2024 MD Charity Campaign Now Open

In Penn North, a former BPD detective pushes to build a new youth and community center

By

Ethan McLeod Senior Editor at Baltimore Fishbowl.

December 17, 2018

• Debbie Ramsey, founder of Unified Efforts, stands in front of the nonprofit’s Penn North property. Photo by Ethan McLeod.
• Neighbors once called it “The Plantation”—not with the grim historical undertone you might expect for the largely black community of Penn North, but with a more playful reference to the property’s exterior. The three-story home at 2521 Woodbrook Ave. is uniquely set back from the otherwise row home-lined street, and sports a Southern-style second-floor balcony out back.
• It was owned by Thomas H. Miller and his family, white residents who had a number of homes in the West Baltimore neighborhood.
• “The big house,” says Annie Hall, president of the Penn North Community Association, who grew up nearby and went on to rent her first home from Miller. “That’s what we called it coming up.”
• Miller sold it in 1972, and it was later acquired by the city, land records show. For years thereafter, the lot between Francis Street and Woodbrook Avenue earned a new nickname: “The Cut,” says former Baltimore Police Det. Debbie Ramsey. The vacant site became overgrown and littered with trash, offering a suitable place for people running from the cops to dump their contraband or hideout.
• But after decades of neglect, Ramsey’s nonprofit, Unified Efforts, purchased the land from the city for $3,500 this past September. A month later, she and a group of volunteers cleared the grounds of litter, brush and other assorted debris. Neighbors have since helped maintain it by removing dumped trash, Ramsey says; they’ve told her it’s already a huge improvement from before.
• And if she can realize her vision, the lot will soon house... To read more, click download at bottom.