Baltimore’s hospital for Yellow Cabs with broken mufflers and sprung seat springs was a shabby brick compound on East Preston Street and Greenmount Avenue.
It sat immediately south of the Amtrak and MARC train tracks in a gritty little dip in the land where bus lines crossed, traffic could be heavy and anyone superstitious about cemeteries left fast. Green Mount Cemetery’s south wall is just up the street.
Who knew that the property at 506 E. Preston Street, which had served the cab company since 1925, was actually an 1891 industrial behemoth? This was once a place where scores of workers turned out giant metal saws, machinery for the gold prospectors and World War I munitions.
A construction crew from Southway Builders has cleaned out a complex of sooty brick buildings and is getting ready to strengthen a huge glass roof. This repair comes not a moment too soon. The aged glass panels and their underpinnings appear fragile and ready for an overhaul.
Daylight once illuminated a vast floor space for the machinists and metalworkers who made sewing machines, railroad industry and plumbing parts here.
The place had a new name, The Machine Works, and is getting a $25 million shot in the arm. In about a year, it will become a new small business hub, where young firms can start to make something in a spot offering affordable rents.
Keep your eye on this part of the city. It’s called Johnston Square, and a hardscrabble neighborhood is being rebuilt, house by house, block by block.
A new apartment house, The Hammond, and a new Enoch Pratt Free Library branch will be ready this fall, one block south of The Machine Works. Vacant houses are disappearing; new parks have been and will be added; a section of East Biddle Street is now a housing complex for young teachers.
A business called Early Charm, whose web page describes the business as “a venture studio dedicated to transforming science into businesses,” will become the first tenant in The Machine Works.
The property is being developed by a joint venture partnership between ReBUILD Metro and MCB Real Estate. The goal is to get a new center established for what is being called “innovative manufacturers, producers, makers and creatives.”
The Machine Works rebuild is a component of the heavy lifting performed by ReBUILD Metro, in partnership with Rebuild Johnston Square Neighborhood Organization, to eliminate the abandonment of rowhouses and derelict industrial buildings.
Sean Closkey, ReBUILD Metro’s president, while giving a tour of the old machine works/cab shop, noted that his organization has reduced the number of vacant houses in this part of Baltimore from 1,300 to 150.
“We’re starting work on vacants on Valley Street and Homewood Avenue,” Closkey said, as he displayed photographs of massive trees embedded within the walls of vacant houses on nearby Mura Street. “The trees are holding these houses up.”
His partner at The Machine Works is P. David Bramble, managing partner in MCB Real Estate, who gets a lot of press for his Harborplace proposal but has been a ReBUILD Metro board member for many years and is a believer in the mission and big picture here.
“People talk about the vacant house and building problem but ReBUILD Metro is showing how this issue is being resolved,” Bramble said as he toured the building one day this week. “This is probably some of the most important work being done in Baltimore.”
It’s taken almost 15 years for the block-by-block work to transform the Broadway East, Oliver and Johnston Square neighborhoods. The results are blocks of houses with new roofs, windows, doors offered at affordable prices.
“MCB and ReBUILD are showing what serious community investment looks like. Redeveloping a historic site to bring clean, safe manufacturing jobs into a welcoming neighborhood ready to grow,” said Ken Malone, of Early Charm.
The goal is to make 508 E. Preston into a “historic factory complex for office and manufacturing uses, as well as midsize maker studios. Targeted end-users include small enterprises seeking a community-oriented environment, micro-businesses outgrowing shared spaces, manufacturers, artisans and nonprofits.”
If anyone doubts artisans and makers are working in this neighborhood, just walk a few doors north on Greenmount Avenue to the Open Works building. It houses a campus of busy creatives who one day may want to go corporate and found the next Under Armour on Preston Street.
The Maryland Historical Trust awarded The Machine Works initiative $5 million in State Historic Revitalization Tax Credits. The site has also been assisted by the Maryland and Baltimore City departments of Housing and Community Development.
Have a news tip? Contact Jacques Kelly at jkelly@baltsun.com and 410-332-6570.
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