Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:03 Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Moving to Maryland. I'm here with Treana today. Hello. And we're gonna talk about a neighborhood that Tressa has lived in her whole young life. <laugh> in the center of Baltimore, little Italy.
Speaker 2 00:00:18 That's correct. My,
Speaker 1 00:00:20 My wife. What a great neighborhood. So if you had to describe where it's located, how would you describe somebody that, that didn't know? Baltimore.
Speaker 2 00:00:27 Uh, it's technically in the southeast district of Baltimore City, so we'll just one block off of the inner Harbor. Um, two blocks north of Harbor East, uh, at the foot of 83. Right.
Speaker 1 00:00:39 So,
Speaker 2 00:00:39 Very convenient.
Speaker 1 00:00:40 So yeah, let's talk about walkability.
Speaker 2 00:00:42 Uh, great walkability. You can walk to absolutely everything. Obviously tons of excellent Italian restaurants. Um, also hair salons, grocery stores, you know, whole Foods is two blocks from Little Italy, cvs, uh, movie theater. Um, anything you need is right there. So if you don't have a car, you can still get anywhere to anything that you need is right
Speaker 1 00:01:03 There. It's one of the best. I mean, if you want a corner bar, you want a corner deli, you want, uh, whole Foods, I mean everything. It's, it's out of a score up to a hundred. I think it's like 120 walkability score.
Speaker 2 00:01:14 At least 120
Speaker 1 00:01:15 <laugh>. So, uh, let's talk about access. Uh, let's say you work north, it's right at the foot of 83,
Speaker 2 00:01:22 Right? Right. It's at the foot of 83 President Pratt Street, excuse me. And, uh, you can get anywhere from downtown to the suburbs in 20 minutes. You're 20 minutes to Towson, 20 minutes to Howard County, 20 minutes to Hartford County. Um, 10 minutes from the train station, 15 minutes from the airport. So it's really easy to get out of downtown to anywhere you wanna go. It's one of the reasons why I never moved was because the location is just prime
Speaker 1 00:01:49 Right now. So, uh, if you use Waze, does Waze tell you to go through the city or cut through Canton to get to 95?
Speaker 2 00:01:58 Uh, it depends. Um, I use, depends on time. Again, use ways all the time. Uh, sometimes when I wanna get to 95, I go through downtown and if I'm uh, at our office, if I'm at my office, then I'm gonna probably go through 95. Yeah. So it depends exactly where you are. But I kind of like to go through downtown. I still feel like it's the quickest way to get outta town. Cuz then I can hit either 95 or 2 95, which is the BW Parkway,
Speaker 1 00:02:22 Unless you're in a Orioles or Ravens, uh, traffic. Right.
Speaker 2 00:02:25 True. You have to be cognizant of that. But, uh, most of the time it works out.
Speaker 1 00:02:29 All right. So you don't use ways. I use ways like it's, it's uh, like there's different parts of the city where like sometimes depending on the time of day or or or game traffic, like, you know, you go this way or that way. Um, that's helpful.
Speaker 2 00:02:41 Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:02:41 Definitely. It's probably closer to go through the city to get out, get out of town. So what about, um, you know, jobs like, so like if you, what are some of the, uh, big employers you can walk to from Little Italy?
Speaker 2 00:02:54 Uh, well, um, Exelon Tower is three blocks away, so if you work at Exelon, easy to walk to that. Um, a lot of the government offices obviously are downtown city hall. It's all walkable. Um, what's one of the reasons why we got residential parking in 30 years ago was permits because people would parking. Yes. People would park in the neighborhood and walk downtown to go to work. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we had to have a residential parking, um, implement it. But any of the, um, state offices are downtown. Um, if you work for the Orioles, it's downtown. Yeah. Um, obviously a lot of law firms are downtown, so walkability to um, financial part of the city is really easy.
Speaker 1 00:03:35 Yeah. I, I think if you want to live in a town home, but close to all the amenities of Harbor East and Fells Point and Inner Harbor, it's gotta be one of the best neighborhoods.
Speaker 2 00:03:45 Yeah. We're one of the only neighborhoods that offers town home. Um, living Harbor East is all condominiums, so if you want condo living, that's the place to be. Yep. That, uh, we have um, really nice houses, it still have a lot of character, um, brick friends and yeah, it's really close-knit community.
Speaker 1 00:04:03 Well, before we get into real estate, let's talk about the restaurants. You got any restaurants in Little
Speaker 2 00:04:08 Italy? Oh, absolutely. Um, my favorite restaurant is Lascala Restaurant. Um, I go to different restaurants for different things. They're all sort of family to me because I've been there a long time. Um, Lascala I go to uh, probably once a week because the food's great and I love the owner Nino and his mom Pina will meet finer people. Uh, I get to Chip rallies, which has been there one of the longest chip rallies and Sabots. They've both been there 60 plus years, which is pretty amazing to think about. Restaurants that have been open for that long since a lot of restaurants go outta business in the first five years. It's pretty incredible. Um, chip Ellis is family owned since day one, so they're approaching their fourth generation of family members running the restaurant and uh, go there quite a bit. It's quite the neighborhood spot and food's still really good and it's, um, enjoyable atmosphere. So they're busy all the time as well. So they're probably my favorites, but there are other restaurants there too. Um,
Speaker 1 00:05:08 And then two blocks. And you're in Harbor East and there's 20 more restaurants.
Speaker 2 00:05:11 Yeah, exactly. Um, not going to Harbor East for Italian though.
Speaker 1 00:05:14 <laugh>. Um, let's talk about, uh, I mean we talked about, touched on on it a little bit, but amenities and shopping like you're, I mean, you're literally close to everything.
Speaker 2 00:05:24 Sure. Um, we can walk to anything that you need. Um, if you need clothes you can go to Harbor East. There's plenty of clothing shops, there are makeup stores there. There's um, athletic gear, there's Lululemon and Under Armor.
Speaker 1 00:05:40 Um, Patagonia just opened, pardon me, Patagonia just opened.
Speaker 2 00:05:43 Patagonia just opened. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. That's a little closer to Fells Point, but yeah, they just opened. That's a nice shop. Um, in Little Italy we have mainly food available. Um, and there's also a really great hair salon called Sweet Louis's, my friend PAMs that and a great new place, place called Waffle that opened up and they sell these amazing waffles with ice cream from a dairy farm and I highly recommend it. If you're gonna go off your diet, stop by there and visit Waffle. Um,
Speaker 1 00:06:09 Isn't there, uh, Joe Benny's there? That's
Speaker 2 00:06:12 Joe Benny. Everybody loves you have to go meet Joe Benny and eat his focaccia. Um, Joe's been in the neighborhood for probably 10 years now and he is quite the personality and in addition to that, his food is spectacular, but get there early cuz he's busy and when he runs out of food, he just closes up. So you have to definitely stop by and visit Joe Benny.
Speaker 1 00:06:33 So I think a little Italy in green space, there's not much, uh, green space that's close. I mean, you could obviously go to Patterson Park and everybody claims Patterson Park is their backyard. Uh, if you have a dog and you're walking dog need, need some green space, where do you go?
Speaker 2 00:06:47 Um, usually walk across Presidents Street to the green space, um, by Scarlet Place. And um, yeah, there's quite a few dogs out there at times, you know, and then I from there, cruise over to Harbor East and sometimes head into Fells Point for some more green space. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:07:04 <affirmative>. Great. Great. What about, um, the neighborhood vibe in Little Italy? I mean it's got such a
Speaker 2 00:07:10 Classic now that's the best part of the neighborhood. There's um, great network of people there. Everybody looks out for each other. If you aren't gonna be home and you're expecting a package or you get a notice that you have a package and you're not home, you text your neighbors and say, Hey, can somebody grab my package? And somebody always does. And if you need help with anything, if your car is not starting and somebody's going to help you, if you have a plumbing issue, you're gonna call our local handy guy, Arthur Gentian. He's gonna come and he's gonna take care of it for you <laugh> and refuse to take any money from you. Yeah. So, uh, it is a great neighborhood and people there, people that come there to rent and then wind up buying a house because they love that sense of community. It's not something that you can find everywhere and I think that's, um, it's been like a secret for a lot of years.
Speaker 1 00:07:58 Yeah, I think a lot of people don't know of it as a community where people live as much as where they come visit for Italian food. Uh, so let's get into real estate and other than the Canal Street Malt house, which is, you know, very nice condos in little Italy, uh, it's mostly, uh, historic row homes that, you know, have never been renovated or renovated. What would you say about the, uh, real estate options in Little Italy?
Speaker 2 00:08:21 So, um, for many, many years real estate never hit the market. I mean, they were all just sold privately from person to person or from family member to family member. In more recent years and maybe about the past 15 to 20 years, uh, real estate does hit the market. Um, most of the times there are people that wanna live in the neighborhood. Sometimes you get an investor because rents are, um, rental properties are very desirable there because of all the amenities we mentioned earlier. Um, most of the houses are now being sold, renovated. So kind of the, the days of finding a old grandma house and renovating it, there are still some, obviously there are still some in every neighborhood, but not as many as there used to be. Sure. So, um, that, uh, that keeps people coming to the neighborhood and we've been fortunate to acquire good neighbors that understand the value of the neighborhood way beyond the monetary value.
Speaker 1 00:09:17 Sure. So Truss and I are real estate agents with the Greatest Moves team at Re Max Advantage Realty. We're located here in Fells Point, Trusa lives in Little Italy and can show you around that neighborhood as well as any of the neighborhoods around Baltimore City. So you want to explore the area, reach out, we'll uh, send you to Joe Bennys with with Tressa <laugh>, check out those meatballs. And uh,
Speaker 2 00:09:38 That's bows on the block.
Speaker 1 00:09:40 <laugh> our contact info is in this post. Reach out. We look forward to, uh, helping you out and we'll see you next episode. Take care.
Speaker 2 00:09:47 Bye-bye.
