Former DHCD Assistant Secretary Received 2014 Award for 20 Years of Leadership
The Klots Mill Throwing Company in Cumberland was transformed into an apartment complex using the Community Investment Tax Credit program.
When Ellen Janes became the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s (DHCD) first assistant secretary for neighborhood revitalization in 1995, there were few programs designed to encourage people to move into existing neighborhoods. As part of Maryland’s movement toward smart growth, Janes pioneered programs like Community Legacy, which strengthens communities through business retention, streetscaping, façade improvements and encouraging homeownership, to breathe life back into communities that need a boost.
Janes, now the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s senior manager for community development, was recognized for her 20 years of dedication to smart growth with a 2014 leadership and service award from the Maryland Sustainable Growth Commission. The commission’s annual awards took place on February 5. (Janes was one of eight people or projects to win the award; Smart Growth Maryland is profiling awardees throughout 2014.)
Under Janes’ leadership at DHCD, programs like Neighborhood BusinessWorks, the Community Investment Tax Credit and Community Legacy were created to revitalize and enhance communities throughout the state.
Neighborhood BusinessWorks provides gap financing for new and expanding small businesses and, since it began, has invested more than $60 million in small businesses across Maryland, leveraging more than $223 million in public and private funds.
Nonprofit organizations apply for tax credit allocations from the Community Investment Tax Credit program, allowing them to raise private contributions to support local projects. Since it began in 1996, the program has allocated more than $16 million in tax credits, allowing Maryland nonprofit organizations to raise $32 million in donations.
Examples of projects that used the tax credit include the transformation of the Klots Throwing Company Mill in Cumberland into an apartment complex and the conversion of a warehouse in Brentwood, Prince George’s County, into a community arts center. However, the Community Legacy Program is where Janes feels she made her biggest mark.
The Brentwood Arts Exchange after renovation. Photo courtesy M-NCPPC
“The Community Legacy Program is the one that I’m most proud of,” Janes said. “In keeping with smart growth initiatives, that program required local governments to have a community development plan and then state resources would come to them to implement that plan.”
Over the 13 years of the program, Community Legacy has awarded more than $64 million for 644 projects statewide, leveraging more than $363 million in public and private investment. An example of Community Legacy can be seen in the Belvedere Square community in northeast Baltimore city, especially in the vibrant marketplace and the Senator Theatre.
The implementation of these programs has revitalized communities, expanded arts and culture, improved transportation and restored historical landmarks throughout the state.
In Janes’ current position at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, she has assumed a leadership role in advancing initiatives to increase the capacity of community lenders, including community development financial institutions and affordable housing land trusts, to create and preserve affordable housing.
“I think Ellen is most deserving of the Sustainable Growth Award,” said Scot Spencer, associate director of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “From my knowledge of Ellen over the past 20 years, this has been a building of success on success and really taking her work from the basic building blocks of neighborhoods and growing them into communities and really helping to grow the state.”
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