York Road Newsletter (July 2025)
July 2025
In this issue
France-Merrick Foundation offers challenge grant
Baltimore neighborhood raises millions for land purchase
A look back at the history of the property we want to buy
Question of the month: dividends
You can support financial transformation today
Financial literacy classes this month
See you in September!
France-Merrick Foundation offers challenge grant
A major Maryland foundation has agreed to boost our upcoming community capital campaign with a promise to match the first $100,000 raised to support our efforts to restore a now-vacant property to the vibrant restaurant location that was once there.
Baltimore's France-Merrick Foundation envisions "an equitable, vibrant and sustainable Baltimore community where people and places thrive," and its grant will support Invest York Road's role in making that vision a reality.
IYR's efforts to purchase and redevelop the property at 5723 York Road align closely with France-Merrick's focus on community and economic development, with an emphasis on neighborhood stabilization, and this grant comes with an exciting challenge to the community: Once our upcoming community investment campaign reaches $100,000 of investment, France-Merrick will release these funds and match that first $100,000.
That means our earliest investors—whether it is 1,000 people each investing $100, 100 people each investing $1,000 or some other combination that gets us over the line—will see the impact of their investment doubled!
We are excited to welcome France-Merrick on board as a partner in this important work, and we will be sharing more about the upcoming investment campaign through this newsletter soon, so stay tuned.
Baltimore neighborhood raises millions for land purchase
As our project gears up for its first investment campaign, we are inspired to read about our neighboring community's success raising capital to purchase Hillside Park. While our projects have important differences, it's encouraging to see that they raised millions from roughly 900 people. You can learn more about their success and future plans in this article.
Here is a link to the project’s website.
A look back at the history of the property we want to buy
One of the reasons Invest York Road is looking to revitalize the site of the old Flight restaurant is that the property has a rich history of community connections. If you are not familiar with that history, check out this article.
You can support community transformation today!
We have recently created a way for individual donors to support our efforts to transform Baltimore’s York Road Corridor and build community wealth through the long-term community ownership of commercial real estate.
Read the full story here.
Help us set our dividend policy
Invest York Road is working out some of the details of the community investment campaign that will be launched in the coming months. We’d like your input on a key topic--dividends.
Dividend payments are an important part of our plan to build community wealth. They are the regular earnings you receive from this kind of investment, a financial reward for the risk you take by investing.
Dividends only get paid if the thing you are investing in is financially successful. With IYR, that means to pay dividends we have to make sure the properties we purchase are earning enough rental income.
At the same time, we have to make sure we are not charging such a high rent that our business tenants can't survive and thrive, especially as they are getting started.
With those thoughts in mind, please indicate your preferences below:
How soon should IYR pay dividends?
I would expect to receive dividends within the first year of my investment.
I would be willing to wait up to three years to start receiving dividends.
I would be willing to wait five years or more to start receiving dividends.
How large a dividend would you expect?
Dividends should be paid at about the level that stocks on the stock market pay, roughly 1.5%.
Dividends should be similar to the return available from a bond or CD, roughly 4.5%.
Dividends should be at least 5% to reflect the risk associated with direct investing.
I am fine with any level of dividends. My main motivation for investing is the social impact.
Go here to answer this month’s question.
Last month we asked readers about organizing a follow-up program to our financial literacy classes. Respondents were evenly split between setting up an investment club and setting up a multipurpose financial empowerment group. Stay tuned for more details about a possible program.
Financial literacy classes this month
We are on summer break and will resume classes in September.
See you in September
Invest York Road will be taking a newsletter break in August. Unless something really important comes along, our next issue will be after that.