Brewed Fresh Daily

Trust us. This is a good problem to have, but it's a problem nevertheless. As the downtowns of big cities revive and people chose again to live in town, the newcomers are setting off numerous conflicts with older residents. No, we're not talking in this case about poor families displaced by gentrification, but blue-collar industries. It's happening all over (Boston, Cleveland, Tampa, Fla., etc.), but it's most noticeable in Baltimore, where residential developers are vying for the same waterfront properties as port industries. "You have this encroachment of gentrification," said an executive of one port company. "We have to be very careful that we don't work ourselves into a corner, where we have a lot of townhouses right up to the water's edge, and we have a second-class port." Hey, that's the free market at work, say developers. "Baltimore's changed," said one banker and developer. "The industrial component is going to go away from here, from the waterfront. . . . The land values are going up. The highest and best use is not for small marine terminals anymore. It's for offices and condos." These aren't easy conflicts to resolve. The 300-year-old Port of Baltimore is still thriving, focused on auto imports. It accounts for 15,700 jobs directly and maybe another 17,000 indirectly and generates more than $200 million a year in state and local taxes. Big problem: Baltimore's port and industrial areas are governed by state and local agencies, and there's no master plan for its development. Footnote: It's not just port cities where you find blue-collar vs. white-collar conflicts. Atlanta's gritty west side, a vast industrial landscape of rail yards and warehouses, is fast becoming a hip neighborhood of art galleries and lofts. Recalls one old-timer, with details that would chill the hearts of vegetarians living there now, "The old U-Haul place that's condos now? That used to be trailers full of pigs to be slaughtered. The (apartment) building across the street from here, that was a meat house with a dairy. Just behind it is where they used to kill cows, used to shoot them in the back."