Helping Up Mission to build Recovery Park at historic Hendler site

Helping Up Mission is set to turn one of Baltimore’s most debated historic parcels into a recovery-focused park, with a $3 million project planned for the former Hendler Creamery site at 1100 E. Baltimore Street in Jonestown.

Recovery Park is slated to open by early 2027 and will cover about two acres. The design calls for a walking and running path, a pavilion for events, a multi-use court, an open field and shaded seating areas. Helping Up Mission has said the space is meant to give men in recovery and program graduates a safe place to exercise, gather and spend time outdoors.

The site carries unusual weight in Baltimore’s preservation fights because Hendler Creamery was once home to the country’s first fully automated ice cream factory. The building began in 1892 as a cable-car powerhouse, and Hendler Ice Cream Company bought it in 1912 for $40,000. Rather than erase that history, the new plan is meant to commemorate it, keeping the industrial legacy tied to a parcel that has sat at the center of repeated redevelopment battles.

Baltimore City’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation held a demolition hearing for 1100 E. Baltimore Street on March 14, 2023, and a May 9, 2023 agenda later included a reconsideration request tied to the Hendler Creamery demolition application. In 2023, the commission voted 8-1 to approve demolition for community green space, and by 2024 demolition work had begun after an earlier $75 million redevelopment proposal failed to move forward.

For Jonestown, the project is less about the sticker price than about what replaces a long-vacant structure in a dense downtown neighborhood. A functioning park could bring more foot traffic, add usable open space and create a visible change at a corner that has spent years as a preservation flashpoint. The site sits within the Jonestown Historic District, where land use decisions often land at the intersection of history, neighborhood access and redevelopment pressure.

Helping Up Mission, which says it has served Greater Baltimore since 1885, brings an established recovery mission to the project. Recent coverage said the organization serves more than 650 men, women and children, and that roughly 70% of its staff are program graduates. That makes Recovery Park part of a larger campus and services network, not just a standalone amenity.

If it is completed on schedule, the project will do more than mark another Baltimore ribbon cutting. It will test whether a historic industrial site can become a visible recovery and workforce asset, rooted in the city’s past but built for daily use by the people living and working around it.