When customers enter JNB Beauty on Belair Road, they are immediately greeted by owner Tunde Tenabe – warm and motherly.
As she rushes through the store, she stocks the shelves and even checks the weather to recommend the right outfits. She knows fabrics and sizes. Her motto with her customers is “Everyone is Beyoncé,” which means making sure every customer leaves the store looking and feeling their best.
“This dress is the real deal,” Tenabe told shoppers early Saturday morning. “It’s a real show-stopper.”
Tenabe, a Northeast Baltimore native, owns a retail clothing and beauty store in the heart of the Bel Air-Edison business district, the third-most populous neighborhood in the city’s northeast region, full of promise and challenges for business.
Belair Road, a major commercial thoroughfare, increases proximity and visibility to other businesses. The neighborhood’s unique collection of light-filled row houses, built primarily between the 1920s and 1950s, give the neighborhood historic value and a higher population density than many other neighborhoods, meaning businesses have the potential for high pedestrian traffic.
However, the area underwent rapid demographic change in the 1990s, going from majority white to majority black. As of 2021, the median household income in the area is $46,000, lower than the Baltimore City average, and 27.4% of families live in poverty, which is significantly higher than the city average, according to data from the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance. In the 2000s, the area was hit hard by the subprime mortgage crisis, and high rates of distressed home sales further contributed to the turmoil in the area.
The area is home to Belair-Edison Neighborhoods Inc. (BENI), an active nonprofit that invests in homes, businesses and the community. John Watkins with BENI said the area has a strong neighborhood association, the Belair-Edison Community Association. There are also many business owners in the area who are invested in the community.
Conversations with Bel Air business owners reveal the hopes and concerns of merchants in one of Baltimore’s predominantly African-American communities: As of March 2024, at least 23 of Bel Air Edison’s more than 50 businesses are Black-owned and at least 13 are women-owned, according to BENI.
Tenabe’s dreams for her business are inseparable from the community. “I want to be here,” she says. She dreams of fostering a space where local residents can feel dignity and respect while shopping close to home. “They don’t have to go all the way to Towson,” she says. “They can come here and feel good and be pretty.”
Tenabe worked with her parents to raise the funds to buy the store. She likes to walk around the neighborhood and shop at other stores in the area. “When you get to know people, you connect with them and they come back more,” Tenabe said.
Like Tenabe, other business owners are betting on Bellaire Edison for the future. Sidney Newton recently celebrated the grand opening of her shop, Sidney’s Ice Creams, but she has bigger plans. Newton, who learned the intricate craft of creating desserts at a French pastry shop in Baltimore, said she envisions making the leap from ice cream and desserts to a more sophisticated, upscale grocery store, “like Dean & Deluca.”
Newton attributes his success to the connections he has with family and friends, and says running a business brings him deep satisfaction. After appearing on the morning TV news in February, he recalled, a group of seniors who had seen the show came by to buy butter pecan ice cream.
“It was so gratifying,” she said. “People were so proud of me as a black girl trying to do this, and that made me so happy.”
Newton said having neighbors and neighbours come to visit helps her feel connected to the community. “I love talking to the residents,” she said.
Around the corner from Newton’s ice cream shop, Tameka Rice’s Queenmeka House of Exotic Wear, which sells sequined dance costumes, fishnet tops, handbags and jewelry, said she was trying to address deeper issues, such as low self-esteem, among the women who shop at her store.
“I sit down and have a conversation with them and ask, ‘Why do you feel that way about yourself?'” she says. Rice discusses issues ranging from skin color to weight and encourages them to let go of the idea that they’re ugly. “I don’t care what your flaws are. Nobody is ugly.”
Rice, who grew up in East Baltimore, converted her home-based business into a brick-and-mortar store and celebrated her one-year anniversary in March. She says connecting with the community is a top priority. When she first opened her store, she “visited every business and introduced myself and let them know who I was,” which brought in new customers. Rice dreams of eventually having a larger store and expanding outside of Baltimore.
Tenabe said fear of crime could discourage some customers from coming to areas like Bel Air-Edison. A Banner analysis of police crime data shows the violent crime rate is slightly lower than the citywide rate. Bel Air-Edison’s rate was 19.3 crimes per 1,000 residents in 2023. The citywide rate was 20.1 crimes. The Banner counted murder, shootings, aggravated assault, rape and robbery as violent crimes.
Tenabe remembers when shopkeepers knew everyone by name. “We have to learn how to deal with each other, not be afraid of each other like we are now,” she said.
For Tenabe, Rice and others, doing business in Bel Air Edison means investing in the dignity of the neighborhood and its residents, a process in which business owners build good relationships with the community.
“If we support each other, if we are more accepting, more supportive, more complimentary of each other, we’ll be better,” Rice said.
Data Intern Adriana Navarro contributed to this story.
This story is part of a series produced by the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill School of Journalism’s Urban Issues Reporting class in collaboration with the Baltimore Banner. Students met with owners and staff of more than 70 small businesses in Baltimore City to understand how they are surviving in the age of big-box stores and online shopping.
