Baltimore Blues.

• Position: West Side Initiative unlikely to effect change - Brief Article

Sam MacDonald

If you live in Baltimore, you may have to face down some city planners soon. The so-called West Side Initiative will use more than $100 million in state and local funds to put upscale residential developments and mixed-use retail in West Baltimore, a neighborhood adjacent to the famed Inner Harbor.

While West Baltimore has always supported a number of thriving businesses--many of them owned by minority families--the area apparently doesn't project the image coveted by Mayor Martin O'Malley and the city establishment. Among the casualties of the West Side Initiative are over two dozen mom-and-pop stores deemed insufficiently upscale.

In effect, residents are being asked to suspend their disbelief. For one thing, they're supposed to forget that a similar government initiative failed to do anything for the same neighborhood in 1980. And they're not supposed to ask whether the government should be subsidizing homes for middle- and upper-class families, who can presumably find places to live easily enough on their own.

The West Side Initiative showcases how complex redevelopment plans can end up sponsoring...