Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, BUILD and GBC announce landmark agreement and $3 billion plan to tackle city’s vacant property crisis

By Special Release Baltimore City Office of the Mayor Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott, BUILD and the Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC) announced a landmark agreement on Dec. 11 to aggressively combat Baltimore City’s vacant and abandoned properties over the next 15 years. The agreement calls for strategic public investment to redevelop a minimum of 37,500 properties, with a clear plan to address as many as 45,000 properties. The Scott administration pledged city investment of $300 million over 15 years to spark the project. That money – and other funding to be sought from the state of Maryland and private sector – will be used to generate as much as $3 billion to finance the redevelopment work over the course of effort. “This historic partnership and the plan we’re putting forward is designed to fully address Baltimore’s vacant housing crisis for the first time in our city’s history,” said Mayor Brandon M. Scott. “The era of piecemeal work and backwards-looking strategies is over. With this partnership and the plan we’ve designed together, Baltimore City finally has a roadmap for solving this crisis once and for all, utilizing both innovative funding streams and tried-and-true development strategies. For me, this work is personal....