Neighborhood activist Regina Hammond proclaimed, “The dust is flying in Johnston Square.” By this week, her words assumed a new reality. The dust has indeed settled in this East Baltimore community, which now has its largest project to date well underway. It’s out of the ground and wrapped in construction insulation. It is one of the milestones of 2024 in Baltimore.

At the corner of Biddle Street and Greenmount Avenue, the framing is visible on a 109-unit apartment building that will include a new Enoch Pratt Free Library branch. It’s called, for now, the Greenmount Park Apartments and is a component of the rebuilding of the Johnston Square community.

“It’s taken 11 years,” said Hammond, executive director of the Rebuild Johnston Square Neighborhood Organization, when ground was broken this past summer. “It took a lot of faith and a lot of working together.”

Hammond is working closely with ReBuildMetro, the nonprofit organization that has focused on the Oliver, Johnston Square and Johns Hopkins Hospital-adjacent communities for the past 18 years. ReBuild’s work involves a house-to-house preservation approach.

Another Baltimore neighborhood that’s taken decades to transition stretches along Howard Street. Once a thriving center of shopping with numerous movie theaters and dozens of small businesses, this part of Baltimore collapsed in the 1990s as investment moved to the Inner Harbor, Harbor East and Harbor Point.

Building by building, the Howard Street sector moved ahead this year. It took some observing to note the changes — it’s a large, often confusing area where crowds once flocked to stores named Hutzler’s, Hochschild’s, Hecht’s and Stewart’s, and more.

The arrival of the venerable Faidley’s seafood stall into the “new” Lexington Market marked a final transition from the “old” market. This seafood stall functions as an ambassador for Baltimore’s role in the crab and oyster food preparation industry. Faidley’s took a good while being uprooted from the 1950s market to its new home. With it came its overhanging signs and related paraphernalia — and, blessedly, its atmosphere.

The area around the market in the old department store district remains a work in progress.

During 2024, the land around the old Martick’s beatnik-era bar and French restaurant became a new apartment house. Individual buildings along Park Avenue and Lexington Street underwent conversion to apartments.

The former Pollack Blum’s store at Howard and Saratoga streets was completely renovated and benefits from substantial investment. It now houses large, attractive apartments created in space that once held rugs and bedroom furniture sets. Skeptics questioned if renters would want to pay into a neighborhood that still faces years of redevelopment challenges.

Chris Mfume, a partner in this project — officially named Crook Horner Lofts — said the building is “100 percent leased.”

Another neighbor, the former Greyhound bus station at Howard and Centre streets, is being transformed into a squash court so the sport can be taught to aspiring players.

If anyone doubts that Baltimore’s big real estate investments moved to the harbor, look at the new T. Rowe Price and Allied Harbor Point structures on the water. Both were completed this year. Allied Harbor Point includes 312 apartments for rent and spaces for restaurants. Harbor Point is located at the end of Central Avenue on the waterfront.

Changes arrived at the Village of Cross Keys in 2024 at its thriving town center with a batch of new restaurants and shops.

The Old Goucher neighborhood saw the reopening, after a fire, of Hooper House and its Mama Koko’s restaurant in a Victorian mansion at St. Paul and 23rd streets. Like so much in Baltimore, it deserves a close look. The interior finishes and exotic woodwork are amazing.

Sweeping change marked the Perkins Square area of East Baltimore in 2024. New apartment buildings were completed along South Caroline Street in the effort to rebuild a community on the site of a World War II-era housing project. This is a developing story that should come to fruition in 2025.

Speaking of markets, Hollins Market in Southwest Baltimore reopened after a careful restoration. This transition was curated to ensure that the 19th-century touches in the old headhouse and stall area survived, with the benefit of new plumbing.

Baltimore, once a city of manufacturing and industry, surrendered that status years ago. It’s curious to watch how a former Western Maryland Railway marine terminal, known as Port Covington, changed with its 2020-era rebuild. Now it has an Under Armour headquarters, numerous offices, a thriving restaurant and blocks of new townhouses at the old Locke Insulator property.

Take a look and use the Hanover Street Bridge as a landmark. It’s not the Baltimore of 1974 anymore.

Have a news tip? Contact Jacques Kelly at jkelly@baltsun.com and 410-332-6570.