Entrepreneurs plot cafes in perennially up-and-coming Reservoir Hill (Baltimore, Mount Vernon: transplants, real estate)

[Infinite_heights77]

*Yes, I do enjoy cafes very much!!! Question? Why did it take so long?

Entrepreneurs plot cafes in perennially up-and-coming Reservoir Hill - Baltimore Sun

Entrepreneurs plot cafes in perennially up-and-coming Reservoir Hill


Caption Renovations in Reservoir Hill Lloyd Fox / Baltimore Sun
Eli Lopatin, with the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council, walks through the 2300 block of Callow Ave., where homes are being renovated.
Caption Renovations in Reservoir Hill Lloyd Fox / Baltimore Sun
Homes in the 2300 block of Callow Ave. in Reservoir Hill are being renovated.

By Natalie Sherman Baltimore Suncontact the reporter

Two coffee shops in Reservoir Hill? 20 years ago, it would have been a pipedream.
By this time next year, Reservoir Hill could have not one, but two small neighborhood cafes — a new step for a neighborhood tagged "up-and-coming" for more than 20 years.
This month, a family of out-of-state transplants signed a lease to open a coffee shop on Madison Avenue, hoping for an October launch. Farther east on Whitelock Street, the owners of The Bun Shop in Mount Vernon are exploring plans for a soup-and-sandwich place at Tune Up City, a former auto shop.
Two decades ago, when the city decided that razing Reservoir Hill's commercial strip was the only way to quash the neighborhood's thriving drug trade, such plans might have seemed like a pipe dream. But some see emerging signs of opportunity.
Neighborhoods of Baltimore

"In the time I've been here, I've seen a steady, if not super-quick, influx of people," said Minh Vo, 30, who started The Bun Shop in Mount Vernon in 2012 with friends and has lived in Reservoir Hill since he moved to Baltimore about five years ago. "I'm confident that if we can make a really nice space … we can bring people into the neighborhood to eat there."
The city and other nonprofits have steered money to Reservoir Hill for years, hoping to prime a market-led revitalization of a neighborhood with large, historic homes and a central location, tucked between Druid Hill Park to the north and Bolton Hill to the south.
Improvements have been slow to come.
About a quarter of the neighborhood's housing stock stood vacant in 2010 after the crowd of investors who flocked to the neighborhood during the housing boom dwindled. Crime remains an issue. Since 2014, there have been three murders and three shootings in the neighborhood, including a shooting on a playground earlier this month.

But the neighborhood, which developed in the late 1800s for wealthy Jewish families and later fell into decline, is slowly changing.
Between 2009 and 2013, population in the neighborhood's two census tracts increased 5.5 percent, according to American Community Survey estimates. More white people have moved in, as have more people with college degrees.
Since 2010, the number of vacant homes has dropped by more than 180. The median monthly rent topped $800 in 2013, up by an average of nearly $200. Median income — though still lower than $30,000 — also increased.
Where the city demolished commercial properties in the 1990s, there's now a park and urban farm.
Richard Gwynallen, who started working for the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council in 2003, said he's always been uncomfortable when people called the neighborhood "up-and-coming" but he believes it has changed for the better.
Homes in the 2300 block of Callow Ave. are being renovated. (Lloyd Fox / Baltimore Sun)

"From when I came to now, the community is a ton cleaner, there's a whole lot more to do," he said. "People are coming, they're having their children, they're staying. Those are all indications of successful activity."
Martin "Marty" Cadogan, a 53-year-old real estate attorney turned investor, bought his first apartment building in Reservoir Hill in 2010 for $420,000 after a foreclosure and now owns 47 units in the neighborhood, charging more than $1,000 a month for two-bedroom, one-bathroom units. As rents rise elsewhere, Reservoir Hill has become more popular, he said.
"Reservoir Hill is still affordable, and once people come into the neighborhood, they really fall in love," said Cadogan, who works with partners he declined to name.

[heavyinthestreets]

nice

[bus man]

Originally Posted by Infinite_heights77

Eli Lopatin, with the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council, walks through the 2300 block of Callow Ave., where homes are being renovated.

That one in the middle has quite a skylight!

Originally Posted by Infinite_heights77

Farther east on Whitelock Street, the owners of The Bun Shop in Mount Vernon are exploring plans for a soup-and-sandwich place at Tune Up City, a former auto shop. [. . .]
"In the time I've been here, I've seen a steady, if not super-quick, influx of people," said Minh Vo, 30, who started The Bun Shop in Mount Vernon in 2012 with friends and has lived in Reservoir Hill since he moved to Baltimore about five years ago.

It's been many years since I've been there, but the last time I had anything to do with Whitelock Street, my recollection was that it had been completely abandoned. I had no idea that anyone lived there, much less did so by choice.

[Sunflowery]

Infinite, I'm not sure if this is gentrification but neighborhood re-development (especially in Baltimore) takes time.

[BMoreJuice]

My favorite neighborhood, its about time. I just hope the housing stock won't sky rocket by the time I want to become a homeowner.

[pwduvall]

Originally Posted by Sunflowery

Infinite, I'm not sure if this is gentrification but neighborhood re-development (especially in Baltimore) takes time.

The large size of these houses points to only two viable uses. Assuming that rehab and maintenance costs force prices of no less than $300,000 per house, you end up with either gentry or with people with lower incomes living in flats. A mixture of flats and gentry would probably work very well so long as the flats are well managed and maintained. Slumlords that get the last little bit of use out of poorly maintained houses, and then abandon them, lead to the kind of neighborhood that Reservoir Hill actually was 15 or 20 years ago.

Very low housing costs can be obtained via a lack of maintenance and modernization. But that dynamic can not last forever.

[Infinite_heights77]

It's not like that in other cities, Baltimore is just SLOW!!!

Originally Posted by Sunflowery

Infinite, I'm not sure if this is gentrification but neighborhood re-development (especially in Baltimore) takes time.

[Infinite_heights77]

When I first came back to Baltimore, I moved over to Eutaw Place. It is close to an old/pre-gentrified Brooklyn, NY neighborhood feel than anywhere else in the city imho.

[Sunflowery]

Originally Posted by Infinite_heights77

It's not like that in other cities, Baltimore is just SLOW!!!

So true.