Sometimes it takes a threat to show what a community is made of. That has been our experience here in Roland Park. Last June, we learned of the Baltimore Country Club's agreement to sell 17 acres of its venerable grounds to Keswick Long Term Care, LLC. For over a hundred years, BCC has been the heart of Roland Park. Keswick plans to build a 340-unit, upscale independent/assisted living complex, obliterting most of the last green space left in the neighborhood. It is a classic backroom deal. The community was not consulted and a few individuals who direct those organizations stand to gain handsomely at our expense. The Roland Park Civic League, another of our hundred-year-old institutions, sprang into action to stop the re-zoning that BCC and Keswick will need to build the complex. Hundreds of staid Roland Parkers now find themselves serving on committees, attending meetings, informing their neighbors. Old timers say they've never seen anything like it. What is at stake is not just our community but a vision of Baltimore first articulated by the legendary landscape architect Frederic Law Olmsted and his sons, John and Frederic Law Olmsted, Jr. The Olmsteds left a big imprint on Baltimore. The firm designed Roland Park, America's first planned urban community, as well as Druid Hill Park, Sudbrook Park and other smaller projects. In 1904, they wrote a plan to connect Baltimore's parks and green spaces with a system of greenways- ravines, shorelines and pedestrian footpaths. They wanted the City to be a more livable place. Today we fight to save one node in that network. We were delighted to discover that the City has recaptured Olmsteds' vision in its One Park concept. If we succeed in stopping Keswick's "planned unit development", our next step is to purchase the BCC land ourselves. We hope the City will help us and other Baltimore neighborhoods plug our green space nodes into Baltimore's network of four thousand acres of parks and green space. Working together, we can make One Park a reality. Adversity has brought us to the forefront of this movement and we are ready to lead. Roland Park is that kind of a community. Mike McQuestion
