Baltimore's New Deal (Mayo: 2014, hotel, schools)

[Infinite_heights77]

*Interesting article from The City Paper.


Baltimore's New Deal: WPA level spending has the power to remake the city, but much of it might be going away.
Baltimore's New Deal (illustration by Jon Stollberg / November 25, 2014)

By Edward Ericson Jr. City Paper 3:14 p.m. EST, November 25, 2014

Baltimore City’s first manufacturing forum took place on Oct. 7 in the Hilton, a deluxe hotel the city spent $300 million to build, which has lost about $50 million since its 2008 opening.
Caron Brace, the Mayor’s press secretary, and Joanne Logan, who does the same job for the Baltimore Development Corporation, were seated at a table outside the main hall where a keynote panel was about to discuss Baltimore’s burgeoning constellation of small high-tech incubators and “maker spaces.”
In celebration of the city’s potential as a center of manufacturing, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake gave a speech, saying we “have everything we need in Baltimore to have strong manufacturing,” which after decades of devastating decline “is poised for a resurgence.”
The desperate need for jobs—and for training for these jobs—in these factories that for the most part do not yet exist here was the event’s subtext. That, and the underlying notion that Baltimore City has the infrastructure—the roads, the rails, the port, the electric grid, the schools, and the water and sewer works—that growing industrial companies need.

[pwduvall]

The article makes a lot of good points. In my own mind there is kind of a devils bargain since the choice is between getting disjointed poorly planned and coordinated projects vs. not getting disjointed poorly planned and coordinated projects. I'm hoping the project to build and repair lots of schools isn't killed or cut back too far.