On the sunny Saturday in June, hundreds of volunteers, including Johns Hopkins students and employees, constructed a playground in Baltimore’s newest public space, Eager Park.
The volunteer day, organized by the KaBOOM! playground nonprofit, added colorful structures for climbing, crawling, sliding and balancing to the north end of the 5.5-acre park, which officially opened in May.
The new park and playground continue a revitalization project that began in 2001, when Johns Hopkins institutions teamed with public and private entities to create the East Baltimore Development Inc., or EBDI, a nonprofit with the ambitious goal of rebuilding an 88-acre East Baltimore neighborhood.
Sixteen years later, EBDI has created a vibrant community of homes, schools, businesses, research facilities and student housing, all surrounding Eager Park and within walking distance of The Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The three-block-long park, designed by Mahan Rykiel Associates and Gensler architects, includes an amphitheater, fountain, walking paths, exercise equipment, expanses of green lawn and a community garden.
It’s already gaining notice. In June, Curbed.com, an online publication about neighborhoods, homes and cities, included Eager Park in its list of “8 Linear Parks that Have Transformed Cities,” alongside New York City’s High Line and the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston.
Development of the Eager Park neighborhood has had many highlights, including the 2008 ribbon-cutting of the Rangos Life Sciences Building and the 2014 opening of Elmer A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School (Henderson-Hopkins), for children in kindergarten through eighth grade, and the Harry and Jeanette Early Childhood Center, for infants as young as 6 weeks.
But the past year has been a turning point as homes were built and occupied, a business incubator opened and Eager Park became a green and welcoming space in the center of it all.
On September 10, 2016, Johns Hopkins University employees and their families participated in a lottery for 49 new and renovated townhouses in Eager Park. The buyers were lured by one-day-only grants of $36,000 from Live Near Your Work, a Johns Hopkins program that helps employees buy homes in Baltimore. Additional incentives for the one-car-garage townhouses, which start at $270,000, came from the city of Baltimore and Ryan Homes lender NVR Mortgage.
Another major leap forward came on April 26, 2017, with the opening of FastForward 1812. The 23,000-square-foot incubator, home to about 20 growing businesses, provides affordable space and support services such as legal advice and networking opportunities. Most of the startups using the space are building on innovations developed at Johns Hopkins. The building also houses a Starbucks Opportunity Café, which provides skills development and job training, and the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures office, which helps bring Johns Hopkins innovations to the marketplace.
Eager Park’s first movie night, a free showing of the family-friendly cartoon Sing, was June 2. Families arrived before dusk to set up chairs and position blankets on the green lawn. Children played catch. As the sun set, the movie began. It was the start of a new tradition.
