By now, Lyneir Richardson had hoped to start sharing some profits with the people who invested with him in the Walbrook Junction Shopping Center in West Baltimore. But something happened.

The Rite Aid bankruptcy happened.

And that’s no small thing. The Walbrook Rite Aid closed, leaving a huge empty space in the shopping center and a hole, for now, in Richardson’s ambition to grow wealth among Black families through what he calls “inclusive ownership.”

I first reported on Richardson’s big idea three years ago, when TREND, the Chicago-based social enterprise that he leads, set about looking for investors in Walbrook Junction. For as little as $1,000, anyone over the age of 18 could become a part owner of a shopping center that had tenants, including Rite Aid and Save A Lot, but needed an upgrade.

“When was the last time that lower and middle-income Baltimore residents, intentionally Black residents, were given an opportunity to own a shopping center?” Richardson said in 2021. “What if [neighbors] owned it and made the shopping center better over time? They will take pride in it, protect it and patronize the shopping center in a way maybe they wouldn’t if they didn’t have an ownership in it.”

Richardson’s goal is the same as that of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, in her advocacy of tax incentives for homebuilders and government grants for first-time homebuyers. “For people all across our nation,” Harris said, “a home represents financial security, the opportunity to build wealth and equity, and a foundation for a better future.”

Why not a stake in a shopping center?

TREND, established with grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Chicago Community Trust, started acting on Richardson’s big idea a while ago. It purchased two shopping centers in the Chicago area, both in neighborhoods where at least half of the residents were Black.

The events of 2020 got Richardson to step up TREND’s efforts at growing wealth among people of color. He called it “a year of pandemic, protest and political pandemonium,” with the civil unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, along with the destruction of retail businesses.

Paul Brophy, a veteran urban planner and former president of the Enterprise Foundation, got Richardson thinking about Baltimore. He looked at 10 shopping centers before he made an offer on Walbrook, lined up capital and arranged financing.

He then launched a crowdfunding page, offering stakes in the 47,070-square-foot shopping center. The offering closed at $332,000 from 130 investors. About half of them were Marylanders, according to Richardson, and mostly from Baltimore or the Baltimore area.

With some additional government funding, TREND was able to give the shopping center a facelift, a new roof and a community-minded theme: “We Own This.”

But then, the parent company of one of its major tenants, Rite Aid, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and closed 154 stores in 15 states. Several Baltimore-area stores, including the big one in Walbrook Junction, shut its doors.

“We were just about to celebrate full occupancy,” Richardson says. “We renovated the shopping center. We found a new Black entrepreneur to open a first-class laundry facility.”

And Richardson hoped to hear that Rite Aid would renovate its store.

Instead, he got the bankruptcy news.

“This was going to be the year that we would celebrate the fact that we could make a distribution to investors,” Richardson says. “But with the Rite Aid space being vacant, you know, we’re not going to have the cash flow to be able to do that.”

Rite Aid left the store full of equipment and shelving. “We had to pay to get that out,” Richardson says.

Now the hunt is on for a new tenant, maybe one that will take all 10,000 square feet that the pharmacy left behind. Maybe it will be another pharmacy. There’s still a need for one in the area, Richardson says.

“Our primary objective is to get what we call community serving tenants,” he says. “We don’t want to get another Dollar Store or a check cashing place. Is there a health care provider, a nonprofit … that might do senior services or workforce development?”

Richardson knows he might have to divide up the space previously occupied by Rite Aid to accommodate smaller businesses — a hair or nail salon, maybe a small pharmacy or a bank branch. TREND was able to get the state’s support for a grant to retrofit the space for new tenants.

The hope, he says, is to get the Rite Aid space filled so that his investors might start seeing returns next year.

“The center looks better,” he says. “It’s got a new roof. It’s got a new parking lot. It’s got a facade. There’s still work to be done. There’s still active drug dealing in and around the shopping center. So, even though we’ve invested in security cameras and security patrols, there’s still some operating challenges. But our objective is to make it a community asset so that it doesn’t become a liability for the community.”

TREND is also redeveloping, with the same investment strategy and the help of about 200 investors, the long-neglected Edmondson Village Shopping Center, also on the west side of the city. Richardson expects to have some news about that place soon.

“Stay tuned,” he says.