Hip city living by the water

One sunny day two summers ago, as Yvonne Hardy-Phillips and her husband, Oliver, shopped for groceries at Whole Foods Market in Harbor East, something happened that took the couple and other store patrons by surprise.

From out of the gourmet cheese aisle strolled "two leggy, svelte 20-something women, clad only in bikinis and barely there cover-ups," recalls Hardy-Phillips, an arts educator who lives in Mount Vernon. Catching snatches of their conversation, the pair had just stepped off one of the pleasure boats moored in nearby waters, a block or so away, she says.

"These two sophisticated young women shopped as if they were in the South of France with no thought to the many eyes watching them," she said. "As I left the store with my purchases, I knew that Harbor East and Baltimore had been forever changed."

Indeed. Baltimore has never had a neighborhood quite like Harbor East, the downtown waterfront community bound by Fleet Street on the north, Central Avenue on the east, and water on the west and south. The "entrance" begins at President Street, where a gleaming golden sculpture, the Katyn Memorial, seems to showcase the community; Aliceanna is the main street through the area, according to the owners and developers.

Source: Baltimore Sun. View Article.

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