St Luke’s Youth Center (SLYC)
SLYC began as an arts and literacy based summer program seven years ago–since that time has grow into year round programming and doing work specifically with families. Leadership is Amanda Talbot and a group of parents in the program. When the congregation at St Luke’s was closed by the diocese they began to plan for the future of SLYC. Realized that the physical space of the St Luke’s church building was essential to the programming and advocated with the archdiocese to ensure that they could stay in the space. Received a grant to do an architecture assessment of the property and have been finishing up the planning portion of the study. SLYC has an MOU with the archdiocese to develop the properties to best serve the community. Based on the assessment, SLYC would be best suited to move into the clergy house. Priorities are to:
- Stabilize the structures
- Raise the funds to turn the clergy house into a center for youth and families
- Want there to be more community involvement in planning for the church
St Luke’s church restoration/development could play a role in the reconciliation/reparations work needed as part of the Episcopal Diocese’s Truth and Reconciliation process
Scott thinks that SWP can help with the acquisition of BRNI/CORE funds (state funding)–would be eligible as long as religious services were not held on the property.
Look to identify a consultant to help with the development of the property and/or identifying a developer to take on the project.
Programming is run by the families and focuses on support for families as a family input.
SWP would be happy to assist with helping with community planning charettes, bringing folks together for events around planning on the church.
SWP could also help with marketing and putting together a video
Next meeting–come together and work on content for a historical stories website
Elizabeth can help connect to Baltimore Heritage
David suggested that Baltimore Heritage could do a five minute history on St Luke’s Church
Updates
Walter–would like to talk about the Sarah Ann St properties at a future meeting–CHAP is still trying to track down the status of some agreements that impact the Sarah Ann St properties
1401-1403 W Baltimore St had been identified by the Committee as a project, SWP is working on acquiring via receivership in order to save the buildings and put it back together to make it an opportunity–will need a subsidy to stabilize the properties.
David asked about the Praise Cathedral on Mount and Lombard St–was wondering what was going on with it? We don’t have contact with the congregation–need to find out what’s going on with the congregation. David will ask around to see if anyone knows anything about it.
