Ambitious plans for ‘Spanish Town’ afoot

The 200 block of Broadway is at the heart of Baltimore’s Spanish Town neighborhood in North Fells Point. Plans would make it a tourist destination.

“The area is just booming in terms of Hispanic population,” said Javier Bustamante, president and CEO of Spanish Town Community Development LLC. “We want an authentic development.”

Restaurants serving the cuisine of Spain, El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as food markets and other retail stores line the streets of “Spanish Town” — bounded by Baltimore Street, Patterson Park, Fleet Street and Central Avenue.

Luis Borunda, president of the Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said it’s important to develop the area for economic, historic and aesthetic purposes.

“What’s happened is that you’ve got Johns Hopkins on one end and Fells Point on the other end, and in between what you’re looking at is blight,” he said. “What we want to do is make that area a destination point for tourism. We feel like that area is prime because of its surrounding neighborhood, as well as the fact that that area was the original destination for immigrants.”

For the people who promote Charm City, the renewal is good news.

“What they’re talking about doing helps us in terms of … packaging it as ‘Spanish Town,’” said Dan Lincoln, senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association. “I think they’re smart in taking a somewhat economically depressed neighborhood and using tourism as a tool to create economic development.”

He added: “If they have the critical mass of tourism-related entities … then the tourists are going to go, they’re going to spend money, which means you have to hire people to service those tourists … and it’s going to create tax revenue, which builds momentum.”

Thus far, Bustamante’s organization has five projects on the table.

The first is expanding the median on Broadway between Fleet and Baltimore streets into a broad, brick-paved promenade with benches, lights and trees, like the one between Fleet and Thames streets. Currently the only object dividing traffic is a small cement strip. Ground will be broken next spring, and the city has pitched in about $2 million for the project, Bustamante said.

Also coming next spring is a Maryland Transit Administration shuttle servicing the “Spanish Town” area, as well as Canton.

Other projects still in the works include a four-level parking garage at Bank Street and Broadway, the purchase of the Apex movie theater, and the conversion of the closed St. Patrick’s Church building — and about seven surrounding buildings — into a Spanish plaza.

The church project must be negotiated with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the church’s current tenant.

Bustamante said his organization — as well as other Hispanic business groups —is encouraging more Hispanic businesses to move into the area.

“We think we are on the right track and things are coming together,” he said. “We have no doubt that this is developing and it’s going to come out pretty well.”

Earlier this year, Mayor Martin O’Malley aired public service announcements in the Washington suburbs, where the majority of Maryland’s 227,916 Hispanics live. The mayor encouraged them to move to Baltimore, where he said rent is cheaper and operating a business more profitable.

There are about 11,061 Hispanics living in Baltimore, according to the 2000 census.

The one campaign not being promoted is changing the area’s official name to “Spanish Town.”

First, community members say they do not want to isolate non-Hispanic residents. Also, they aren’t sure it’s needed, and use their neighbors to the west as an example.

“A sign saying ‘Little Italy’ does not detract or add to the fact that people like to go there,” Bustamante said.

O’Malley, he said, deserves kudos for helping to speed up the development of “Spanish Town” — an idea born nearly 20 years ago.

“The mayor made it very clear that he wanted [Baltimore] rehabilitated … and that he needed leaders of the community to do it,” Bustamante said. “And that’s what we’re doing.”