NAIOP Maryland has scheduled its Community Service Project event for Friday, May 1 at the Patterson Park Youth Sports and Education Center, to benefit the Living Classroom Foundation. The event, which begins at noon with a reception and luncheon, is situated at 200 S. Linwood Avenue in Baltimore City. For information on participating or becoming an event sponsor, visit www.naiopmd.org, e-mail kates@naiopmd.org or call 443-986-9429.

More than 160 members of NAIOP Maryland, a local commercial real estate trade association, will assemble garden beds, construct tables and benches and perform other tasks. Merritt Properties is the Platinum event sponsor and Corporate Office Properties Trust, First Potomac Realty Trust, Heritage Properties, The MacKenzie Companies and St. John Properties are the Gold event sponsors. Silver sponsors include The Brick Companies, Continental Realty Corporation, Greenfield Partners, J.C. Porter Construction, Knott Realty Group, Kramon & Graham, Lee & Associates, Liberty Property Trust, Mid-Atlantic Properties, The Mullan Contracting Company, Prologis and Wilhelm Commercial Builders.

Brendan Gill of The MacKenzie Companies and Connie Rhodes of Rhodes Development, LLC are serving as Co-Chairs of the project. Gill, Rhodes and the fifteen-person committee are consistently challenged to locate a venue that “can keep more than 150 people busy for the entire afternoon,” as well as satisfy the various real estate, construction and community-relations objectives as mandated by the biennial exercise. This year’s event has become a mini-development project with landscape architects, construction managers and real estate professionals leveraging their talents to shape the day’s activities.

“Our team is consistently impressed with the work and the people behind Living Classrooms, and we are amazed at their diverse programming,” Gill explained. “In addition to providing quality educational support for Baltimore City’s youth, they also offer enrichment, after school and summer educational programming at places such as Living Classrooms’ Carmela Anthony Youth Development Center and Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center – which we volunteered with two years ago. It is a group that we are proud to give back to.”
Birchwood Capital Partners is sponsoring the post-event Happy Hour and J. Burke Catering is the luncheon sponsor. In addition, NAIOP Maryland has received in-kind sponsorships from FX Studios which is providing Under Armour gym bags for all the participating students.