Hundreds of new teachers flood Baltimore each year, unfamiliar with the city and looking for an affordable place to live.
Developer Donald Manekin said he has a solution to ease that stress, while giving a boost to a blighted block in Remington.
“We thought if you could have well-located, nice, funky apartments for these new young people in Baltimore, it would take the mystery out of where to live and allow them to focus on the work,” said Manekin, who started real estate company Seawall Development Co. in the city with his son earlier this year.
Manekin plans to develop a decrepit warehouse at 26th and Howard streets into 40 apartments marketed to teachers ? in an approach he called “socially conscious real estate.”
The 80,000-square-foot building, the former H.F. Miller and Son Tin Box and Can Manufacturing Plant, was built in the late 1800s and has sat vacant since being used by the Census Bureau in 1990.
The nearly $19 million building will consist of one- and two-bedroom apartments and include teacher-centric amenities, such as planning rooms and a fitness center.
Rents would range from $500 to $700 per tenant, Manekin said.
“We are marketing to those organizations that support the schools system,” he said.
On the ground floor, he wants to locate several educational nonprofits, allowing the organizations to share conference rooms and kitchen space.
“It will create a natural opportunity for us to share best practices and identify areas where we can overlap,” said Carole Prest, chief strategy officer for Building Educated Leaders for Life, a Baltimore City nonprofit that offers tutoring programs.
Prest?s group, which shares a building with a drywall company, is one of the nonprofits interested in moving into the new space.
The development is being closely watched by surrounding neighborhoods, and developers said they hope to be pioneers in an area that has been forgotten.
“The idea of making this a 24-hour location where there are literally tenants at all hours of the day will awaken the block and stimulate more opportunities for others in the area,” said Thibault Manekin, Donald Manekin?s son.
Residents in the area are anxious to see the building redeveloped.
Joan Floyd, president of the Remington Neighborhood Alliance, said the building is unsafe, with glass and metal often falling onto the sidewalk. Two previous plans for the building have fallen through in recent years, she said, but so far, there “is a good buzz” from neighbors.
“I am cautiously optimistic,” she said.
