After 87 years and three generations of selling engagement rings, the Samuelsons are trying real estate development on for size.

Baltimore Street Redevelopment

The family-run business, anchored by a retail diamond store at the corner of West Baltimore and North Paca streets, is teaming up with Baltimore County developer David S. Brown Enterprises and Washington-based firm A&R Development to return a key downtown Baltimore block between the University of Maryland and the central business district to its former glory as a “thriving downtown area.”

“People used to get on a bus and come downtown and went shopping at Stewarts’s or Hutzler’s,” said Steven Samuelson, who at 67 still runs the shop with his son Ron, who is 36. “The neighborhood had become something we knew we had to do something about, or else somebody else would.”

Samuelson’s Diamonds maintains its commitment to rebuilding and reinvigorating city life and business on the West Side of Baltimore.

The article, which originally appeared in The Baltimore (Maryland) Daily Record, is also available through BNET: ‘Samuelsons, Brown Enterprises teaming on Baltimore’s West Side | Daily Record, The (Baltimore) | Find Articles at BNET:‘