Rawlings-Blake honored with top community award in San Francisco
A greening program in East Baltimore is lauded by the U.S. Conference of Mayors as Stephanie Rawlings-Blake prepares to become the group’s next president
Above: The 2300 and 2400 blocks of East Eager Street (former site of the “FOREVER TOGETHER” mural) are part of a project that received national recognition yesterday.
On the eve of her induction as the 73rd president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was given top honors in San Francisco yesterday for proposing a neighborhood greening project.
Baltimore defeated more than 160 other cities to be selected for the award, sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank, that recognizes “exemplary leadership” by a city mayor in “promoting neighborhood stabilization, economic development and job creation efforts.”
The award and $300,000 went to “Growing Green Tracks,” a plan announced by Rawlings-Blake last November to improve the city’s notorious image along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor across East Baltimore. The funds will be used by Civic Works, one of the non-profits involved in the clean-up.
Yesterday’s award crystallized Rawlings-Blake’s success as a rising star within the mayors’ group as she has moved up its leadership ranks.
She was elected the group’s second vice president in 2013, its vice president in 2014, and under its bylaws, will automatically become president today on the final day of its 2015 conference in San Francisco, to serve a one-year term.
The long weekend conference, featuring speeches by President Barack Obama and by Democratic Party presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley, has offered the embattled mayor a welcome break from the events swirling in Baltimore.
Rawlings-Blake left Baltimore on Thursday with police union criticism still ringing in her ears. She will return to City Hall on Tuesday as the first African-American woman to head the Washington, D.C.-based group that lobbies for cities.
Mayor Rawlings-Blake applauds Hillary Clinton Saturday at U.S. Mayors Conference in San Francisco. (AP)
“Baltimore Compact”
For her inaugural address later today, Rawlings-Blake told The Baltimore Sun that she will call on mayors to come to Baltimore in September for a meeting to develop a bi-partisan agenda to address unemployment, poverty and other issues highlighted by the Freddie Gray riot in April.
She has given the agenda a name – the “Baltimore Compact” – that she said will be used to press Democratic and Republican presidential candidates for support during the 2016 election.
Other American mayors have been receptive to her idea, she told The Sun, explaining:
“Even with the reforms we put in place, the unrest still happened in Baltimore. They know it could happen anywhere. We’re having conversations about what else can we do as mayors to confront these underlying issues. It has to be a national conversation.”
The mayor tweets out the “great news” that Baltimore won a $300,000 award to improve the city’s looks for those traveling on Amtrak. (@MayorSRB)
Yesterday’s award involves a plan to create a landscaped “green corridor” on both sides of the elevated Amtrak tracks in East Baltimore by tearing down rowhouses that have been vacant for years.
Still in its early stages, the corridor is envisioned to be bordered by a reforested hillside, urban farmlands, meadow plantings and walkways to complement housing planned for the 88-acre East Baltimore Development Inc. (EBDI) project next to the Johns Hopkins Medical Complex.
An artist’s visualization of the greening plan given top honors by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. (Courtesy of Ayers Saint Gross)
A few parts of the project have been partly completed.
They include the tearing down of blighted rowhouses on the 2300 and 2400 blocks of East Eager Street – site of the controversial “FOREVER TOGETHER” mural spray-painted across the buildings’ facades as part of a $50,000 “Love Letter to Baltimore” project by New York graffiti artist Steve Powers.
The site of the mural is now a seeded lot that flanks the south side of Amtrak between Luzerne and Montford avenues.
Steve Powers’ mural lasted a few weeks on the rowhouses of East Eager Street before the properties were razed for the greening project. (June 2014 photo by Fern Shen)
Tom Cochran, executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said the community awards – funded by a $3 million grant by Wells Fargo – “gives the conference an opportunity to showcase positive change happening now in our cities that makes a positive difference in people’s lives.”
Discriminatory Loans
Wells Fargo has a history among minority communities in Baltimore.
In 2012, the bank paid a $7.5 million settlement to the city for steering minorities into sub-prime house loans given at a less favorable terms than to white borrowers. Many of these houses were foreclosed by the bank during the 2007-10 recession when families couldn’t pay the mortgage.
The settlement was part of a larger agreement between Wells Fargo, the country’s largest residential mortgage originator, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
The agreement also required Wells Fargo to pay about $15,000 each to about 200 Baltimore area minority borrowers who were steered to the sub-prime loans.
A press release from the USMC yesterday noted that mayors from several other cities were honored for their innovative community projects, including the mayors of Newark, N.J., Lima, Ohio, Little Rock, Ark., and West Sacramento, Calif.
The awards were presented by Martin Sundquist, executive director of the Wells Fargo Housing Foundation.