Baltimore Creative Homesteads: A Concept for Discussion

I've been working on a concept that asks a fairly simple question: Could Baltimore use a small portion of its enormous inventory of vacant and underutilized property to create permanently affordable live/work communities for artists and creative workers, while creating homeownership, employment and business opportunities for existing neighborhood residents at the same time?

These are ideas I've been thinking about since my involvement with the East Stroudsburg Main Street program more than twenty years ago. Baltimore's combination of vacant property, extraordinary cultural institutions, thousands of working artists and hundreds of new arts graduates each year makes the possibilities particularly interesting.

The concept draws on experiences in places including Paducah, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Providence and Detroit, but asks what a distinctly Baltimore model might look like.

This isn't intended as a finished proposal. It's a concept paper intended to start a conversation, and I'd particularly like to hear from Baltimore elected officials, artists, musicians, performers, neighborhood residents, community-development people, housing advocates, developers and anyone who has experience with the City's vacant-property programs.

Stephen & Susan Washington