A lease signing in Mt. Washington and a groundbreaking at Uplands. 

Two ceremonial events on today’s schedule. 

Expanding the Mt. Washington Elementary School to include a middle
school has been the community’s goal for more than a decade.  The
Shrine of the Sacred Heart School, just two blocks away, was closed by
the Archdiocese of Baltimore this spring. 

Today, Mayor Rawlings-Blake and Archbishop O’Brien signed a lease
for those vacant classrooms.  Next fall, children from pre-kindergarten
through second grade will use them, allowing Mount Washington School to
begin adding grades 6 through 8 in the building it has been using since
1961. 

The vacant and rundown units of the Uplands complex were a 100-acre
blot on West Baltimore for many years.  Today, ground was broken for
the first of more than 1,100 new residences – both homeownership and
rental in a mixed-income community.

A project of this size will have an extraordinary impact on the
neighboring communities, businesses, and schools.  Plus, the Red Line
would run right by it.

I was a spectator today, but my 41^st District colleagues
and I had supported both of these projects.  We were not the prime
movers in either case, but in this instance, all politics is
incremental.

We will now sweat the details, when needed, to help make sure that
both of these projects achieve the goals trumpeted at today’s
ceremonies.