A new neighborhood is taking shape in Baltimore.

What was once a notorious apartment complex and vacant buildings on West North Avenue is becoming Reservoir Square, a rowhouse community with office space and more development planned. On Monday, the developer behind the project announced plans for a grocery store.

Streets Market, a grocery store chain with locations in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, plans to anchor the redevelopment of a vacant building at 600 W. North Ave. that was once a day care.

P. David Bramble, the co-founder of MCB Real Estate, said the Reservoir Square project began about a decade ago and has survived multiple setbacks and deals that fell through.

“But we kept pushing, knowing this community deserved better,” Bramble said. “Every time I was about to give up, someone reached out and said, ‘Please keep pushing on this. We need this.’”

In addition to Streets Market, the 20,000-square-foot project will also include space for other retail businesses, according to a press release. Some taxpayer money is supporting it. The West North Avenue Development Authority, funded largely by the state, invested $1 million in the project.

MCB is developing the project in partnership with another Baltimore-based firm, Blank Slate. Property records show that MCB and Blank Slate spent $2 million to acquire the parcel.

“This grocery store will not succeed unless we make it our own. This is going to be our store,” Bramble said. “We need to shop here. We need to tell our friends and neighbors to come in.”

The development of Reservoir Square is personal for Bramble, a Baltimore native who grew up nearby. His parents attended the announcement, along with a bevy of city officials, state lawmakers and Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume.

Baltimore-based MCB has made investments across the country and is best known locally for its ambitious plans to overhaul Harborplace at the Inner Harbor. That project — still in its nascent phases — has become a lightning rod for both praise and skepticism.

Reservoir Square is similar in scope to other Baltimore projects helmed by MCB, including Yard 56 in East Baltimore and Northwood Commons.

Ryan Homes, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, is building the neighborhood’s 120 rowhouses. Bramble said Monday that 50 of those sites have already been sold.

A block away from the future Streets Market, masons were laying brick at some of the new homes. Property records show sales to individual homeowners range from $350,000 to almost $500,000.

Bramble said these sales were proof that people want to live in West Baltimore. Before its rebranding as Reservoir Square, the area was formerly Madison Park North, known to some as the “Murder Mall” because of the drug trade and violence that plagued it.

“What you’re seeing here — near what was once called ‘Murder Mall’ — is about a fresh new beginning and a renaissance that is happening up and down North Avenue,” said Mayor Brandon Scott. “This isn’t just about tearing something down. This is about building something up.”

Monday’s event concluded with Scott, under the supervision of a construction worker, using a backhoe to tear down a wall of the vacant building. But Scott is doing more than ceremonial work on the project.

His administration awarded $16 million to an arm of MCB and signed a unusually long lease agreement to occupy a planned office building at Reservoir Square.

The Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, which has about 50 employees, will lease the building for 32 years, moving its workforce there and using the space as a career center for the community.