06/12/2026
This morning, members of ReBUILD Metro, Rebuild Johnston Square Neighborhood Organization, the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, and the Maryland Community Investment Corporation walked Johnston Square to review and celebrate our progress in revitalizing this long-distressed East Baltimore community.
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After working together for over a decade to rebuild Johnston Square, our shared and steadfast commitment to the future of this neighborhood is now yielding a remarkable amount of transformation. With community leadership and the support of critical State programs like BRNI, BVRI, and UPLIFT, we are now:
🚩Rebuilding close to 40 vacant houses across 6 blocks.
🚩Restoring the Machine Works into over 45,000sf of light manufacturing and office space.
🚩Restoring 4 acres of vacant land into Greenmount Park.
🚩Continuing to improve community beauty and livability.
🚩Continuing to make major repairs on the homes of legacy homeowners.
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All these improvements were imagined by local residents in the Johnston Square Vision Plan in 2019 and 2020: not as isolated programs and projects, but as a network of strategic block-by-block reinvestments that would catalyze Johnston Square’s rebirth into a healthy, thriving, lovable neighborhood that offers a quality of life that everyone deserves.
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Bringing this vision to reality only happens through public-private partnerships rooted in deep trust, shared purpose, and a commitment to strategic long-term reinvestments at the scale necessary for neighborhood-level change.