The entrance to the Alley Shops at 1330 Reisterstown Road is plain wall for now. The Pikesville Downtown Partnership scheduled Wednesday, October 28, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., to show the design meant for it at the Pikesville Armory's NCO Club, with a Zoom option. The plan was for anyone to drop in, meet the selected artist, mark up the proposal and fill out a short survey. According to the event listing, that feedback goes to the artist before the design is final.
This will be Pikesville's second community mural. The way it is being made says more about downtown than the paint will. Pikesville's first public mural was a single project with its own committee. The second comes from a coalition that formed to keep this kind of work going.
The first wall, painted in spring 2024
The first wall is at 1220 Reisterstown Road, on the side of a commercial building across the street from the Pikesville Branch Library and the Maryland State Police headquarters. Muralist Jaz Erenberg painted it with her husband, Doron Erenberg. It's called Echoes of Resilience, and in Erenberg's words to Baltimore Fishbowl, it is "themed around Pikesville's natural beauty and history." It measures 45 feet long by 13 feet high.
Fishbowl called it the first publicly funded, juried mural in the area. Erenberg is a 2017 graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art and a member of Baltimore's Public Art Commission. Her other murals are in Station North, Belair-Edison, Sandtown-Winchester, Cherry Hill, Highlandtown and Ednor Gardens. The Pikesville project was coordinated by 1,000 Friends of Pikesville, with support from the Northwest Baltimore Partnership, the Greater Baltimore Chamber of Commerce, the Pikesville Revitalization Action Plan Committee and Baltimore County.
The idea came well before the paint. Pikesville's 2021 Revitalization Action Plan called for picking public-art locations, giving the Armory special consideration, and commissioning work, with a target of fiscal year 2022-23. That made the first mural a goal a plan had set years earlier, and it took until spring 2024 to finish.
What changed between wall one and wall two
The second mural is being built differently. The county's 2025 Sustainable Community plan for Pikesville says county money had already paid for new trash cans, a public mural and a placemaking consultant. It also says revitalization work would be led by the Pikesville Downtown Partnership starting in 2025. The Alley Shops mural is the first mural on record under that new arrangement.
| Echoes of Resilience | Alley Shops mural | |
|---|---|---|
| Location | 1220 Reisterstown Road, across from the library | Entrance to the Alley Shops, 1330 Reisterstown Road |
| Led by | 1,000 Friends of Pikesville, with four supporting partners | Pikesville Downtown Partnership, a coalition of five nonprofits |
| Funding | Publicly funded, juried | Supported by a Baltimore County grant |
| Public role before painting | Artist selected through a juried process | Drop-in and Zoom session to mark up the proposed design, plus a survey |
| Status as of late October 2026 | Painted in spring 2024 | Design not yet final; artist and painting date not yet announced publicly |
The Partnership's five members are the Greater Baltimore Chamber of Commerce, the Pikesville Armory Foundation, 1000 Friends of Pikesville, CHAI and the Pikesville Improvement Corporation. The same coalition was at work on Reisterstown Road well before this wall. In March 2025, CHAI reported that more than 25 volunteers joined the Partnership and WesBanco to clean up the road.
Pikesville's status with the state changed in between. On April 7, 2026, County Executive Kathy Klausmeier announced that Maryland's Department of Housing and Community Development had approved Pikesville as Baltimore County's ninth Sustainable Community. The designation makes the area eligible for state revitalization money for "bricks and mortar" work like commercial revitalization and public spaces. Pikesville had first been grouped with Randallstown and Woodlawn under a single Northwest Gateways designation. The county split it out after community input showed each area had different priorities. In that release, the county counted "the installation of the community's first publicly funded mural" among Pikesville's recent visible improvements.
The same stretch of road, on the November and December calendar
The two murals and the Armory sit along Reisterstown Road, and most of the events on the calendar between now and early December are on that road too. The Pikesville Branch Library is at 1301 Reisterstown Road, between the two mural addresses. The Armory, where the feedback session was scheduled, is at 640.
- Tuesdays through November 24, 2 to 6 p.m. The Pikesville Farmers Market is on the Armory's front lawn. JMORE reported that this is the market's 25th season and its first at the Armory. Four Tuesdays are left: November 3, 10, 17 and 24.
- Wednesday, November 4, 2 to 3 p.m. At the Pikesville Branch Library, Acadia Roher, archivist at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, speaks about preserving Maryland's Jewish history.
- Sunday, November 8. Classic Afternoon with Bach in Baltimore at the Armory, with Carrollton Brass and Charm City Flutes. It is free, thanks to the Peggy and Yale Gordon Trust. Space is limited and registration is required.
- Sunday, November 15, 2 to 4 p.m. Stephanie Burgee leads a beginner-friendly Autumn Watercolors Workshop with the Baltimore County Arts Guild in the Armory's NCO Club. Tickets are $30, or $50 for two, and materials are included.
- Friday, December 4, 7 to 10 p.m. Jingle Jazz, Ribbons & Bows, a holiday jazz dinner benefiting PCDS, at the Armory with a buffet and live jazz. Tickets are $60 per person or $100 per pair.
- Sunday, December 6, 3 to 6 p.m. The 3rd Annual Courts, Colons and Community pickleball fundraiser at Bounce Pickleball Club, 1726 Reisterstown Road. Registration is $36.
Several of these events depend on one building. The NCO Club, home to the mural session and the November watercolor class, reopened as finished space in 2025. Baltimore Fishbowl reported in August 2025 that the renovation was done, with meeting and event space, Armory Foundation offices and a county Recreation and Parks office. Before that, downtown had no space like it for a drop-in design review.
What could change next on Reisterstown Road
Of everything in the pipeline, the mural is closest to done. Other plans are funded or written but don't have street-level detail yet.
The largest pot of money for storefronts is a $100,000 award from the Maryland Façade Improvement Program to the Greater Baltimore Chamber of Commerce, for upgrading building exteriors along Pikesville's commercial corridor. The county says the project came from the community's Action Plan. Under the state's program rules, the receiving organization sets up a grant fund and runs an application process for businesses. The money covers capital costs for exterior façades. No list of participating blocks or businesses has been published, so nobody can yet say which storefronts will change.
The 2025 plan also lists transportation ideas still at the proposal stage. They include evaluating crosswalks and signals on Reisterstown Road, sidewalk maintenance and buffers, walking audits, parking wayfinding, a larger LOOP circulator, paths linking the Armory to nearby neighborhoods, and better Metro connections. The plan itself notes that pedestrian access along Reisterstown Road had not yet been improved when it was written.
The Armory has the longest timeline. The 2025 plan describes a $95 million, four-year transformation expected to be fully complete in 2028. The planned uses include recreation, trails, public art, a makerspace, community events and performance space. In August 2025, Fishbowl reported that the outdoor phase, with fields, paths, a playground and more public art, was slated to start in late 2026. No start date has been announced, so treat that timing as a plan.
The Alley Shops mural is the next of these changes people will actually see. Its artist and painting date are still to be announced, and the Pikesville Armory Foundation's events page is where the Partnership has been posting its public sessions.
Our team at Dan Cohen Homes follows changes like the Alley Shops mural, the façade money and the Armory's next phase block by block. If you want to know how they could affect your street or the value of your Pikesville home, ask for a free consultation.
