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Department of Housing and Community Development

Baltimore’s Millers Court Wins Top Prize for Innovation and Urban Development

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Award Winner – Miller’s Court Apartments

Miller’s Court, a mixed-use project that transformed an industrial eyesore into a catalyst for change just north of downtown Baltimore, has received one of the nation’s most distinguished awards for urban development.

The project won the top prize in the 2015 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence. The Rudy Bruner Awards seek to promote innovative thinking about the built environment and advance conversation about making cities better.

“The national recognition of Miller’s Court is a reminder, six weeks after the April riot and civil unrest, that Baltimore is a place where good things can happen when there is the will to make it so,” wrote journalist Edward Gunts in the Baltimore Brew newspaper. “In a city beset by urban problems, Miller’s Court represents an earnest effort to offer solutions.”

The project provides affordable rental housing for educators and commercial office space for non-profit organizations, such as Teach for America, that focus on education, thus addressing several problems at once: critically needed workplace housing for teachers and the need to revitalize communities by finding new uses for abandoned properties.

Developed by Baltimore’s Seawell Development Co., DHCD’s Neighborhood BusinessWorks program played a critical role in providing the gap financing that made the project possible. Neighborhood BusinessWorks is one of the state’s premiere small business lending tools, providing access to the capital businesses need to innovate and grow. Those businesses, in turn, play help revitalize their communities and contribute to the state’s economy.

Miller’s Court has received repeated recognition, including the 2010 President’s Award for Innovation by the Council of State Community Development Agencies, which said it set a new standard for the adaptive use of historic structures in urban neighborhoods; and an Award of Merit in 2011 from the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials.