Biotech In, Residents Out?

"...hundreds of residents of East Baltimore’s Middle East neighborhood [have] been presented with an ultimatum over the past four years. After living in houses they have owned or rented for years, decades, even generations, they are being forcibly moved out of their neighborhood to make way for a $1.2 billion, 2 million-square-foot life-sciences and technology park featuring offices for biotech companies, retail space, and neighborhoods’ worth of new housing.

Since 2000, the city and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have worked to make the massive 80-acre project a reality. East Baltimore Development Inc. (EBDI), the nonprofit organization created in 2002 to take charge of the project, has been touting a new east side, with new jobs, schools, roads, facilities, green space, trees, and the kinds of homes and improved services that area residents have wanted for decades. Ronald Peterson, president of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, said at a groundbreaking in November 2005, 'We are about to turn a blighted area into a lively urban environment filled with a mix of residents, high-tech businesses, shops, and hopefully plenty of brain space as well. When this project is complete East Baltimore will be transformed.'"