Project Spotlight: 2008 NDC Baltimore Projects of the Year
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Each year the Neighborhood Design Center chooses projects that exemplify civic engagement, quality of design, and positive impact on the community.  This year we are proud to honor two Baltimore projects:  Lockerman-Bundy and the Northwood Plaza Shopping Center.

Show Way Project: Transforming Lockerman-Bundy Elementary School
Midtown Edmondson Avenue Improvement Association (MEAIA) has long advocated for increased opportunities for youth in their community.  At the urging of President John Hailey, after-school art classes were initiated at Lockerman-Bundy Elementary School in the fall of 2005.  Over a period of two years, the school was transformed through art in projects overseen by artist and OSI Community Fellow Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen and Irene Poulsen of NDC.  Click here to read more about this project and see additional images.

The project was selected because The Show Way murals and ceramics completed in June 2007 followed the Searching for New and Better Worlds murals series completed in June 2006.  Together, these art installations showcase artistic thought and talent of students and set a vibrant color scheme for the total renovation of the second floor of the school.  In addition, a stage was constructed to encourage performing arts.  The school, slated for closure in 2006, has now become a Parent Choice School for Pre-K and Kindergarten.



Learning Center before (above left) and after (above right), painting workshops (below)



Creating a New Main Street: Re-imagining Northwood Plaza Shopping Center
The Northwood Plaza Shopping Center in northeast Baltimore, built in the 1930s, is purported to be one of the first shopping centers of its type in Baltimore City - a strip mall built to cater to the new suburbs of the day.  However, after a lively heyday lasting through the 1960s, the plaza began a long slow decline as its department store anchor, theater and other retailers began relocating to the expanding Baltimore County suburbs.

In April 2007, a subcommittee of the Northwood Plaza Working Group (an ad-hoc group of community representatives formed to address concerns of vacancy, crime, sanitation, and safety at the shopping center) applied to NDC for design assistance, hoping to generate ideas for sprucing up the 20+/- acres site.  With NDC's guidance, the group quickly decided that the issues at the shopping center went beyond the scope of mere façade and parking lot improvements, needing instead to be addressed in a more holistic fashion. The group wanted to see the site fully revitalized, not simply "spot improved."

Two community workshops were held in January and April of 2008, as well as over a dozen workgroup and volunteer meetings.  Additionally, a community survey was developed which received hundreds of responses from neighborhoods surrounding the shopping center.  For more information about the project click here.

This project is recognized for successfully rallying participation from area residents in more than ten surrounding yet disparate neighborhoods, area business people, Morgan State faculty and students and City officials at two public meetings held in January and April 2008.  While none of these community stakeholders possess actual ownership or control over the site, they were motivated by their desire to have a community-driven plan in place so that as redevelopment opportunities arise, there would be very clear representations of the community’s vision ready and at hand.  After experiencing decades of neglect and decay at Northwood Plaza, community members felt greatly empowered by an inclusive, participatory design process and the ability to point to conceptual designs that maximize the exceptional physical and social amenities this location has to offer.




Images from the workshops (above) and the final master plan (below)