Shopstead

Many of the previously vacant commercial buildings along Baltimore Street have been "shopsteaded" (the commercial equivalent to homesteading).

The city offered businesses the option to “shopstead,” a program that rented storefronts for $1 per square foot per year, renewable for up to forty-seven years (Jordan 1986).

The program is supported by merchants, who see abandoned storefronts in neighborhood shopping strips as hurting their business, and by neighborhood residents, who have been given a say in what types of businesses they want in the shopstead properties.

While renovating shopsteads, residents and city officials discovered artists needed affordable housing they could adapt for large, open studios.

This means that there must be an identifiable market for goods and services in the shopstead area.