Real estate financier William Polk Carey has announced his intention to leave the bulk of his estate to the W.P. Carey Foundation to help revive the economy of Baltimore, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Though Carey lives in New York City, his family has a philanthropic history in Baltimore that dates back six generations. While the exact sum of Carey's fortune is unknown, he owns roughly 30 percent of the investment firm W.P. Carey & Co., which has a market value of approximately $1.2 billion. Eventually, Carey's bequest could make his foundation, which has some $20 million in assets, one of the top grantmakers focused on the city.

In recent years, Carey and his foundation have awarded approximately $65 million to Baltimore-area institutions, including the Gilman, Calvert, and Bryn Mawr schools; the Baltimore School for the Arts; the Maryland Historical Society; and Johns Hopkins University, which received $50 million from the foundation in 2006 to establish the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School. Unlike some of the city's other large grantmakers, such as the Annie E. Casey and Harry and Jeannette Weinberg foundations, which focus primarily on providing social services, Carey hopes to use his philanthropy to foster a business revival in the city.

"Baltimore used to be the cultural center of the United States," Carey said, attributing the city's economic decline in large part to the departure or acquisition of corporations once based there. "We have to start having enterprises started here that want to stay headquartered in Baltimore, and one of the ways we can do that is by having more business school grads starting here."