Recommissioning One of Baltimore’s Original Schools

How can one of Baltimore’s original educational facilities be recommissioned to service a neighborhood and provide students with entry points to the green economy?

It’s extraordinarily rare to meet a team with a vision for creating an entirely new school from scratch, let alone a group who wants to do it in one of the most historically overlooked areas of Baltimore City. But in the Green Street Academy team, we met a group who had already executed on a vision for an innovative educational program focused on rigorous career training and strong academics. When we crossed paths, they were looking for a building to call their own. Green Street Academy was founded as a public charter school in 2009 and originally served 200 students in sixth and seventh grades. Their goal was to provide strong academics along with exposure to employment opportunities, especially in the green economy – mainly environmental science, urban agriculture, healthcare, and construction design and management. The founders, David Warnock and Larry Rivitz, were both serving on the board of directors for the Center for Urban Families (CFUF) and heard from the community there was a lack of high-quality education options in CFUF’s surrounding areas. The school started out sharing space in a vacant West Baltimore building but soon felt like a building of their own was needed to solidify the school’s unique culture and mission. As educators, their expertise wasn’t in real estate, and so they asked us to come alongside them to find, acquire, finance, design, and build their dream school. Together, we found the former Gwynns Falls Park Junior High School at 125 N Hilton St. in West Baltimore, not far from their first building. Built in 1925, the 130,000-square-foot structure was at the time, the most expensive school structure built in Baltimore City history and educated thousands of students. But it had been decommissioned and sat mostly vacant for more than 20 years; when we came across it, the building was far from being operable for a 21st-century school. Yet, we saw immense possibility, and we couldn’t wait to help Green Street to realize it all. An investment of $23 million transformed the forgotten school into state-of-the-art classrooms for more than 875 students in grades six to twelve, utilized 8.75 acres of green space for all kinds of urban agriculture – like greenhouses, chicken coops, and a fish farm, – and includes community staples like a food pantry and adult education spaces. Today, more than 75 percent of the student body lives within walking distance and the school is poised for another expansion, adding grades K-5. Job well done, GSA team.