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BALTIMORE — Todd Marcus dropped out of Loyola University Maryland 26 years ago to combat poverty in West Baltimore neighborhoods. He then helped establish the nonprofit Intersection of Change in West Baltimore’s Upton neighborhood.
“For me, it was an obvious decision. I had thought it through. I knew I wanted to be a part of the [West Baltimore] community,” said Marcus, the organization’s executive director.
Intersection of Change, which operates in Upton, Sandtown-Winchester and surrounding neighborhoods, is expanding.
The nonprofit has partnered with the Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts & Entertainment District, which promotes the cultural legacy and revitalization of West Baltimore, to develop a roughly 20,000-square-foot arts center called the Sanaa Center. The organizations are trying to raise $8 million for the project, with construction expected to begin in about a year and end in 2025.
The Arts & Entertainment District plans to have its headquarters in the Sanaa Center, which will also provide artists with studio space, workshops and a place to display their work, said Brion Gill, the organization’s executive director. Sanaa means art in Swahili.
The center will take shape in a vacant lot on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the city demolished 12 rowhouses in the 1990s, Marcus said.
The project is expected to cost roughly $10 million. About $2.7 million has been raised so far, including about $800,000 from the city and nearly $600,000 from the state, Gill said.
The nonprofit, which employs about 20 people, also is renovating a 980-square-foot, two-story structure on Presstman Street, Marcus said. That project is funded by a $75,000 grant from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development and a $55,000 donation from a private foundation. The nonprofit is trying to raise $250,000 more for it.
The projects will increase the amount of space available for Intersection of Change, which offers a residential program for recovering women as well as an art program, workforce development and employment for formerly incarcerated people. About 2,000 people make use of the art program every year.
Gill said the reason she and Intersection of Change are working together to build the Sanaa Center is the nonprofit’s innovative programs.
“They really have invested their time and talents in cleaning up the community and providing services that folks in West Baltimore definitely need,” she said. “They’re an organization that’s really [focusing on the] work.”
Diane Scott, a resident of Sandtown-Winchester, enrolled in Intersection of Change’s six-month recovery program in 2015 to treat her alcoholism. She finished the program that same year.
“I thank God for [the recovery program] because when I came here, it gave me my spirituality back. The structure is phenomenal,” she said. “I’m now accountable. I’m now responsible.”
Marcus, 46, a native of Haworth, N.J., lives in Sandtown-Winchester.
He met Clyde Harris, who founded Intersection of Change, while volunteering for Sandtown Habitat for Humanity in West Baltimore, where he worked cleaning and renovating abandoned buildings.
He stopped attending Loyola in 1996. In 1999, Marcus graduated from Rutgers University with a bachelor’s degree in urban studies.
Intersection was founded in the mid-1990s. Harris’s wife, Amelia, is a co-founder.
“The goal was to serve the needs of our community — look at what was not being addressed and provide services to our community residents,” Marcus said.
Harris, a member of the nonprofit’s board, emphasized that Marcus doesn’t lead Intersection alone. Marcus collaborates with him to address poverty in West Baltimore, Harris said.
“Our community doesn’t want to feel that a White man [one of Marcus’s parents is White, while the other is Egyptian] came here to deliver us. No, it was Todd and I together. We reconcile as human beings, and we’re working together,” said Harris, who is Black.
Aside from his work with Intersection, Marcus is a working musician.
A clarinet player since the fourth grade, he plays bass clarinet and composes music. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Motor House and Keystone Korner are among the Baltimore venues where he has performed.
He said juggling his employment at Intersection and his career as a musician is difficult.
He now goes for evening walks at West Baltimore’s Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park — a 10-minute drive from his home.
“It’s rough because there [are] only so many hours in the day,” he said.
