The following memo was part of the Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley's Final Transition Report. It was drafted and included in the Report by the Spanish Town Community Development, LLC.

"SPANISH TOWN PROJECT

For years, the arrival of Hispanics to Baltimore has resulted in the major concentration of them settling in the area comprised by Fayette Street in the north, Aliceanna Street in the South, Central Avenue in the West and Haven Street in the east. Central Americans -Nicaraguans, Salvadorians, Guatemalans and Panamanians, followed Spaniards, Puerto Ricans, Peruvians and Colombians. More recently, Mexicans, Dominicans, Cubans and other South Americans, such as Venezuelans have joined these groups. Now, a second wave of Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other Central Americans and Mexicans has made the area a veritable Spanish Town.
The name Spanish Town, proposed many years ago, reflects the Hispanic influence in the area, particularly in the immediate surroundings of the major thoroughfares -Broadway and Eastern avenues- now the "Special Impact Area." For many years the Hispanic community has struggled, with no resources or support, to maintain and expand the area and avoid the urban blight that has engulfed so many other areas of Baltimore. To a great degree they have succeeded. More than forty Hispanic small businesses are now established in this area and more are coming in on a regular basis.
The Hispanic community led by the Hispanic Business Association, the Broadway Area Business Association and the Spanish Town Community Development Corporation, is now proposing a two-tier approach to the development of the area.

Short Range Plan:

1. The community is fomenting the immediate and steady expansion of Hispanic businesses in the area. Several are now in the process of establishing themselves in the area. More are seeking space and looking for capital and favorable leases.
2. The community will seek immediate, more than cosmetic improvements to the infrastructure of the Broadway corridor from the city, using public works funds as well as Empowerment Zone. Immediate improvement in the parking situation, landscaping, street lighting, public safety, nuisance removal (homeless, drug addicts, vagrants, loiterers) and marketing of the area as a tourist attraction.
3. The community will partner with organizations, private and public, to continue this developmental policy. The community will fight efforts by any groups, private or public, to develop or revitalize the area without the participation of the Hispanic community.

Long Range Plan:

1. The community is developing an economic revitalization plan to include the Broadway and Eastern avenues' immediate surroundings. The plan envisions the development of a Hispanic motif to give the Spanish Town a true Hispanic flavor and identify it in the fashion of a Little Italy or a Greek Town.
2. Using the Spanish Town Community Development Corporation as its for-profit business developmental arm, the community will seek funds from available private and public sources including, if necessary, the issuing of bonds for capital raising. The city of Baltimore is expected to play a vital role in the development of the area's infrastructure.
3. The plan, now being developed with the help of an architectural firm, envisions expenditures of 25 million dollars to be used for the acquisition and refurbishing of properties, remodeling of building facades, expansion of parking facilities, rezoning and redirection of traffic patterns in the Broadway Boulevard and other improvements.
4. The plan seeks to tie this venture with to development of existing near-by developments such as the East Harbor development, the Fells Point and Canton areas and the Johns Hopkins University expansion to the north.
5. Spanish Town will join these other developments, to expand the tourist area surrounding the Baltimore Harbor to the benefit of the Hispanic community as well as the whole Baltimore area.

Baltimore January 18, 2000"