Biddle Street Homes
A block away from the Hoen Lithograph Campus, the 2200 Block of E Biddle Street presented an opportunity to return 9 homes to first-time homebuyers and generate critical pathways to employment for Baltimore residents.
Development
Cross Street Partners, City Life Historic Properties
General Contractor
Cross Street Partners
Design
Sgodley Architects, DesignHAND Architects,
Financing
Baltimore Community Lending
Just how much opportunity is sitting on a block of vacant rowhomes?
What if we could bring those vacant structures back to life – and at the same time:
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- Return homeowners to a community suffering from decades of urban flight.
- Support down-payment assistance for low-income or first-time homebuyers.
- Fill an opportunity gap and develop critical on-the-job training for individuals looking to break into the construction trades.
These were the questions posed when Cross Street Partners, City Life Historic Properties, and Project JumpStart joined forces at the Hoen Lithograph Campus in East Baltimore. What emerged was a first-of-its-kind onsite workforce training program for recent graduates of JumpStart’s pre-apprenticeship construction training.
Building a block back – while training the next generation of trades workers
The causes of blocks of blight are numerous, complex, and historic. What challenges the solutions are high construction costs and low property values. With little potential for profit, small investors and aspiring homeowners cannot justify the rehabilitation – so the blocks sit, their condition worsens, and the vacuum sucks surrounding blocks into its vortex.
The Biddle Street Homes are a for-sale housing redevelopment consisting of 9 vacant rowhouses on the 2200 Block of E Biddle St. Following our East Baltimore Homeownership Collaborative model, the project was designed to generate affordable ownership opportunities for low-income and first-time homebuyers. The Biddle Street Homes also provided the prototype and launchpad for an onsite workforce training partnership between Cross Street and Project JumpStart, a pre-apprenticeship construction training program serving Baltimore City residents and returned citizens facing job insecurity.
