, also is setting up an office in the former big-box store.
And, according to a news release Tuesday, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield — one of the country’s largest nonprofit health care organizations — plans to move into the development, which is called The Village at Mondawmin.
CareFirst said Tuesday that it will be leasing about 20,000 square feet of space at The Village to provide workforce development training to community members, as well as other health equity projects. Lester Davis, chief of staff to the nonprofit’s CEO, estimated that the location would add about 100 jobs to the community, including positions on the company’s sales, health access and finance teams.
The project is multiple years in the making, Davis said, dating back to when the health insurance company’s CEO, Brian Pieninck, met with community members to ask them about the area’s most pressing needs. While Pieninck and his colleagues expected community members to point to problems with access to health care, they instead spoke about the paucity of quality jobs in the area that were within walking distance.
Opening a CareFirst location at The Village is the “perfect match,” Davis said.
It will allow community members to walk to work, he said, and allow the health care nonprofit to dip into the area’s rich talent pool to fill open positions. He envisions the project helping people living in the surrounding neighborhoods become healthier, considering that, he said, 80% of someone’s health is determined by their environment and circumstance, rather than any other factor.
The first cohort of the nonprofit’s West Baltimore Workforce Development Program — which it leads with Coppin State University and the Center for Urban Families — just graduated last month, with students entering careers in community health and sales, among other fields.
Moving forward, Regan said, TouchPoint Empowerment Center LLC — the company he personally owns, which is leading the redevelopment efforts — plans to bring a primary care medical office to The Village, as well as a child care center and retail outlets.
Regan and his team are working closely with community leaders on the project, he said, and aim to help revitalize the neighborhoods surrounding Mondawmin Mall.
“This is not for the faint of heart,” Regan said of the project. “When you’re insisting on building something that is just beautiful and has appropriate amenities for what people in that community deserve, you have to break some old habits.
“Like, ‘Oh, you’re going to put something that nice in Mondawmin?’ Yes, I am, as a matter of fact. Yes, I am.”