Well, we're past 500 posts in the last Baltimore Development 2 thread.
I guess we should continue here unless someone overrides this thread. Since I don't have "sticky thread" powers, we'll just have to see. :)

I don't know if anyone ever posted this, but it's a neat website that goes over the development in East Baltimore.
http://www.ebdi.org

"The community will have 1,200 new or renovated homes for mixed-income buyers and renters, including town homes, duplex homes, apartments and senior housing. Up to 6,000 new jobs will be created for skill levels ranging from high school to those with advanced college degrees."

Good deal. :)

great! Thanks. :)

Hi everyone, I'm new to this site. Glad to see that there are a lot of people out there who care about Baltimore's redevelopment progress!

Anyway, this question has probably been asked before, but has anyone heard anything else regarding a new arena for Baltimore? I know there was a brief mention of a proposal in the Sun paper last year, but I haven't heard anything else since then. Everyone knows this city is long overdue for a decent indoor facility. I thought they would've knocked down the old arena downtown by now.

Thanks.

First of all, "Welcome to the Forum!"

Secondly, no news of a MUCH NEEDED new arena. Sorry.
Your concerns are shared by many of us. Our best shot at a new arena was blown when the "Believe Team's" Westin proposal at the Conway street site was turned down in favor of the Johnson Hilton proposal. :(
Since then, only little "blips" here and there or just rumors really.

its that time of year again!!!! :)
http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/778/6063ocean_citya-thumb.jpg

Seeings how this has been the third coldest May in recorded history, it's hard to believe that it's Memorial Day weekend and beach time again. I have not spent 1 dime on air conditioning yet, and the heat is still on. Can't remember the last time I used the furnace in May. :down: :blahblah:

It's 93 degrees where I'm at. :D :D :D Sorry, just had to brag a little.... ;)

Baltimore Housing Boom Makes National Headline
Some Market Analysts Concerned Over Potential Market Cooldown

POSTED: 7:27 pm EDT May 25, 2005
UPDATED: 7:42 pm EDT May 25, 2005

BALTIMORE -- The Baltimore housing market made a national front-page newspaper headline Wednesday -- but some analysts have concerns over possible reckless investing.

WBAL-TV 11 News reporter Kate Amara reported the city housing market currently enjoys an amazing pace of buying and selling.

Gus Tsamouras, a realtor, described what he has experienced in recent months: "a frantic pace, multiple offers on property ... we had a listing downtown, and in about 72 hours, we had 10 offers, all above asking price."

Amara said that sentiment seems to echo citywide these days: a red-hot housing market with no sign of cooling down.

Baltimore's boom stole the national spotlight Wednesday, landing on the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

"What they're saying is the investors are actually investing their money in some of our poorer neighborhoods because they see our city coming back," Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley said.

According to the Journal article, residential rehabilitation permits jumped in the city nearly 50 percent in the last six years.

"(The article) will be read all over the country by people who make investments in cities that are on the rise," O'Malley said.

Financial analyst Brian Kroneberger agreed, but also believes Baltimore follows a national trend in which the value of the average American home has increased by 50 percent in the last five years.

"Baltimore is thriving, the real estate -- certainly in Canton, Federal Hill -- has been strong, and with tax revenues increasing, it's good for the city of Baltimore," he said.

Amara said home rehabilitations in progress and "for sale" signs occupy many houses in south Baltimore -- even around Patterson Park and Reservoir Hill.

The mayor said the housing boom has breathed new life into previously blighted neighborhoods.

"If you make cities safer, people will want to come back. So, it's a great for Baltimore, and the more we can attract investment, the more we can grow," O'Malley said.

Tsamouras called the market "a feeding frenzy" with no sign of a slowdown. He said his sellers routinely pocket double-digit profits, usually around 40 to 45 percent.

"In the last nine months, we've seen prices escalate already above levels that we thought were exceptional," he said.

But some wonder whether the spike in real estate spending will turn the city around for good, or if Baltimore's bubble could soon burst.

"Any time you have investment -- especially at the top of a market -- and it's kind of exasperating itself, because people are pulling out money from their existing home equity loans and using that money for a down payment on vacation or rental properties, that tells me that it's a speculative bubble and, eventually, it has to unwind," Kroneberger said.

And when the bubble does burst -- will Baltimore have egg on its newly rehabilitated face?

According to an economist the mayor has asked: "Not in Baltimore."

"I asked him why he said that, and he said, there are a couple things: One, you are continuing to improve the quality of life. You are located in that corridor between Washington, D.C., and New York, and you are surrounded by cities more expensive in which to live. And the third thing is our creative assets -- our universities and our hospitals," the mayor said.

And even when the market does cool, O'Malley said he's confident real estate speculators will have already bombarded Baltimore with cash, stabilized a shrinking population and shored up the city for the long haul, Amara said.

The mayor also addressed the question of whether gentrification would eventually displace the city's working class. O'Malley said his administration is looking into dedicating a percentage of the transfer tax into an affordable housing fund to create a mix of housing opportunities.

Stay with TheWBALChannel.com and WBAL-TV 11 News for the latest House and Home updates.

Whoops. Posted this on the old thread. I'll repeat here.


Has everyone seen this one yet?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/travel/bal-travel0526,1,6735055.story?coll=bal-features-headlines

Baltimore makes list of top 10 travel destinations
Frommer's credits city's neighborhoods, cultural renaissance for appeal

By A Sun Staff Writer
Originally published May 26, 2005, 12:27 PM EDT

Frommer's, a leading travel guide publisher, added Baltimore to the list based on a poll of hundreds of travel experts, the company said.

The city shares the designation with places such as Brazil, Puerto Rico, the Cook Islands, Barcelona, Vietnam, Belize, South Africa, Tucson and the Catskills...

Wow,
Thats good to know. Who says Baltimore is not an entertaining city :okay:

Good find Ron :)

good article: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.comfort26may26,1,1517808.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Travel experts: Baltimore a hot summer destination
Julekha Dash
Staff
Now Baltimore shares something in common with Barcelona, Spain and Belize, according to a ranking by travel publisher Frommer's.


Each of these locations was among the top 10 suggestes summer destinations for 2005, according to the publication.

Frommer's polled hundreds of travel experts to devise the list, which also includes Puerto Rico; the Cook Islands, South Pacific; Hoi An, Vietnam; Paraty, Brazil; South Africa; Cambria, Calif.; and the Catskills, N.Y.

Baltimore's cultural attractions, neighborhoods and restaurants were among the reasons Baltimore made the list. The publication took note of 10 new or improved Baltimore attractions, which include the American Visionary Arts Museum, the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the Walters Art Museum.

"If you've never considered Baltimore, now is the time. It's undergoing a cultural renaissance that goes beyond baseball and steamed crabs. Top off your day by visiting one of the new ethnic restaurants that have been popping up in neighborhoods like Fells Point, Mount Vernon, and Little Italy that make dining an event unto itself," Frommer's editors wrote.

Baltimore hosts more than 11 million visitors annually who contribute nearly $3 billion to Baltimore's economy. Frommer's is a unit of Wiley Publishing Inc., headquartered in Hoboken, N.J.



© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

Baltimore Retiree Proposes 'Hollywood'-Style Baltimore Sign
Lettered-Sign Would Adorn Federal Hill, Overlooking Inner Harbor

POSTED: 6:38 pm EST March 30, 2004
UPDATED: 7:30 pm EST March 30, 2004

BALTIMORE -- A local retiree is pushing to change a Baltimore landmark in hopes of boosting tourism.


George Kelch (pictured, left) was born and raised in Baltimore and said having "Baltimore" on the side of Federal Hill would help promote the city he loves, WBAL-TV 11 News reporter Rob Roblin reported.

He got idea a couple years ago and friends have told him to pursue it.


"The phone has been ringing off the hook since this morning, and I've had two companies call -- they bought the letters. And [I've had] nothing but people calling, saying: 'This is great,' and it has been remarkable," Kelch said.

The letters would be some kind of plant like ivy or juniper, and would be lit at night, Roblin reported. Kelch said he spoke with Baltimore Gas and Electric officials and said lighting the sign would be inexpensive to do.

Retiree Proposes B-A-L-T-I-M-O-R-E Sign Overlooking Harbor


He also talked to city officials, including Mayor Martin O'Malley.

"I learned in this job that you really should not to take upon all the other jobs of mayor, including art critic," O'Malley told 11 News.

Some people 11 News spoke with said the proposal would add to the ambience of the harbor, but others said they don’t think it's necessary and would spoil the view.

But Kelch will move on with his proposal.

"I want to do it because I think it's a good thing to be done," he said.

The proposal is just in its beginning stage. Many people and organizations would have to give their approval, Robin reported.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/thumbnails/photo/2005-05/17744441.jpg
Westport renewal rules are readied
Urban design agency to receive proposed guidelines today; Shoreline project dubbed 'Harbor West'

With the success of Harbor East, city planners are shifting their attention to redeveloping the industrial shoreline of the Middle Branch in Westport, a 50-acre swath some have dubbed "Harbor West."

City planning staff are to present proposed development guidelines today at a working session of the city's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel, with the goal of having City Council adopt a new urban renewal plan for Westport's waterfront by late summer.

Planners have been working with Patrick Turner of Baltimore-based Henrietta Development Corp., which bought the 16-acre site of the shuttered Carr-Lowrey glass manufacturing plant on Kloman Street and plans a mixed-use development. Turner declined to discuss details of his plan, saying it was too early to comment.

The city envisions transforming a waterfront dotted with abandoned plants and some active businesses into condos, apartments and townhouses, along with some offices and neighborhood stores, clustered around the Westport light-rail station.

Another property owner, Constellation Energy Group, which owns a former Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. power plant on Kloman Street, is close to selling the 12-acre site, a Constellation spokesman said yesterday. Constellation said it could not identify the prospective buyer.

The city began eyeing the stretch from Waterview Avenue to Interstate 95 for residential development after commercial brokers assured the city more than a year ago that an industrial market no longer existed there, said D. Christopher Ryer, deputy director of the city Department of Planning. The city chose not to protect the area for maritime use because of the shallowness of the water.

With the city's housing market booming, buyers clamoring for urban, waterfront homes and available land in short supply, planners and developers see the Middle Branch as the next frontier for upscale housing.

"It's the only [remaining] opportunity for waterfront redevelopment," other than areas reserved for port-related uses, Ryer said.

"We would envision a transit-oriented development, a mixed-use, fairly high-density development that is very walkable," he said. "You wouldn't see destination retail there, like a regional Wal-Mart; you would see retail for that neighborhood. Ideally, you're looking at a mixture of housing products, whether high-rise, mid-rise or low-rise, with density clustered around the [Westport light rail] transit station. But we're also trying to preserve a sense of openness and views toward the water."

Developer A. Rod Womack has no doubts about the attraction of such water views in such a hot housing market, where he said Baltimore still seems a bargain compared with Washington prices. A water location, plus the appeal of new, spacious homes and quick access to both I-95 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway will lure Washington commuters, empty-nesters and other buyers to the shores of the Middle Branch - or "Harbor West" he said.

Womack, chief executive officer of Baltimore-based CIMG Inc., is building Waterview Overlook on 10 acres along Waterview Avenue between Westport and Cherry Hill, across the street from Middle Branch Park. He plans to start selling the more than 100 townhouses and condos in two weeks, touting amenities such as a private pool, garages, a fitness center and a clubhouse.

"We're trying to create a little Canton or Harbor East in Harbor West," Womack said. "If you think about it, there's no more waterfront left. There's nowhere else for folks to develop along the water in Baltimore City."

City officials expect that the portion of the Westport waterfront owned by Turner could be rezoned by late summer to allow mixed-use development. Turner would need to seek a rezoning, which would require City Council approval. Turner bought the 16-acre Carr-Lowrey site at auction in November for $6.82 million, records show.

Turner's Henrietta Development Corp. is transforming a former 290-foot grain elevator in historically blue-collar Locust Point into upscale condos. National homebuilder Pulte Homes is building 121 townhouses on another part of that 15-acre site.

In Westport, zoning changes would likely permit 1,200 to 1,500 homes on the entire 50 acres, along with commercial and retail uses. The stretch now includes the city-owned and mostly unused Kloman ball field; a truck maintenance facility for trash hauling company Cockey's Enterprises Inc.; the former BGE plant, the Carr-Lowrey site and Brice Concrete mixing plant.

Robert Singleton, chief operating officer for Cockey's, said the company bought the property in the late 1990s -not for water views but because it needed space to park and maintain trucks and equipment.

"We haven't addressed the issue of what in the long-term to do with it," said Singleton, who would not comment on whether developers have approached him about buying the land. "We're focused on running the company."

Residents of nearby neighborhoods of Westport, Mount Winans and Lakeland, which have long struggled with abandoned and vacant homes and have battled to get drug dealers off their streets, said they were initially worried about redevelopment plans. They feared their neighborhoods would get none of the benefits of waterfront revitalization but that longtime residents could be displaced by rising property values and taxes.

But community leaders say they have met with Turner, who has expectations that revitalization will extend beyond the waterfront, and has promised public access to the water. Community leaders say they favor new homes and shops sprouting on the former industrial land.

"It's going to have a ripple effect," said Linda Towe, executive director of Project Toour (Teaching Our Own Understanding and Responsibility), an umbrella group for the three neighborhoods. "It's going to expand into all of the neighborhood."

Ruth Sherrill, president of the Westport Community Association, said she looks forward to the redevelopment as a way to revitalize the neighborhood where she has lived for 68 years.

When she was growing up, "the neighborhood seemed more like the suburbs. It was more woods than anything else," she recalled. But decades of depressed property values have led to disinvestment and abandonment of homes.

"I would really like to see more townhouses and some condos and things of that nature, where it won't block the other communities out," she said. "The community would like to see a diversity of people coming in so we can have affordable housing for people in this community. People are realizing they are going to build some properties down on the waterfront."

hopfully it will spur a second inner harbor :naughty:

How many people are expected to live in Baltimore City by the end of the decade?

My Estimate would be 660,00 maybe 665,000 at the end of the decade.

How many people are expected to live in Baltimore City by the end of the decade?
Welcome, 90 degrees! I don't think I have ever seen your posts before. Please feel free to post more often. :)

My guess to the population in Baltimore City by the end of this decade would be around 675,000 or so. It's so hard to pinpoint just exactly how many people there are now. Some say, "651,000 now, others say, 640,000 I've heard told. But if you take the higher number of the two AND given the continuing surge in people moving in Baltimore city, (downtown and other places), AND consider the reverse of the recent exodus of people in the past decade or so, then I'd say it should be around 675,000 people within the city limits. Just using a little probability. :D
But that number is only true if no other unforseen things happen such as; economy stops, or slows way down, crime levels start to increase, housing market comes to a halt, and/or city officials/leaders/developers slow down or stop their strong marketing of the city,...etc......... ;)

That's my 3 or 4 cents. :D :D :D

btw, robert, I did not see that article before. Thanks for posting it. It's a good one! :)

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y238/cfxj530/memorialstadium.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y238/cfxj530/metroarea2.jpg
i wish i had a newer copy of this. i would love to see the difference now

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y238/cfxj530/memorialstadium.jpg

Good old Memorial Stadium. I lived nearby in the early 80's. I could walk to the games, pay $3 for a ticket and take my own beer. By contemporary standards, it was a dump but it was our dump. When the O's won the series ('83), I walked down about 3 AM to see the team bus arrive; the entire parking lot was filled with fans dancing in the wee small hours. It's all so slick and corporate now at Camden Yards, the the day of $3 tickets and cheap beer is about as gone as it gets.

They still have $9 tickets...adjusted for inflation that's not tremendously more. I remember those days well...in fact my wife and I were part of the "roar from 34". The fact you could walk up and buy a ticket was cool, but in those days 1.5-2.0 million attendance was considered good. What was great was that over half the seats were general admission..you paid your money and sat where you wanted...that's what made the section 34 group possible.

As much as we loved Memorial Stadium, Camden Yards is worlds better and with the Nats in DC, you might see a return of the old days of true O's fans in the stands.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y238/cfxj530/memorialstadium.jpg

Great memories indeed!
First game I ever saw there was when the O's hosted the Indians almost 23 years ago. The O's won 5 to nothing! YEAH! ;)
My dad and I filmed a couple tv commercials for major leage baseball and Gwaltney hotdogs. :D It was cheesy but fun. My dad and I had to act like one of the O's just hit a homerun and we had to "High-Five" each other as we watched this imaginary ball sail out of the park. What a trip! My dad couldn't get the High-five right. It took nearly TEN TAKES!! :eek2: :D
Then we joined about 20 others and had to do a wave. lol. 20 people doing a wave was VERY funny. :D
Finally, we had to act like another homerun was hit our way and one of us had to catch the ball. We cheered as one of our crowd caught the ball. It was for the first of many, "Major Leauge Baseball, Catch it!", ads.
The hotdog commercial was fun cause all we had to do was cheer for our O's and bite into the hotdog, all happy like. :D :D :D ;)

Well, I degress. :)

East Baltimore demolition to restart
Alan Zibel
Staff
The first tangible evidence of a massive effort to redevelop East Baltimore is on track to appear in the coming months, with groundbreaking on the first life sciences office building anticipated for September.

East Baltimore Development Inc. (EBDI) said Wednesday that demolition of 18 vacant rowhouses on a two-block area next to Johns Hopkins Hospital is scheduled to take place in June.

EBDI is heading up a $1 billion effort to redevelop an 80-acre blighted neighborhood next to Johns Hopkins Hospital with life sciences offices and new housing.

Demolition of housing in the area has been halted since fall 2003 due to neighborhood concerns about lead and other environmental contaminants that could be released in the air during demolition.

Jack Shannon, president of EBDI, said demolition plans were rewritten in response to community concerns.

Initial plans called for demolition to take place block by block. Under the new plan, the remaining 530 rowhouses will be demolished after residents move out. That is scheduled to take place by the end of the year, Shannon said.

Shannon called neighborhood criticism "very significant and understandable." The new process, he said, "helps us to hopefully allay and address those concerns."

Shannon said that 160 households have moved out of the neighborhood so far, with 10 of those leaving Baltimore City. Residents are being given compensation for being forced to relocate.

"We are moving families to high-quality communities of their choice where crime rates are lower, school options are better and the qualify of life has improved for them and their families," Shannon said.

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/05/23/daily5.html

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/05/23/story2.html

Good articles on Baltimore's developing economy. :)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/bal-te.pe.bubble29may29,1,6679201.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2005-05/17788108.jpg Real estate agent-investor Dorian Keydash checks out the view from his roof deck. The equity in his house in Locust Point helps pay for his purchases of other properties.
(Sun photo by Monica Lopossay)
May 26, 2005

Great article: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/bal-pe.spirit29may29,1,6328631.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Awesome news! :)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/graphic/2005-05/17788312.gif

Great article: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/bal-pe.spirit29may29,1,6328631.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Awesome news! :)

That was a great article! Great ending Quote!

Baltimore is like that. It doesn't really matter if they're saying it's the murder capital or the top ten summer destination, what the house prices or the bond rating is, Baltimore gets under your skin.

It's a great place.

A great ending quote, indeed! :D

An interesting question to ponder. For years the population of Baltimore has been declining, but recently it has appeared to bottom out, perhaps somewhere around 630,000. This is probably an undercount but it suffices as an estimate. If you go back and look at previous censuses, it seems as though we peaked somewhere around 1950 at 950,000 or thereabouts. The question becomes what could we expect if things continue to improve.

Consider that estimates are that the city has about 40,000 empty houses. If we could re-occupy ALL of these houses with a family of 4, that would add 160,000 to the population, bringing it up to somewhere around 800,000, still a long way from 1950. Consider also that many buildings, including a lot of houses, have been built in the city since 1950 and that the vast majority of the newer houses ARE currently occupied.

The $40 question is... just what was the density of occupation of buildings back in 1950? Even with ALL of its houses occupied, the city must have been really cheek-to-jowl back then, something people don't seem to appreciate now. How many people had boarders back then and how big were families? My family tradition has it that some of my ancestors lived during the 40's with 3 guys sharing a room with one bed, sleeping in shifts when they were doing shift work. Can we ever really expect to duplicate that level of density again? With a average family unit of 3, we would have to add or recycle 100,000 units to ever get back up to the 1950 population. That doesn't seem likely in the near future but just what IS the potential? I'd like to see the city actually increase, but just how much can we realistically expect?

An interesting story - this forum seems to neglect one of the busiest parts of the city, the Hopkins Hospital complex, an area that is currently building and has more on the way... from the Greater Baltimore Committee web site -

Forest City puts construction of first east-side life sciences building on 'fast track'

05-26-05 -- Construction of the first lab and office building for the East Baltimore Life Sciences and Technology Park will begin in August, according to the head of the project's Phase One development team.

Construction of the eight-story, 295,000 square-foot building at 855 Wolfe Street "is going to be very much fast-track process," Peter Calkins, senior vice president and chief development officer of Forest City Enterprises, told more than 90 GBC members who attended a May 26 breakfast briefing on the east-side project. The building is targeted for completion in July 2007.

There is a pretty good looking Power Point presentation there that you can download to see what a transformation this project promises.

The $40 question is... just what was the density of occupation of buildings back in 1950? Even with ALL of its houses occupied, the city must have been really cheek-to-jowl back then, something people don't seem to appreciate now. How many people had boarders back then and how big were families? My family tradition has it that some of my ancestors lived during the 40's with 3 guys sharing a room with one bed, sleeping in shifts when they were doing shift work. Can we ever really expect to duplicate that level of density again? With a average family unit of 3, we would have to add or recycle 100,000 units to ever get back up to the 1950 population. That doesn't seem likely in the near future but just what IS the potential? I'd like to see the city actually increase, but just how much can we realistically expect?

I know for a fact that the house I'm currently sitting in once held my Great-Grandparents, their 10 kids, and then they rented out the upstairs. So that's a dozen people on one floor of a house with less than 1000 square feet! I don't know how they did it!

Anyway, I think we're going to see something positive in terms of population when the 2010 census is taken, but I personally would hate to even try to guess a number.

There is a pretty good looking Power Point presentation there that you can download to see what a transformation this project promises.

Awesome.. wheres the download at?

Awesome.. wheres the download at?

It's linked to the GBC site at http://www.gbc.org/news/May05/052605-EastSideDev-PeterCalkins.html

It's linked to the GBC site at http://www.gbc.org/news/May05/052605-EastSideDev-PeterCalkins.html

Great informative site.

This is the type of activity that will grow the city's population in the future. The Forest site talks about 850 housing units. Unlike the housing trends of the 50s, new city residents will, for the most part, be single or empty nesters. I cannot see families moving into the city unless than can afford private school tuition. Also future growth could consist of immigrant families.

The population will grow more slowly, since I believe the average household will consist of only 2 people. Priojects like Hopkins and U of M on the westside will attract more affluent residents and, hopefully increase the city's tax base. New apartment building construction going on downtown along with new housing in Canton, Fells Point and locust Point areas should significantly boost the city's population by 2010. The most important thing is that the mass exodus of residents that we saw in last decade is over. Even a modest gain of 10k residnets is a good thing.

Great articles! Must READ!
http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/05/30/story1.html

Fast-growing U.S. Lacrosse considering city's Harbor Point for new HQ
Heather Harlan
Staff
U.S. Lacrosse is tossing around a plan to relocate its north Baltimore headquarters to Harbor Point -- the downtown waterfront site that remains undeveloped despite years of planning, sources close to the deal said this week.


A move to the site by the governing body of men's and women's lacrosse would be a huge win for the Harbor Point developers, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc. and H&S Properties Development Corp.

The Baltimore developers have tried unsuccessfully for several years to build on the site, once home to a now demolished AlliedSignal chrome factory. In November 2003, the Baltimore Business Journal reported Struever Bros. and H&S remain prohibited from developing residential units on the peninsula off Thames Street as first planned.

Steve Stenersen, executive director of U.S. Lacrosse, declined comment through a spokesman.

And when asked about possible tenants for Harbor Point, Larry White, a senior development director at Struever Bros., said, "We're in the midst of a variety of things that I cannot talk about."

U.S. Lacrosse, a fixture next to Johns Hopkins University's storied Homewood Field off University Parkway, had launched a search for a new headquarters to accommodate its rapid growth last year.

The 12,000-square-foot space at 113 W. University Parkway is no longer adequate for U.S. Lacrosse staff, interns, volunteers, the Lacrosse Museum and National Hall of Fame, officials there said.

U.S. Lacrosse, founded in 1998, isn't the only entity looking at Harbor Point. Morgan Stanley, which first committed to Fells Point in 2003, has until June to decide whether to expand into the first building at Harbor Point.

White also declined to discuss that situation, or the details behind the delay in construction.

Real estate sources close to the project said financing for the commercial project could not be secured until a lead tenant is signed. White said that's not the case: "There are some design issues that are very complicated," he said.

But White said those design issues can be resolved, and the situation is expected to be settled in July. U.S. Lacrosse is also expected to make a decision about its possible relocation in June or July, sources said.



© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/05/30/story8.html

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/05/30/newscolumn2.html

:)

Im so glad to know that U.S. Lacrosse isnt moving out of the city. Harbor Point is a great site and should be developed soon. I wonder if the Lacrosse Museum and Hall of Fame would also be moved to the new site as well. That would be a great attraction to add to the already culturally rich waterfront.

I guess Morgan Stanley has outgrown its space in the tower at Pratt and Howard. I'd love to see Morgan Stanley and some other tenents move into a building or two on the forthcoming Harbor Point campus. I would like to see a waterfront park encorparated into the master plan though.

As for city branding, its a great idea. Just think about Philly. A few years ago Philly was essentially just another regional city. After its branding campaign, it really made itself a destination.

Yeah, and it doesn't hurt that JHU just won the NCAA Championship in Men's Lacrosse. ;)

As for city branding, its a great idea. Just think about Philly. A few years ago Philly was essentially just another regional city. After its branding campaign, it really made itself a destination.

A few years ago I read an interview with I think Bill Streuver.. but the slogan he had for baltimore was "America's largest small town"

I love that one.. I think it would play out pretty well..

UMMS plans $400M expansion
Hospital asks regulators for outpatient center downtownBy Alan Zibel
Baltimore Business Journal
Updated: 8:00 p.m. ET May 29, 2005

The University of Maryland Medical System is planning a $400 million expansion of its Baltimore campus that would make the hospital easier to navigate for patients who aren't staying overnight.

Currently, university clinics for such services as diagnostic imaging and chemotherapy are scattered around 13 buildings throughout the downtown campus. That makes it difficult for elderly patients and people with chronic health problems to figure out where to go.

The hospital on May 6 filed with state regulators detailed plans for a nine-story construction project at Lombard and Greene streets downtown. But hospital officials said it could very well be built somewhere else. [See related story, Page 45.]

Ellen Beth Levitt, a hospital spokeswoman, said the application was "very preliminary" and emphasized that there could still be major changes in the hospital's plan. "Things are still very much in flux," she said.

The hospital filed its application with the Maryland Health Care Commission, which oversees hospital construction and expansion projects statewide.

Joan Shnipper, who heads corporate communications for the medical system, said in an e-mail message that hospital officials plan to revise that application and file it again in July. She declined to comment further.

Ronald M. Kreitner, executive director of WestSide Renaissance Inc., which promotes growth on the city's west side, was enthusiastic about the plan, calling the hospital area a "premier location" near highways and public transportation.

"It's a very clear sign of economic strength and the economic importance of health care both for the west side and the city," Kreitner said.

The hospital's application details plans to build an L-shaped building on a block bounded by Greene, Lombard, Paca and Pratt streets. That block contains the University of Maryland, Baltimore's administrative offices, a building owned by the medical system, two parking lots and a historic building at the corner of Pratt and Paca streets used by M&T Bank and the medical system.

The plans include a bridge over Greene Street to the university's health sciences library.

Paul Drehoff, a spokesman for the university, said he is "certain there is a high level of collaboration" between university and hospital officials on the project, but declined to comment further.

Administrators have identified another potential location: the current home of the University of Maryland, Baltimore's social work school on Redwood Street between Paca and Greene streets, according to Geoffrey Greif, the school's associate dean.

Greif said his school is considering moving to a yet-to-be-determined location. Administrators in the social work school have told faculty and students that a move could take place "in a year or more."

"It isn't a done deal at this point," Greif said. "It's a matter of trying to work out the details."

A potential new home for social work students and faculty could be in a building at the corner of Pratt and Paca streets, Greif said. That building at 110 S. Paca St. is owned by a partnership in which M&T Bank is a limited partner. In February 2004, the Baltimore Business Journal reported that the medical system had signed a 10-year deal with the bank to sublease 110,000 square feet of space at 110 S. Paca St.

Hospitals around the country and locally have been shifting services to outpatient facilities, often in suburban locations, because they can be less expensive and easier to access than traditional hospitals.

Johns Hopkins Hospital, also an academic medical center in Baltimore, opened a suburban outpatient center in Lutherville in 1994 and one in White Marsh in 2000.

While the University of Maryland studied that option, hospital officials rejected it, concluding that suburban locations would make it more difficult to teach medical school students and perform research, according to the application.

The hospital also plans to group its services by clinical specialty. For example, cancer-related services such as bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy are to be centralized in the "clinical neighborhood" of a cancer center.

Other departments are to include a diabetes center and a breast evaluation center, according to the application. The new building also would house some surgeries that don't require an overnight stay.

The total $403 million expansion budget includes $34.5 million for technology systems for the clinical building.

Frank Monius, assistant vice president for administrative services at the Maryland Hospital Association, said hospitals have been building standalone outpatient facilities since the early 1990s.

"You want it to be easy to get in and out," Monius said. "If you have your outpatient activities spread throughout the hospital, it's a challenge for patients to find their way around."

The 650-bed University of Maryland Medical Center has gone through several major expansion projects in the past 15 years.

In 2003, it opened the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building, which holds adult and pediatric emergency departments and state-of-the art emergency rooms.

EurAsian Harbor to become Ruth's Chris
Julekha Dash
Staff

Downtown restaurant EurAsian Harbor will serve its last meal May 7 as owners prepare to transform the spot into a Ruth's Chris Steak House -- just two blocks from another Ruth's Chris at Power Plant Live.


Executives at Big Steaks Management LLC want to capitalize on Ruth's Chris brand recognition and plan to open the new eatery in June, Chief Operating Officer David Sadeghi said. The Metairie, La.-based upscale chain has sprouted more than 80 franchise locations worldwide, including Hong Kong, Mexico and Taiwan.

The new Ruth's Chris, dubbed Ruth's Chris Steak House Pier V, will feature a more "modern, chic" decor versus the Water Street outlet, which sports darker colors and a more traditional look, Sadeghi said.

The restaurant executive said he is not concerned about the proximity of the two eateries because the Pier V location will target a younger clientele, and draw on more tourists and business travelers from the nearby Baltimore Marriott Waterfront hotel.

Other downtown steakhouses include Morton's, Fleming's and, soon, Atlanta-based Capital Grill, which will open its first Baltimore location at 500 E. Pratt St. June 20.

The growth in upscale chain eateries is being fueled by an aging baby boomer population that does not want to eat at home, said Carl Sibilski, a restaurant analyst at Chicago-based Morningstar Inc.

Big Steaks' management believes a Ruth's Chris will draw more dollars than EurAsian Harbor. "A brand that is recognized will have more profitable results," Sadeghi said. In addition, the average cost per diner is about 50 percent higher at Ruth's Chris, versus EurAsian Harbor, he said. Sadeghi deferred additional financial details to Big Steaks CEO Steve de Castro, who could not be reached for comment.

The Ruth's Chris at Pier V would seat 165, about half the capacity of the Power Plant Live location.

In addition to its signature steak, the Pier V restaurant will retain some popular dishes at EurAsian Harbor, such as the whole fish and the sea bass.

In July, Big Steaks will open yet another Ruth's Chris in Atlantic City, replacing Babalu Grill, which closed in the resort city last month. The Pikesville-based company operates eight restaurants, including Blue Sea Grill and Babalu Grill at Power Plant Live.

Big Steaks' news comes shortly after Ruth's Chris Steak House Inc. filed an S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering. At least three new Ruth's Chris have opened in the past six months, in Virginia Beach, Va., Sacramento, Calif., and Biloxi, Miss.

Ruth's Chris charges a $100,000 franchise fee, which does not include training, real estate and construction costs. Franchisees pay Ruth's Chris a royalty fee of 5 percent of gross sales each month and an additional 1 percent to fund advertising costs.

© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

A few years ago I read an interview with I think Bill Streuver.. but the slogan he had for baltimore was "America's largest small town"

I love that one.. I think it would play out pretty well..

Isn't Reno called, "The Biggest Little City in America"? Kinda close to the, "America's largest small town."
:D ;)

Sad article: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/05/30/story2.html :(

Very good article :)

BLIGHT TO BRIGHT
Real Estate Boom Helping Reverse Urban Decay
May 27, 2005
By JAMES R. HAGERTY, And KEMBA J. DUNHAM Wall Street Journal BALTIMORE -- Last year, Terence Trader and a friend paid $77,000 for a crumbling, six-bedroom house in Baltimore with garish yellow asbestos siding.

After partially renovating the property, which abuts two boarded-up homes, the former social worker agreed to sell it last month - for roughly $300,000. The buyers, a young couple from Washington, D.C., say they plan to settle down in Baltimore.

"It's kind of a diamond in the rough," said Jennifer Hoover, a doctoral student in psychology, who is buying the house with her husband.

The transaction marks a small victory for Baltimore as the city recovers from one of the nation's most relentless urban declines.

During the past 50 years, Baltimore has lost about a third of its population amid an exodus of industrial jobs and the flight of middle-class people to the suburbs. As recently as last year, the city housing department kept five crews busy boarding up abandoned homes to shut out prostitutes and drug dealers.

Now the national real estate boom is starting to transform some neighborhoods long resistant to government or philanthropic recovery programs. The five-year-old boom in residential housing initially was concentrated heavily on economically vibrant cities, such as San Diego, Miami and New York.

In the past couple of years, it has spread to some less obvious places, including long-distressed sections of Baltimore, Philadelphia and Oakland, Calif. Parts of these cities have turned into hot real estate markets, largely because their house prices still seem like bargains, compared with those in more glamorous cities nearby.

The lowest mortgage interest rates in four decades have spurred spending on housing across the country and sent individual investors searching for real estate opportunities much as they used to scour the financial news for the latest initial public offering.

Cities are promoting blighted areas as investment opportunities, offering a lure many prosperous suburbs lack: vacant property suitable for developers.

Philadelphia offers property-tax breaks to people who build new houses or rehabilitate old ones under a program created about five years ago.

In Oakland, the city government has long offered low-interest loans to low- and moderate-income people who renovate homes. A few years ago, Oakland also tried to lure residents from San Francisco with ads touting far lower prices and less fog. Now, said Samee Roberts, the city's marketing manager, "the housing market is so hot we don't really need to spend dollars on advertising."

It's not clear whether real estate fever will translate into long-term gains for poor urban neighborhoods. Some buyers are absentee landlords who hope for quick profits and may not be much more willing or able than their predecessors to invest heavily in renovation. Moreover, a spike in interest rates could cool investors' interest in marginal neighborhoods.

But officials in Baltimore say the rush of investment in housing is helping them turn the city around. The population, estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau at 636,000, has nearly stopped shrinking.

In 2004, the median home price in Baltimore jumped 20 percent, to $90,000, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., Rockville, Md., which tracks sales made by real estate agents. That compares with an 8 percent rise nationwide.

Baltimore helped lay the groundwork for a recovery in the late 1990s by beginning to tear down high-rise public-housing projects that Mayor Martin O'Malley said ringed downtown "like a moat of despair." The 42-year-old mayor has pushed forward with the redevelopment of those sites to provide a mix of subsidized and market-rate housing.

His administration also has acquired thousands of vacant houses and begun selling them to people willing to renovate the properties. It has brought in experts from other cities, including New York, to shake up the city housing department. And the city is concentrating government aid on the most promising neighborhoods, such as those near Johns Hopkins University, rather than spreading it thinly throughout the city.

O'Malley acknowledged that none of these efforts will suffice if the city can't make the streets safe. He has embraced the New York approach of using statistics to pinpoint high-crime areas that need more policing. In 2003, the latest year for which comparable statistics are available from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore reported 11,183 incidents of violent crime, down 40 percent from 1999, the year before O'Malley took office. That compares with a nationwide decline of 3.5 percent in the same period. But the homicide rate has stayed relatively high. In 2004, Baltimore had about 44 homicides per 100,000 residents, compared with 7.3 in New York.

Baltimore gets a lift from its proximity to Washington, D.C., one of the nation's strongest job markets, where home prices are more than three times as high. Some people with jobs in Washington now commute to Baltimore, about 45 minutes away by train.

To promote the idea of Baltimore as a haven for people priced out of the Washington market, O'Malley works closely with a nonprofit organization called the Live Baltimore Home Center, funded by the city and private foundations. Live Baltimore markets Baltimore as a trendy urban lifestyle choice. The organization has run ads in Washington publications showing flower pots crowding a few square feet of pavement. "If you call this a yard," the ads say, "you need to get out of D.C."

Tracy K. Gosson, executive director of Live Baltimore, said gay people are among her targets. For most of them, she said, Baltimore's weak public schools aren't a big issue. "They really value historic architecture, which we have a lot of," said Gosson, a native of Syracuse, N.Y., who moved to Baltimore in 1993 and renovated a row house.

Even for people who have school-age children, Gosson has a ready pitch: "You're going to pay so much less for the house here that you can afford private schools."

In some areas, the city is trying to acquire run-down houses and string together large parcels of land that can be offered to private developers. One big developer recently drawn to Baltimore is KSI Services Inc., Vienna, Va.

KSI is a partner in two projects that involve plans for a total of about 1,500 new residential units, including townhouses and condominiums. Robert Kettler, chairman of KSI, said he was attracted by Baltimore's location near the booming Washington area and by O'Malley's enthusiasm. "If you need to talk to the mayor, he'll call you back in three minutes," Kettler said.

The city is also drawing hundreds of small property investors and speculators. In one blighted, but promising neighborhood, Barclay, between the city's main rail station and Johns Hopkins, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently scheduled an auction of 56 rental properties it had acquired through foreclosures. The Baltimore housing department feared that the homes would attract a new generation of slumlords, people without the resources to transform the neighborhood, said Christopher Shea, a city planning official.

Rather than let the homes fall into what he called "weak hands," Shea persuaded HUD to cancel the auction and sell the properties to the city. Shea said those properties and others nearby will be offered to developers willing to renovate several city blocks.

One determined investor is Donna Meeks, 56, a college English professor who grew up in Washington, but now lives in Pasadena, Calif. Meeks, alerted by friends to the investment potential of Baltimore housing, arrived in the city about 6 a.m. one day in mid-March and headed directly for an auction of rental homes. She was struck by how low the prices were, in comparison to California, where the median home price is about $509,000. At the auction, she quickly bought three houses, sight unseen, for a total of $73,000.

By the end of the day, after a quick exterior inspection of her three new properties in blighted neighborhoods, Meeks was suffering from a mild case of buyers' remorse. "I just took the red-eye in from L.A., walked in, slammed down some money and put my auction card up," she said. "Later, it was sort of like, 'Have you lost your mind?'"

The auction house where Meeks bought her properties, Alex Cooper Auctioneers Inc., sold all of the 112 houses on offer that day for prices ranging from $25,000 to $147,000. Alex Cooper, which also auctions antiques and Oriental rugs, began holding regular large-scale sales of houses last year after some local landlords decided it was a good time to unload their properties on eager newcomers.

Paul Cooper, who runs the auction firm, estimated that more than 80 percent of the buyers at his March auction were from out of town, and he plans more such sales. "These people are insatiable," Cooper said.

Stephan Allen, an engineer from Washington who has attended the Cooper auctions, began investing in Baltimore houses early last year and now owns 13 of them. He expects property prices in Baltimore to soar in the next few years and takes comfort from the presence of like-minded investors. "I can name 10 people who live in D.C. who own properties in Baltimore," he said.

It's too early to judge whether these new landlords will maintain homes better than their predecessors, often disparaged as slumlords. Allen said he aims to improve the neighborhoods where he has invested. He figures he has spent $40,000 so far on improvements to his 13 houses in Baltimore. One elderly tenant cried with joy when Allen replaced a door, he said.

City officials hope to keep the new crop of landlords in line through "targeted enforcement" of building codes. That means concentrating enforcement actions on neighborhoods that are generally in good shape, but threatened by the neglect of some properties. It's pointless, O'Malley said, to enforce codes strictly in neighborhoods where most of the houses are already abandoned.

A few years ago I read an interview with I think Bill Streuver.. but the slogan he had for baltimore was "America's largest small town"

I love that one.. I think it would play out pretty well..

Small town? Baltimore? To qualify for that I think we would have to have a tractor store at the edge of town that also sells auto tires....a weekend auction and flea market and two diners... and that's that. I think we got past that stage about 1750. I wake up each day feeling glad that I don't live in a small town.

Small town? Baltimore? To qualify for that I think we would have to have a tractor store at the edge of town that also sells auto tires....a weekend auction and flea market and two diners... and that's that. I think we got past that stage about 1750. I wake up each day feeling glad that I don't live in a small town.

Well obviously.. It made more sense in the context of the article. He was talking about how great the neighborhoods of the city are and how they make such a big city seem very small and interconnected. I agreed with him.

Small town? Baltimore? To qualify for that I think we would have to have a tractor store at the edge of town that also sells auto tires....a weekend auction and flea market and two diners... and that's that. I think we got past that stage about 1750. I wake up each day feeling glad that I don't live in a small town.

Speaking of which...

http://mdhsimage.mdhs.org/Library/Images/RiceOnline/Full/imagef023.jpg

Could you imagine living living here then??

well at least catching anything out of the inner harbor would be safe to eat :) . i use to live in a town simular to the pic in gerton nc. i lived there for 3 yrs and it was a half an hour to anything :bash: , it wasnt that much fun. i still like the big city! im glad to be back

the new tower at hopkins bayview campus looks like its up to 8 stories now . ill drive by tomorrow to get a closer look.

^how tall is it suppose to be?

BDC names west side leader

The Baltimore Development Corp. has put Baltimore City's west side revitalization under the direction of Kathy A.L. Robertson.

Robertson is replacing Sharon Grinnell as the BDC's Westside Initiative Team Leader. Grinnell left Feb. 1 to work for local developer Ronald Lipscomb.

Since 2000, Robertson has been the West Baltimore team leader for the BDC, working on projects such as the Gateway South/Carroll Camden Industrial Park and the Seton Business Park. Robertson has also been executive director of the Sandtown Winchester Community Development Corp.

The $1 billion redevelopment of downtown Baltimore's west side is anchored by the Hippodrome Theatre and Bank of America's Centerpoint residential and retail project.

Robertson will be charged with pushing forward the St. James Place mixed-use renovation on N. Howard Street and the development of the super block, said BDC President M.J. "Jay" Brodie, in addition to many other projects. The super block is a five-block area considered crucial to Baltimore's west side resurgence.

Robertson's "experience, energy and drive are well-suited for continuing and accelerating the already substantial progress on the west side," he said.

Robertson has a bachelor's degree in architecture from Hampton Institute and is a candidate for a master's degree in real estate at Johns Hopkins University.


© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

Robertson will be charged with pushing forward the St. James Place mixed-use renovation on N. Howard Street and the development of the super block, said BDC President M.J. "Jay" Brodie, in addition to many other projects. The super block is a five-block area considered crucial to Baltimore's west side resurgence.

I had not heard of the St. James Place project before this. However I did find a website for it. Looks like its going to be at Howard and Franklin, exactly where the Best Buy, Kay Jewler, 7-11 signs were (maybe they weren't kidding)

Here is the site and here are some renderings

http://www.hcm2.com/htmlfiles/projects/st_james_place.HTML

http://img109.echo.cx/img109/5541/stjamesplacecorner9pa.jpg

http://img109.echo.cx/img109/9545/stjamesplaceaerial5qv.jpg

Baltimore's new skyline:

http://www.yfc.org/cwsimages/nations/baltimore.jpg

I'm just wondering what the skyline would like from this view with 300 east pratt, water tower place, harbor tower, one light street and cityscape in it. :D

http://www.hollingerweb.com/images/Baltimore/Baltimore2LG.jpg

^If one light street were built right now. It would totally eclipse BoA tower in that shot, Harbor Tower would rise just behind 750 E Pratt and Water tower of course would rise to the right of Commerce Place. Cityscape would not be noticable in this shot due to Marriot Waterfront.

Hope that helps a little :)

Bet you could see 300 east pratt. ;)

Marriot waterfront would partially block 300 East pratt in that shot.

Interesting info on a few westside projects

http://mlis.state.md.us/2005rs/fnotes/bil_0009/hb1449B.pdf

i drove by bayview today and got a closer look. there are 6 floors shelled but they have started erecting steel beams for floors 7and 8. the overall design looks impressive. the best view is coming down 895 south you can see the new complex taking shape. hopefully they would go above the proposed 10 stories. i can dream cant i !!!!.. also ed hales tower is up to 6 stories looks huge. :)

Hello everyone. In about two weeks I'm gonna be moving back to Baltimore and I began to wonder if there was any new skyscraper construction going on. Luckily I stumbled upon this site and I have to say its a great source. Thanks for posting all this great info.
I haven't had a chance to read through all the old posts but are there any plans for a building that would be taller than Legg Mason???

Speaking of which...

http://mdhsimage.mdhs.org/Library/Images/RiceOnline/Full/imagef023.jpg

Could you imagine living living here then??
First time I've ever seen this view in color. Although the perspective is compressed, the present-day topography is plainly visible...several roads leading north from what is now the Inner Harbor and the obvious east-west steep slope that is now between St. Paul and Calvert Streets, most pronounced today near Mercy Hospital.

Oh, and it looks like they hadn't started construction on 300 E. Pratt back then either!! (The site would have been underwater then) :D :rofl:

^If one light street were built right now. It would totally eclipse BoA tower in that shot, Harbor Tower would rise just behind 750 E Pratt and Water tower of course would rise to the right of Commerce Place. Cityscape would not be noticable in this shot due to Marriot Waterfront.

Hope that helps a little :)
You can also see some of the buildings that are further north not usually visible in some other views...Blaustein Bldg, Tremont Plaza, etc.

Now imagine this view with the "Believe" team hotel in it to the left. Too bad it's not going to happen.

Hello everyone. In about two weeks I'm gonna be moving back to Baltimore and I began to wonder if there was any new skyscraper construction going on. Luckily I stumbled upon this site and I have to say its a great source. Thanks for posting all this great info.
I haven't had a chance to read through all the old posts but are there any plans for a building that would be taller than Legg Mason???


Welcome Grenseal :)

Yeah there is alot going on in Baltimore development wise. There are several new skyscrapers/highrises that are either proposed or approved that we hope will start construction soon. The list goes as follows: beginning from Harbor East.

Harbor East:

Four Seasons: Two towers, one that will be 23-25 flrs and the other 20-22 flrs. project has already broken ground.

Alicianna Apartment Tower: 28 flrs, I believe this project has already broken ground, if not then it will very shortly.


Downtown in and around the harbor and CBD (Central Business District)

One Light Street: This project is still in the making after years of redesign, financial issues, etc. but will likely be built and may become Baltimore's new tallest.

Cityscape Tower: Residential/retail tower. I think this project is in the making. Its proposed at 28 flrs and may be taller.

300 East Pratt: 34 flrs maybe taller, this project has also been in the making for some time and will likely be built in the coming few years and would be a residential/retail building. If built it would rise taller than the World Trade Center.

Water Tower: 32 flrs including the 10 story garage it will be on top of. This project will begin construction very soon, and will be a residential tower.

Zenith Tower: 23 flrs, residential tower, site is fenced off with the rendering of the tower posted, so I'm guessing it will begin construction anytime now.

There are many more projects that have been proposed and then scrapped. Some of them were for a new tallest.

Let me know if I missed anything anything guys :)

[QUOTE=Brian21]
One Light Street: This project is still in the making after years of redesign, financial issues, etc. but will likely be built and may become Baltimore's new tallest.QUOTE]

How tall, in feet, is One Light St. supposed to be?

Just as a general heads up, the building at 22 S. Howard St. (ust north of the new Camden Courts Apartments) is currently being gutted. A article in the Sun said that marketing of the for-sale units will begin soon.

[QUOTE=Brian21]
One Light Street: This project is still in the making after years of redesign, financial issues, etc. but will likely be built and may become Baltimore's new tallest.QUOTE]

How tall, in feet, is One Light St. supposed to be?

Originally One Light Street was supposed to be anywhere from 600-700 ft tall but over the years it has been redesigned. I think the current proposal puts it somewhere over 500 ft. The height could increase though.

any word on pratt and green office tower??????

any word on pratt and green office tower??????

there was an article in the sun just a few days ago about that. Univ of MD is looking to build an outpatient center there. The article said that planning is very preliminary but they have submitted a request for funds from the state.

They said the building would wrap around the M&T Builiding on Pratt and Paca, so I would think it would be at least as tall as that building, but thats just my opinion

Interesting info on a few westside projects

http://mlis.state.md.us/2005rs/fnotes/bil_0009/hb1449B.pdf

Great link! :) Thanks! :D

Hello everyone. In about two weeks I'm gonna be moving back to Baltimore and I began to wonder if there was any new skyscraper construction going on. Luckily I stumbled upon this site and I have to say its a great source. Thanks for posting all this great info.
I haven't had a chance to read through all the old posts but are there any plans for a building that would be taller than Legg Mason???

Welcome, Grenseal! Please feel free to post as often as you like. :)
We are glad to have another Baltimore forumer. :D

As far as a new tallest soon........... well,.....................
nothing definate right now, sorry. :(

Ah well, maybe we'll hear somrthing one day soon. :D

Touring the city, I got lost. Going down Boston St, past 895 into I guess Dundalk?? I came up on Broening Hwy. I didn't know where it was, but I knew the name from the GM articles.

I go down that road to check out the GM plant and how big it is....man this city is huge. There's so much space out there I thought I was in the county. They also have a JHU building out there (how big is JHU any damn way..they have buildings everywhere)

Anywho, I was very surprised by how good that area looks. I reminds me of the river between VA, and DC.

It's on a hill, overlooking downtown, directly on the water... I think developers should look at this area. They may have a better time building there than dealing with residents in Canton, Fed Hill and Fort St. JMO

Thanks for the welcome and the rundown on whats going on. Good to see that there are some decent construction projects underway.

I know what you mean about that area. There are a lot of empty industrial lots just waiting to be developed. Maybe with all the work in Canton, it might spill over into that area. As a matter of fact i'll be moving close to there so i'll have to keep an eye out for any development.

I'm Surprised

That no one has posted any comments/opinons on the front page article in this mornings Sun regarding the historic preservationist and their row with the archdioces of Baltimore's plans to tear down the Rochambeau apartments on Charles St. and create a clearer sight line for the Basilica.

First of all although the Rochambeau is a nice old building it is not in the same league as the Latrobe designed Basilica. And historically that building was not there when the Basilica was built in the early part of the 19th century. So what is all the fuss about?

It sort of get's up my nose that economic development is held hostage time and again by these so called historic preservationist! There was the delay in knocking down that hideous Oderite building which was built as a car show room for goodness sake, to build a much more useful building for the community. My feeling regarding the Rochambeau is that by tearing it down, it would create a much more asthetically attractive space to highligt a truely important historically very significant building. Also it would benefit the city because it would increase the number of people that would want to visit and in the process spend money on Charles St. As it is that building has been vacant for some time now and I also like the idea of tearing down all of the other buildings on that side inculuding that soup kitchen to open up the vista of Cathedral Hill. I have always though that the Basilica was too hemmed in to really stand out as it should.

So what are your views?

I didn't see that article. Thanks, Hugh. :)

I'm Surprised

That no one has posted any comments/opinons on the front page article in this mornings Sun regarding the historic preservationist and their row with the archdioces of Baltimore's plans to tear down the Rochambeau apartments on Charles St. and create a clearer sight line for the Basilica.

First of all although the Rochambeau is a nice old building it is not in the same league as the Latrobe designed Basilica. And historically that building was not there when the Basilica was built in the early part of the 19th century. So what is all the fuss about?

It sort of get's up my nose that economic development is held hostage time and again by these so called historic preservationist! There was the delay in knocking down that hideous Oderite building which was built as a car show room for goodness sake, to build a much more useful building for the community. My feeling regarding the Rochambeau is that by tearing it down, it would create a much more asthetically attractive space to highligt a truely important historically very significant building. Also it would benefit the city because it would increase the number of people that would want to visit and in the process spend money on Charles St. As it is that building has been vacant for some time now and I also like the idea of tearing down all of the other buildings on that side inculuding that soup kitchen to open up the vista of Cathedral Hill. I have always though that the Basilica was too hemmed in to really stand out as it should.

So what are your views?

Maybe the preservationists have some value since if they didn't do their work there would be no reason to BE on Charles St. This one is an interesting quandry though since it pits one somewhat historic building against another that is acknowledged as quite important. The church has been engaged in the widespread practice of "demolition by neglect" where an owner allows a building they don't want to deteriorate to the point where it becomes dangerous or so ugly that no one will defend it. This practice is so painfully obvious that it is bound to raise the hackles of any nearby preservationist. One wonders whether the church will demolish the income producing garage or the soup kitchen that is such a huge problem in that area or the bishop's residence, which is covered with formstone. They can't expect to remove an old building from a historic street without getting some feedback.

The basilica is in a lot of folk's opinion one of the most significant works of architecture in the country. The apartment building is not. The archdiocese's motives may be suspect, but creating this green space at this location is going to add to the appeal of Charles St., IMO. It would probably turn out to be a very attractive garden.

Speaking of the soup kitchen, aren't there plans to relocate that somewhere around Guilford Ave on the other side of downtown?

The basilica is in a lot of folk's opinion one of the most significant works of architecture in the country. The apartment building is not. The archdiocese's motives may be suspect, but creating this green space at this location is going to add to the appeal of Charles St., IMO. It would probably turn out to be a very attractive garden.

Speaking of the soup kitchen, aren't there plans to relocate that somewhere around Guilford Ave on the other side of downtown?


The Church wants to open a green space dedicated to the late Pope John Paul II. It would provide a nice open green space and tie the Cathedral more to Charles Street. St Patrick's in New York is a great tourist draw and so could the Baltimore cathedral. Plus the open space is supposed to be a prayer garden. I think some of the liberal nuts who are going to be protecting this insignificant apartment building should spend some time in the prayer garden rather than fighting it. JMO

Plans as presented by the Archdiocese for the site are interesting, but full of inherent contradictions, including:

The Rochambeau
The Archdiocese claims upgrading the units to market rate condition isn't feasible, yet another successful developer says they are.

Parking Garage
If The Rochambeau is blocking views of the Basilica, then what about the parking garage it built in 1991 on Franklin Street? The garage is as tall as the apartment building and three times wider than The Rochambeau; very little is gained in terms of view corridors. Just look at the site-image below!

Soup Kitchen
As part of its ministry to help the poor, an older less attractive structure was replaced with the modern one we have today. Yet now, the consensus is let's shun the poor and homeless, and bring on the tourists/religious pilgrims and their money. (Mark my words, I wouldn't surprised if the Archdiocese announces renovations of the kitchen into the new Basilica Welcome Center and gift shop.)

Wilson Alley
Is Baltimore in the business of selling/giving away public egress again? The super block is bisected by a public street. Will the city get any compensation, and if so how much?

Archbishop's Residence
It blocks the view of the Basilica from Charles Street as much as anything else downtown. Let's tear it down as well.

Beacon in the Hill
If the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the first Roman Catholic cathedral in the United States is truly what once was long ago referred to the "light of beacon on the hill", and acknowledging the Basilica came before the apartments, well then perhaps more of the taller recent structures should be cleared away as well -- in the financial district and along the harbor -- to restore prominence of the landmark.

Issue of Obscurity
Last and foremost, what is being totally ignored here and downplayed is that in reality, the Basilica is not being blocked at all. The main entrance is located on Cathedral Street, facing the Pratt Library. In essence, we're talking about opening up a view corridor to showcase the rear-end of the Basilica...

In the end, all of this is simply preposterous. More will be lost than gained with this proposal. As far as I'm concerned, the Archdiocese presented a big fat lie when it acquired the apartment building by stating they had no plans to demolish the landmark. Shame on them! The hypocrisy is simply overwhelming. They're going to destroy an apartment building to create a view corridor and establish a prayer garden, yet keep the larger garage for its revenue generating capabilities. The soup kitchen poor and homeless can go elsewhere, since it will offend the tourists and mar the experience for visitors. Plant a garden, name it after a popular Pope and wait for the dollars to stream in. Is the Archdiocese really operating as a part of the Roman Catholic Church, or have operations been converted to become a tourist destination?

While others say the preservationists ought to spend some time in the prayer garden, I suggest the Archdiocese keep to the business of saving souls rather urban development. If the Archdiocese doesn't want to get into the business of leasing apartments, understood. Sell the structure, and let someone else have a go at it. After all, I'm assuming most on this board are for more downtown residents, no?

http://www.dcestonian.com/baltimore/midtown/basilica/cathed.jpg

http://www.dcestonian.com/baltimore/midtown/basilica/cathed.jpg[/QUOTE]

Thanks Eerik for that ariel shot, it really adds a valuable perspective to the sightlines debate on the church's plans.

I think tearing down all of the buildings to the north of the church and creating a park in that whole area would be very nice and attractive, kind of like NYC's Bryant Park.

However, considering that the church built the fairly new garage (1991), I would find ripping down the whole block unlikely. Considering that, It looks like the lowrise buildings on the northwest would be a more logical place for a garden, near the main entrance to the church. Also removing the bishops residence would open up the church to Charles Street more effectively than removing the Rochambeau (although it is the church's backend).

I am unfamiliar with the architectual merits of the bishops residence, in and of itself, but the formstone covering is not very attractive. :nono:

The Archbishop's Residence, as far as I know, is not covered in formstone. I think that misconception comes from the grey colored stone that the mansion is quarried from that leaves that impression.

Again, the aerial photograph makes it clear, the Basilica rests comfortably within its original property lines. While gardens can be attractive, I do not agree that a prayer garden wedged into that constrained lot can ever be attractive with a tall parking garage hulking over the site.

Their proposal makes no sense, from their standpoint, from an urban design standpoint, or from an economic standpoint. Please, sell the building. I'm certain a developer would be willing to make the numbers work; revenue could be used to supplement the Basilica restoration costs.

Who is on the hook for convention center hotel?

Baltimore hoteliers are of different minds about the city’s plan to build a publicly financed $305 million headquarters hotel for the Baltimore Convention Center. However, they agree on this: Not one of them is interested in paying for it.
- Jen DeGregorio

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/investing/bal-te.bz.legg03jun03,1,5953744.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
Good article on Legg Mason. :)

City for Sale

The battle over our waterfront

By Joan Jacobson

Early Sunday morning, while the happy-hour crowd sleeps off a collective hangover, a giant pile driver slams deep into bedrock along the Canton waterfront, breaking ground on grimy Clinton Street for the latest multi-million dollar condo-office project with a view as stunning as its price tag.

The great thud of progress echoes off the wall of Tindeco Wharf a block away, drowning out the ducks quacking among the hundreds of sailboats and yachts moored off the banks of a New Baltimore that is as disorienting as a crab house with valet parking.

Suddenly, a new sound overpowers the pile driver. The pealing of St. Casimir’s church bells sings forth from the golden Polish domes that have gleamed for a century from O’Donnell Square. They sound a comforting theme from the Old Baltimore, like the long-gone smell of cinnamon from the McCormick plant or the workingman’s free panoramic water view from Boston Street, Key Highway or Thames Street.

For years St. Casimir’s was a grand welcome to boats entering the harbor, towering over the little rowhouses of Southeast Baltimore. Today, from the water, you can only glimpse the old Polish Catholic church between the condos and townhouses going up as fast as a tract of Ryland homes in Howard County.

Meet the New Baltimore, where there really is a crab house with valet parking, since Bo Brooks relocated from its working-class roots in Northeast Baltimore to the Canton coastline.

In just 20 years, our shore has transformed from a scruffy, industrial port with a smattering of tourist attractions into a luxury living waterfront, envied by New Yorkers and Washingtonians who once dismissed us as a backwater.

How well is the redeveloped waterfront blending with the quaint architecture and stubbornly independent culture of a people who will walk a long way for the right to eat a bottom-feeding crustacean? And how much of the Old Baltimore must be transformed into a New Baltimore to oblige developers and luxury-seeking homeowners?

Welcome to New Baltimore

On industrial Clinton Street, awash with new infrastructure for businessman Ed Hale’s ambitious Canton Crossing, there sits a reminder of Old Baltimore , a little red rowhouse with painted window screens of ducks and a lighthouse. Dwarfed by the nearby construction, it resembles a quaint prop left over from an abandoned movie set.

Nearby is the construction site for The Moorings at Canton—four-story townhouses (starting at $600,000) with doors opening onto a little polluted cove.

The acres of boats bobbing outside are from as far away as Corning, New York, and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Not just little boats, but tall, sleek sailboats and fat, three-story yachts with more square footage than a Highlandtown rowhouse. In fact, as of the last city count in 2003, there were 4,000 more marina slips (existing and proposed) than the city had 20 years ago.

Then there is the gated community on a pier over the water. A wide electronic gate bars the parking garage beneath the townhouses that look as if they’re floating. They are part of a new, handsome eighty-three-unit townhouse development on the 2300 block of Boston Street called North Shore at Canton. Think of it: a gated community only a block from the Sip & Bite diner, Baltimore’s legendary greasy spoon.

The city’s planning department has a map with a dot showing each of the 14,000 city house sales last year. They total $1.4 billion in sales. The darker the blue dot, the more expensive the house. The area around the harbor is so saturated with dark blue dots that they form a mass. And the map doesn’t include condominiums.

That map shows the potential for a tax infusion unseen in modern times. Those eighty-three townhouses near the Sip & Bite have a total assessed value of $44 million, according to calculations from the city’s planning department.

That translates into a possible tax windfall for the city (not counting the five years of discounts that buyers of new homes get on property taxes) of $1 million, enough to finance a small city public school for a year.

If you’re from Old Baltimore and your mouth is still agape, consider this: $1 million in tax revenue is what the city gets from some of its finest neighborhoods. That’s the entire neighborhood, not just one block. Two examples: West Baltimore’s picturesque Hunting Ridge with 461 houses and Northeast Baltimore’s well-manicured Mayfield with 416 houses.

Who are the newcomers willing to pay six and seven figures for a piece of Baltimore’s waterfront?

In 1990, New York entrepreneur Louis J. Pearlman did something many Old Baltimoreans thought was complete lunacy.

He paid $1 million for a penthouse on top of the twenty-seven-story Harborview in Federal Hill.

As he mingled with hundreds of people sipping champagne outside Harborview’s gala opening, Pearlman said he liked the idea of having his own elevator and needed a place for his 45-foot yacht with its two staterooms and Jacuzzi, he told a reporter for the Evening Sun.

And he said the price of only $1 million was a great deal, about a third of what he’d pay in New York City.

Fifteen years later, Pearlman’s investment in Baltimore proved lucrative, not lunatic.

He sold the penthouse last year for a price he said he can’t quite recall. But, “I made more than 50% profit,” he says.

And even though he never lived in Baltimore, he said he loved the “phenomenal” harbor and often stayed there with houseguests, including the Backstreet Boys, who he produced through his Transcontinental Studios.

Fifteen years ago Pearlman may have been considered a risk taker for spending $1 million on a home at the Harbor. Today, it’s become a standard.

Phong Mai grew up in Arbutus, graduated from Johns Hopkins University, then moved to Northern Virginia, opening a database consulting firm. On a recent spring weekend he and his wife drove to the Inner Harbor on a whim.

They were so “blown away with how far it’s gone” that they are seriously considering buying a house being built on a pier off Key Highway for more than $1 million. Pier Homes at Harborview would be a second home for them, but Mai says it would be worth it for a view of the water that can’t be found in Washington, D.C.

O Say Can You See? A City on the Rise

Mining the potential value of Baltimore’s waterfront was an emerging idea back in the 1980s when Carolyn Boitnott was president of the Butchers Hill Association. As Canton and Fells Point were slowly gentrifying there was a troublesome flurry of bills in the city council to allow new development along the waterfront, which was now being dubbed the “Gold Coast.”

Boitnott and other leaders were alarmed at the thought of tall buildings dwarfing their rowhouse communities and blocking their water views.

After meeting with a city official to review plans, “We all came out of there and said, ‘Oh my god, we have to stick together.’”

And so they did. They formed the Waterfront Coalition, made up of community groups from Canton to Little Italy. They fought towers from being built, historic wharfs from being razed, and urged the city to build waterfront parks and maintain public access to the water.

The coalition also supported a plan to build the one thing that would keep the waterfront open to everyone. Wouldn’t it be fabulous, developers like Ted Rouse and community leaders agreed, to build a public promenade for a 7-mile stretch from Canton to Federal Hill.

Charm City was, in fact, ahead of its time.

“ Baltimore can say with pride that it was out front,” says Dick Rigby, co-director of the Waterfront Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that helps cities design their waterfronts.

Now, Rigby says, when people in other cities discuss good ideas for urban waterfront development, they say, “Oh, like Baltimore.”

Steve Bunker was a Fells Point community leader and businessman who worked with Boitnott to preserve the waterfront and “fight for access of working-class people so they didn’t get gentrified out,” said Bunker, who now lives in Maine.

In the early days, “People said you can’t fight City Hall,” recalls Bunker.

But he and Boitnott—and dozens of others—proved the naysayers wrong. “Of course, it’s going to change, but you can have a say in how it changes,” says Bunker.

“We certainly held it back,” he says, recalling how the coalition stopped a twenty-eight-story building from being built in Fells Point.

Boitnott agrees. When asked if she thinks there is a wall blocking the Boston Street waterfront, she says, “I hate to call it a wall, because there could be a worse wall.”

Many activists believe the same could not be said for the high-rise buildings at Inner Harbor East, that are in clear view across the harbor from Federal Hill, a neighborhood that covets low building heights as passionately as it guards its parking spaces.

Federal Hill’s own waterfront makeover is equally as stunning as Canton’s transformation. And the metamorphosis has had a particularly profound effect on one observer. At a recent meeting over the city’s plans to convert industrial Key Highway into a thoroughfare as cosmopolitan as a Parisian boulevard, the skeptical gray-haired man stood up to introduce himself.

“My name is George and I’ve lived in South Baltimore for a long time,” he said.

It didn’t matter that he didn’t give his last name. Most likely, the 200 people in the high school auditorium know him as George W. Della Jr., the state senator from the 46th district for the last twenty-two years. His district covers the entire waterfront—from Canton’s Clinton Street to Fells Point, to the Inner Harbor and around to the Museum of Industry.

To record the changes along the water, the senator’s office has plotted a map with shiny multicolored stars showing the 640 liquor licenses in his district (out of 1,370 city-wide). There are so many bars on the waterfront, the map looks like a crude picture of fireworks bursting over the harbor.

The night of the Key Highway plan unveiling, city planners proposed a transformation of the once-industrial Key Highway with new parks, public access piers, and tall, narrow buildings with new luxury homes and shops. Della was wary. He didn’t want any new development to hurt businesses in nearby South Baltimore and he didn’t want to see a repeat of past mistakes, accusing developers of “skirting the law” and the city of “walking around with blinders on.”

Della knows from experience that the city never penalized developers who blocked promised view corridors that were written into the Key Highway Urban Renewal Plan.

The meeting took a turn for the worse when a long-time resident sitting in front of Della broke through the evening’s decorum.

“I like Key Highway the way it is,” she shouted. “Why do we have to give it to developers? Take your plan and stuff it.”

Della’s views are considerably more tempered toward the New Baltimore. He just wants to make sure working-class homeowners aren’t forced out by escalating property taxes—and Della has sponsored circuit-breaker laws to control tax increases on rising assessments.

In an interview before the Federal Hill meeting, Della—who grew up near Federal Hill Park—reminisced about the Old Baltimore and how it’s been transformed from a working-class industrial town.

“It’s wonderful to see all this. I have no idea where it’s going to end up. Every square inch of real property is going to be developed and redeveloped and changed into something new,” he said.

“You have to ask yourself, is it ever going to stop?”

—Joan Jacobson, a regular Urbanite contributor, wrote about development in Cherry Hill for the March issue.

GREAT article, Jayson! :)
Thank you very much for posting it. :)

The Archbishop's Residence, as far as I know, is not covered in formstone. I think that misconception comes from the grey colored stone that the mansion is quarried from that leaves that impression.

Again, the aerial photograph makes it clear, the Basilica rests comfortably within its original property lines. While gardens can be attractive, I do not agree that a prayer garden wedged into that constrained lot can ever be attractive with a tall parking garage hulking over the site.

Their proposal makes no sense, from their standpoint, from an urban design standpoint, or from an economic standpoint. Please, sell the building. I'm certain a developer would be willing to make the numbers work; revenue could be used to supplement the Basilica restoration costs.

Check it out. Several architectural guides clearly say that the Bishop's residence is formstone. You can see it clearly if you look closely. It's somewhat more restrained than the usual multicolored stuff, but fake stones sculpted in cement over mesh pretty much defines formstone. I can't really imagine how they can imagine a prayer garden in such an exposed, noisy environment. Serenity isn't exactly what comes to mind in a small property wedged between Charles and Cathedral Sts, with US Route 40 passing by to the north and south

I think some of the liberal nuts who are going to be protecting this insignificant apartment building should spend some time in the prayer garden rather than fighting it. JMO

I guess this is how a discussion reduces to juveniles pitching mud at each other. Bear in mind, "New Baltimore1980" that preservationists are, after all fundumentally "conserve-ative" but not of the sort that needs to reduce a discussion to simplistic ideology.

The basilica is in a lot of folk's opinion one of the most significant works of architecture in the country. The apartment building is not. The archdiocese's motives may be suspect, but creating this green space at this location is going to add to the appeal of Charles St., IMO. It would probably turn out to be a very attractive garden.

Speaking of the soup kitchen, aren't there plans to relocate that somewhere around Guilford Ave on the other side of downtown?

There have been plans making their way through the city govt for several years to create a multi-service center in another location to take the place of ODB. The people who need that place could get more of what they need without having to pee in the alleys and sleep in the library. I don't know how the idea is progressing but apparently the church was considering being party in the facility and then relieving Mt Vernon of the presense of ODB.

Yup great article. I can't wait to take some drives through that side of town to see how its changed.

In regards to the Rochambeau, I don't think it should be torn down just to give a better view of the Basilica. Now maybe if it was somehow endangering the strucutral stability of the Basilica then I'd probably say yes, but just to give a better view and to add a prayer garden doesn't seem like a good enough reason to raze another building.

Check it out. Several architectural guides clearly say that the Bishop's residence is formstone. You can see it clearly if you look closely. It's somewhat more restrained than the usual multicolored stuff, but fake stones sculpted in cement over mesh pretty much defines formstone. I can't really imagine how they can imagine a prayer garden in such an exposed, noisy environment. Serenity isn't exactly what comes to mind in a small property wedged between Charles and Cathedral Sts, with US Route 40 passing by to the north and south
Tacky. That's all I have to say. According to Dorsey and Dilts: "Originally stucco scored to resemble cut stone, the house was covered with a concrete veneer also resembling cut stone in the 1950s."

Maybe the prayer garden will feature a pink flamingo or a reflective orb...

Tacky. That's all I have to say. According to Dorsey and Dilts: "Originally stucco scored to resemble cut stone, the house was covered with a concrete veneer also resembling cut stone in the 1950s."

Maybe the prayer garden will feature a pink flamingo or a reflective orb...

LOL! :D

Hey guys I found this shot of the skyline on google. Not sure where it was taken from but it looks to be a good 10 miles away. It looks to be backwards. The four tallest: commerce place, BoA tower, schaefer tower, and legg mason tower are easily seen but don't they look backwards? maybe its just me. Does anyone else see that. Anyway I think its a cool shot. :)

http://imagehost.biz/ims/pic.php?u=4267KkmBH&i=323588&c=.gif

I don't think it's backwards. It could be looking south, in that case making Commerce Place on the left and BOA just off the left of Legg Mason. You can also see 250 W. Pratt on the right half of the skyline. I'm going to guess it's looking south.

Definately taken from somewhere north, and possibly slightly northwest, of downtown. A hill is blocking some of the view. Look close...the Key Bridge and Sparrows Point are faintly visible on the left. Wonder where this was taken from...possibly a high hill west of Towson...maybe the one that forms rhe south side of the Green Spring Valley.

I found a great site about people wanting to restore Baltimore. It echoes many of my own thoughts exactly. When I move back up I'm gonna try to get involved with what they are doing. Here's the link http://www.techbalt.com/

BTW nice picture.

I took the liberty of brightening up the photo. I agree, it's definitely a view looking south, for previous reasons cited. But I think it's taken closer in than Towson or any other points north. Take a close look, you can clearly see the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus along with the Wyman Park Dell. The photo was taken somewhere in the W. University Parkway to Hamden corridor, possibly even from the Rotunda or Keswick.
http://www.dcestonian.com/baltimore/views/view.jpg

Now that you look at it, it is definately looking south. Looking at the photo the first time you couldn't really tell where it was taken from. Thanks Eerik for brightening up the photo :)

Four Seasons project gets green light
Heather Harlan
Staff
After three years of planning, two Baltimore developers plan to break ground this fall on a 200-room Four Seasons hotel and 106-unit, luxury condo complex along downtown's waterfront.


Larry White, a senior development director for Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc., said site work for the hotel and condo development at Harbor East has already begun, with full construction expected to be under way this fall.

The project, a joint venture between Struever Bros. and H&S Properties Development Corp., is slated to be completed within 30 months. Initial costs were estimated at $75 million, but are likely to exceed that figure.

The anticipated Four Seasons will be the second luxury hotel and condo complex in Baltimore City -- with the Harbor Court the only one in that category now. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. is also building high-end condominiums on Key Highway, but that project does not include a hotel. And Philadelphia developer ARC Wheeler LLC is scouting a site off Pratt Street downtown for a St. Regis hotel and condo project.

Many city leaders and experts believe Charm City is not only ready for a second luxury hotel, but also for more waterfront condos -- some with price tags in the millions.

"We don't need luxury condos, but there is a market for them," said Anirban Basu, an economist and CEO of Sage Policy Group Inc. "This is not your daddy's Baltimore anymore, is it?"

With interest rates remaining stubbornly low and the steady stream of wealthy baby boomers from across the country eyeing Baltimore, the local condo market is likely to flourish, Basu said.

Four Seasons Hotels Inc.'s condo units will range from 1,400 square feet to 8,000 square feet, White said. Marketing, including pricing, will be set next spring, he said. Ritz-Carlton's units range in price from $800,000 to $5 million. And already, some of the penthouse units -- which command the $5 million asking price -- are spoken for, according to Ritz-Carlton.

On the hotel side, Yan Freitag, a director at Smith Travel Research in Tennessee, said Greater Baltimore does not have enough luxury properties to track competitive forces. Harbor Court Hotel on Pratt Street in downtown Baltimore and Loews Hotel in Annapolis are the only ones in the luxury category. The Loews advertises a weekend room rate of $239 this time of year, while the Harbor Court asks between $220 and $250. If a convention hits Baltimore, the rates at the Harbor Court can jump as high as $365.

But according to Smith Travel Research, the average rates in the next category down from "luxury" were nearly $145 per night for the first four months of the year in Greater Baltimore, compared with nearly $138 during the same period in 2004.

Occupancy in the Greater Baltimore's "upper upscale hotels" -- such as the Hyatt and Marriott properties -- was almost 67 percent for the first four months of this year, flat from the same time last year, according to Smith Travel Research.

Similarly, occupancy for Four Seasons Hotels Inc.'s domestic properties was roughly 70 percent in 2004, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. And in Washington, D.C., where Four Seasons' closest hotel is located, weekend rates this time of year range from $350 to $495 per night.

Aynsley Winprip, a spokeswoman for Four Seasons, could not be reached for comment on the local project. But Securities and Exchange Commission filings for Toronto-based Four Seasons Hotels list the Baltimore complex as one of the company's "properties under construction or in advanced stages of development."

The filings show the planned local development is expected to open "beyond 2006." Baltimore is one of six American cities that Four Seasons is targeting for expansion. The others include Seattle, Vail, Colo., Palo Alto, Calif., and Lanai, Hawaii. The majority of the company's growth plans hinge on international locations. All told, Four Seasons has slated 20 international cities ranging from Damascus, Syria, to Mumbai, India, for new projects in the next several years.

Hale in talks for Exxon site
Heather Harlan
Staff
Baltimore businessman Edwin F. Hale Sr. is close to striking a deal with Exxon Corp. for some of its land off Boston Street in Canton, sources familiar with the negotiations said.


Hale could not be reached for comment. But sources familiar with the potential agreement said Hale, a local developer and president of First Mariner Bancorp, has big plans for a large portion of the nearly 30-acre site.

The Exxon property at 3501 Boston St., they said, would be an extension of Hale's Canton Crossing, a mixed-use development that will include an office tower, retail center, two hotels and marina.

The additional land could accommodate some of Hale's latest ideas: another retail center, offices and specialty entertainment uses such as a movie theater. Parking is also a viable option, sources said.

Hale isn't the only developer who is counting on Exxon to clear the way for parking. While Hale is negotiating with the Texas company primarily for the north portion of the site, another local developer would like the southern half.

Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc. needs the southern portion of the property for parking to support its nearby Brewers Hill project. That redevelopment is transforming an old brewery into funky office space on the eastern side of the city.

The Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation values the Exxon land at $3.4 million dollars.

Good, two page article:

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/06/06/story6.html

:)

Wow I thought that Four Seasons was going to break ground sooner. But at least its a go. I'm happy that St. Regis will be possibly coming to Baltimore. Could be our next chance for a new tallest :)

Also it said that the developer is scouting a site off of pratt street. What site would that be? I thought that he was looking at the Old Mcormick site at first.

Wow I thought that Four Seasons was going to break ground sooner. But at least its a go. I'm happy that St. Regis will be possibly coming to Baltimore. Could be our next chance for a new tallest :)

Also it said that the developer is scouting a site off of pratt street. What site would that be? I thought that he was looking at the Old Mcormick site at first.

The Mcormick site is roughly "off Pratt" I imagine that is what they are talking about.

Couple more Baltimore photos

I think this one is cool. Very hazy but you can still see the outline of the buildings. This is actually how it looks today, its a very hot day.
http://imagehost.biz/ims/pic.php?u=4267KkmBH&i=323942&c=.gif

This one is pretty cool.
http://imagehost.biz/ims/pic.php?u=4267KkmBH&i=323943&c=.gif

Awesome pics, Brian. :D

Here's a link: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/06/06/daily8.html

:D

Hale in talks for Exxon site
Heather Harlan
Staff
Baltimore businessman Edwin F. Hale Sr. is close to striking a deal with Exxon Corp. for some of its land off Boston Street in Canton, sources familiar with the negotiations said.


Hale could not be reached for comment. But sources familiar with the potential agreement said Hale, a local developer and president of First Mariner Bancorp, has big plans for a large portion of the nearly 30-acre site.

The Exxon property at 3501 Boston St., they said, would be an extension of Hale's Canton Crossing, a mixed-use development that will include an office tower, retail center, two hotels and marina.


What do you guys think about this site's potential? :D

The additional land could accommodate some of Hale's latest ideas: another retail center, offices and specialty entertainment uses such as a movie theater. Parking is also a viable option, sources said.

Hale isn't the only developer who is counting on Exxon to clear the way for parking. While Hale is negotiating with the Texas company primarily for the north portion of the site, another local developer would like the southern half.

Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc. needs the southern portion of the property for parking to support its nearby Brewers Hill project. That redevelopment is transforming an old brewery into funky office space on the eastern side of the city.

The Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation values the Exxon land at $3.4 million dollars.

What do you guys think about this development? :D :D

What do you guys think about this development? :D :D

Well...

I think that I am repeatedly (in fact almost daily) amazed at the news of new upscale developments in Baltimore City!

I have lived in Baltimore long enough to remember when a single new building was big, big news. I wonder how much is strictly a local phenomenon, and how much is representative of a national boom in upscale developments. Anyone have a sense of this?

That's a good question, Ron. :)

Besides Struever and Paterakis, what percentage of these proposals actually get built? I say about 50%.

Strange Bedfellows
Baltimore Prepares to Venture into the Hotel Business, Despite Concern From Experts and Council Members
By Stephen Janis

The old business axiom “Don’t throw good money after bad” is as often stated as it is ignored. But according to a widely published convention center expert and several members of the Baltimore City Council, that may be exactly what the city is about to do.

Before the City Council is a bill to authorize the issuance of a $305 million dollar bond, the proceeds of which will be used to finance a 752-room convention center “headquarters” hotel on a site currently occupied by a parking lot on West Pratt Street adjacent to Camden Yards. In April a 63-page feasibility study was presented to the City Council by HVS International, a Chicago-based consulting firm that suggested that a hotel could be the cure for lagging attendance at the Baltimore Convention Center. The study noted that a large “on site” hotel could give the center a much-needed boost.

On April 11, Baltimore Development Corp. President Jay Brodie announced that the city would have to step forward to finance the hotel and that the financing proposal would be going before the City Council. “We’re doing this to improve the performance of the convention center,” he said at a press conference on the matter. The hotel, which has since been touted as a way to both boost convention center traffic and business on the city’s west side, would be managed by Hilton but owned by the city of Baltimore.

But not everyone in city government is as enthusiastic about the proposal as Brodie. Some members of the City Council, including Councilman Keiffer Mitchell (D-11th District), are worried about the massive expenditure the cash-strapped city would be committing to if it approved the financing plan. The councilman has introduced another bill that calls for an advisory board to evaluate the plan before the bond is approved—a move that Mitchell says Mayor Martin O’Malley, who supports the hotel plan, is not pleased about.

“Obviously I’m not in good graces with the administration over this,” he says.

Meanwhile, Heywood Sanders, a professor of public policy at University of Texas at San Antonio and a 1970 Johns Hopkins University graduate who fought alongside community activists in the late 1960s to save Fells Point from demolition to make room for a proposed Interstate 95 artery, has also gotten involved in the discussion. Sanders says that it could be a costly mistake for the city to get involved in a hotel just to prop up its sagging convention center.

“The current premise that adding a hotel will cure the ills of an underperforming convention center is specious,” he says. “It hasn’t worked anywhere else. There’s no evidence that it works.”

The Baltimore Convention Center, which was expanded in 1997 from 425,000 square feet to 1.2 million square feet at a cost of $151 million, has experienced a decline in business over the past several years. According to the center’s internal figures, attendance has dropped 28 percent, from a peak of 250,000 visitors in 2001 to 175,000 visitors in 2003—a figure roughly equivalent to those before its 1997 expansion. The Maryland Stadium Authority, which financed the center’s expansion, acknowledges in its 2005 budget analysis that convention centers, in general, are not moneymakers: “Virtually all convention centers nationwide function as loss leaders,” the analysis noted. Yet cities like Baltimore invest in them anyway.

Leslie Doggett, president and chief executive officer of Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, said in an April 12 Sun article that declining attendance at the Baltimore Convention Center can be attributed to 120,000 lost room bookings “because of the lack of a convention hotel connected to the city’s convention center.”

The Baltimore Development Corp.’s Brodie insists that city financing is the only option for getting the proposed hotel built, but Mitchell wants time to explore other possibilities. The Baltimore Development Corp. says in its paper arguing for the hotel that since 1996 three separate requests for proposals have been put out for a private developer to build on the site, but none has been acceptable. The city has already received three bids from builders to begin construction on the city-owned hotel. Mitchell thinks the plans for the project are moving too fast.

“We need to slow this process down,” he says. “I find it hard to believe that this is the only way. . . . There needs to be more than one perspective on this idea.”

Mitchell’s resolution, which was introduced to the council on April 18, calls the hotel a “money loser” and cites experts, including Sanders, who have sounded a “cautionary note” about the city’s involvement in it. The resolution refers to a paper by Sanders published in January by the Brookings Institution called “Space Available: The Reality of Convention Center as Economic Development Strategy,” which says that many convention centers fail to attract high attendance not due to lack of on-site hotels but due to competition from other cities vying for the same limited convention business. Since 2000, he says, 19 cities have built brand-new convention centers, including Houston, Pittsburgh, and Washington. In addition, 34 cities have expanded already existing convention centers despite declining trade-show attendance. Convention attendance was down 3.2 percent in 2003 for the top 200 conventions held in the United States. Sanders calls the convention center construction trend an “arms race” for the shrinking market.

“Over the past decade alone, public capital spending on convention centers has doubled by $2.4 billion annually,” Sanders’ article notes, “increasing convention space by 50 percent since 1990.”

“It’s irrational,” Sanders tells City Paper in a phone interview. “It’s a poor use of public money. Cities that have built headquarters hotels have not boosted their convention business.”

Sanders points out several convention center projects around the country that have either underperformed or are in serious trouble. In St. Louis, for example, the Renaissance Grand Hotel, which opened in February 2003 to boost convention center business, has had an occupancy rate of 52 percent—far less than the 68 percent projected for 2005 by HVS, the same consulting company that completed Baltimore’s hotel-feasibility study. Business is also down in Boston, Denver, and Dallas, all cities that have either expanded convention centers or built hotels to increase convention business.

The convention center construction boom is being driven by what Sanders calls “a very small group of consultants who are very effective on talking about how well the hotels will do.” He cites the projections from the Baltimore feasibility study that predicts an average room rate of $187 per night for the proposed Hilton, which the city hopes to see open in 2008. The average room rate in Baltimore is currently $167 per night, Sanders says, and points out that flooding the market, which already has 4,700 hotel rooms, with even more rooms is unlikely to drive rates up. He calls the notion “absurd.”

Though Mitchell has used Sanders’ study to support his resolution before the City Council, he is not entirely opposed to adding a hotel to the convention center complex. He says he’d just like to see the city use more caution before it dives into the project.

“I support the idea, I just don’t think Baltimore City should be buying a hotel,” he says. Because real estate near the Inner Harbor is extremely valuable, he says he does not think it would be difficult to attract an investor to take up the financing of the project. “The site is near the water, Camden Yards, it’s prime real estate,” Mitchell says. “I think we can find private financing.”

Normally, a bond-related bill would go before the council’s Taxation and Finance Committee, which Mitchell chairs, for authorization. But since he introduced his resolution, it has been moved by City Council President Sheila Dixon to the Committee of the Whole, which means the resolution will go before the entire council for review before it can be passed. Mitchell is afraid that Dixon’s shifting of the bill out of committee does not bode well for him, or for the bill.

“It’s obvious the administration is not happy with me,” he says.

Chris Williams, spokesman for Dixon’s office, denies that the bill was moved out of Mitchell’s committee for political reasons. “President Dixon decided that such an important bill should have input from all members of the City Council,” he says. “She wants a comprehensive and all-inclusive review.”

Irene Van Sant, project manager and point person for the Baltimore Development Corp., does not think Mitchell’s task force is needed to guide the project.

“We don’t support the task force in principle, we don’t think it’s necessary,” she says, adding that the city has been diligent in hiring consultants to offer an accurate picture of both the hotel’s financing and prospects. “We believe we have the best feasibility consultants in the business.”

But should the city end up financing this construction, it has more at stake than just the $305 million it will take to build the hotel. The city has also pledged 25 percent of its hotel occupancy tax, the money it collects from guests who stay in city hotel rooms, to make up for any underperformance of the hotel. In 2004, the city collected $17.2 million from hotel occupancy taxes. Given that hotel occupancy was down last year from $17.7 million in 2003, that 25 percent is a large slice of a shrinking pie.

Van Sant acknowledges that there are risks associated with the project and that “not all our competitors [in the convention center market] have been successful.” But she says the Baltimore hotel market is stronger than in many other cities. “We have an extremely healthy market,” she says. “This is a viable project.”

Dixon spokesman Williams says nothing is scheduled to happen with the hotel until “after the budget process is finished in June.”

Besides Struever and Paterakis, what percentage of these proposals actually get built? I say about 50%.

Do you think that this exxon site/30 acres would be a good place to build a new larger arena? :D Too far, maybe? :) I'd like to see it. Isn't it pretty close to Interstate access? :?

Well...

I think that I am repeatedly (in fact almost daily) amazed at the news of new upscale developments in Baltimore City!

I have lived in Baltimore long enough to remember when a single new building was big, big news. I wonder how much is strictly a local phenomenon, and how much is representative of a national boom in upscale developments. Anyone have a sense of this?

I can't quote statistics on this but I think that we are making up for lost time. As I remember it, the 90's, especially the second half, were good to some cities but Baltimore seemed to be pretty quiet, especially with the Schmoke administration expressing almost no belief in its own city. While Schmoke was going around on talk shows promoting Baltimore as a nuclear free zone, other mayors were promoting their cities as places to live and build. Despite whatever things one might want to say about the O"Malley term, he has given people a reason to believe that Baltimore is a credible place to invest and build. There seemed to be a palpable change in the feel of the city after he came in and it seems like people with money and plans are finally seeing what some of us have always seen about this place.

Besides Struever and Paterakis, what percentage of these proposals actually get built? I say about 50%.

That seems to be close to right, perhaps a little optomistic.

Do you think that this exxon site/30 acres would be a good place to build a new larger arena? :D Too far, maybe? :) I'd like to see it. Isn't it pretty close to Interstate access? :?


I think its a great idea. The site is one of those empty industrial lots I was talking about earlier. I'd like to see it developed rather than it just being a weed garden.

I'd estimate its about one mile from 95 so it has pretty good interstate access. A new arena would be nice but just about any sort of development would be an improvement. Good news indeed.

Do you think that this exxon site/30 acres would be a good place to build a new larger arena? :D Too far, maybe? :) I'd like to see it. Isn't it pretty close to Interstate access? :?

there is another site that is nearby across the tracks from exxon, near the building that they blew up in enemy of the state that they were talking about using as a potential site for the new arena that pateratis i think owns . its about 20 to 30 acres and is already cleared and fenced off. yes 95 is a 1/4 to a 1/2 mile from both sites. there is a lot of empty land down there. the sites are seperated by the train tracks and part of the canton railroads heavy freight moving yard. :)

they would really need to put boston st under all of those tracks and widen that part of boston st. there is way too much traffic down there. then once the train comes you get stuck there or try and turn around and take odonnell st bridge!!!

Almost the same look over on Fort Ave. They're building houses on the water. However, train tracks for ro-ro bring the scene down a lot. The area in Canton is ripe for something other than an empty rail yard, and old oil drums.

It actually reminds me of parts of Philly when I lived there. They've done a very good job of developing up there. I hope to see Bmore make good use of much of that abandoned land. If not condos, hotels and banks...a park, plaza, or outdoor sports complex will work very well.

Skate ramps, basketball, tennis, running track, etc. Imagine that. So much land and potential, right on the water. I guess there would be no money making in that tho....

Molo, that would work very well. I, personally, think something like that should go at Harbor Point. With the hotel coming to the "real" Recreation Pier in Fells Point, a Chelsea Pier-esque complex could be erected at Harbor Point. It'd be a great draw for neighboring residents and other locals. Tourist would use it too.

Almost the same look over on Fort Ave. They're building houses on the water. However, train tracks for ro-ro bring the scene down a lot. The area in Canton is ripe for something other than an empty rail yard, and old oil drums.



Those rail yards are still used heavily. There are the main rail yards for Dundalk Marine terminal and Seagirt and the buisness on Broening Highway and the coal export terminal. Increasing the rail switching times would not help the competitive postion of the part.

I am not sure if this is true in Maryland, but in Pennsylvania railroads have immenent domain, meaning that the land cannot be taken by the goverment they would have to negotiate for it. The railroad could turn them down flat.

The Canton railroad is owned by the state, however.

Those rail yards are still used heavily. There are the main rail yards for Dundalk Marine terminal and Seagirt and the buisness on Broening Highway and the coal export terminal. Increasing the rail switching times would not help the competitive postion of the part.

I am not sure if this is true in Maryland, but in Pennsylvania railroads have immenent domain, meaning that the land cannot be taken by the goverment they would have to negotiate for it. The railroad could turn them down flat.

The Canton railroad is owned by the state, however.
The conundrum for Baltimore development: can the old and new coexist. While Baltimore no longer commands a dominant role in commerce or industry, a sizable share of revenue is still generated for city and state coffers in the form of taxes -- direct and indirect (wages). Not to mention the companies that still manage to be profitable.

Unless the state, and to a much lesser degree the city agree to pay sizeable subsidies, I can't imagine rail service being cut to lower Canton, Seagirt or Dundalk. After all, Seagirt is barely twenty years old, and has been fully operational for less than that. It would be interesting to know the cost amortization of their original $250 million investment. When would they be able to close and reinvest at another location?

Good points.

In other news:

Owings Mills may get more than 5,000 new jobs
Jared Favole
Staff
The Baltimore County Council approved a development agreement Monday for a "lifestyle" metro center at Owings Mills that could create as many as 5,300 jobs and $2.4 million in annual property tax revenue.


The centerpiece of the 47.5-acre site, which is adjacent to the Owings Mills Metro station, will be a 100,000-square-foot library and Community College of Baltimore County.

"The project's design as a lifestyle center is on the cutting edge of mixed-use development around the country," Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. said in a prepared statement.

The five-story library, which was increased from its original size after community feedback, will include a cafe and wireless technology.

The new building for the college will help local businesses recruit talent and train employees, said Andrew C. Jones, president of the Community College of Baltimore County's Catonsville campus and the Extension Centers.

Jones said he worked closely with county officials in shaping the college aspect of the project.

The building for the college holds about 10,000 students. Jones said extra space in the new building will allow 5,000 to 8,000 more students to enroll.

"We've been maxed out there for some time," Jones said. "It's actually pretty inadequate."

Also included in the project are 1.2 million square feet of office space, 227,500 square feet of retail and 75,000 square feet for a hotel and restaurants.



© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

ATTENTION:


In an effort to improve the traffic flow through a busy section of Downtown, Downtown Partnership and the Baltimore City Department of Transportation announced the conversion of Saratoga Street from one-way westbound to two ways between St. Paul Street and Guilford Avenue. The conversion took place during a press event on Monday, June 6th.

The affected section of Saratoga Street is only a few blocks long but the change is expected to have a large and positive impact. This part of Downtown is home to Mercy Medical Center, the Clarence Mitchell courthouse, the Tremont Suite Hotel, the St. Paul Plaza building, and several major companies, including Bank of America, CitiFinancial, and Provident Bank. There is also an increasing number of residents at buildings such as Saratoga Court and The Standard.

Traffic has a tendency to back up, particularly during the evening rush hour when hundreds of cars empty out of nearby garages. By heading east on Saratoga Street, commuters will now have easier access to Calvert Street and the Jones Falls Expressway. This change is also expected to alleviate north and southbound congestion along the Charles and St. Paul street corridors.

Height allowances in Mount Vernon raise ire of Baltimore preservationists


Some residents of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood are fired up about surprises they found in an urban renewal plan for the cultural district released Friday by the city Department of Planning.
Those residents have long awaited guidelines for future development in the neighborhood, hoping officials would comply with requests to limit building heights to 100 feet.

- JEN DEGREGORIO

I'd LOVE to read the rest of this article. :)

Maryland ranked fourth in biotech
Ernst & Young has ranked Maryland as the country's fourth best state for the biotechnology sector.

Maryland was ranked behind California, Massachusetts and North Carolina in Ernst & Young's Global Biotechnology Report 2005 Beyond Borders for its concentration of biotech companies.

Maryland has 84 public and private biotechnology companies, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. North Carolina has 225 biotech, pharmaceutical, lab-testing and contract research companies.

Ernst & Young plans to present the findings of Beyond Borders, which focuses on the biotech industry's maturity and globalization, at BIO 2005, an international biotechnology conference to be held this month in Philadelphia.

Good article in the SUN: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.height08jun08,1,3846009.story?coll=bal-local-headlines&ctrack=2&cset=true

Doesn't Mt Vernon have buildings taller than 230 now??

Mt Vernon hasn't had investments in years. Now there's interest, (U of B, Apts @ Howard & MLK, etc.) and everyone wants a voice. Beautiful area.

But just like the peeps in Fed Hill, Canton, Pig Town, they never have a problem selling at 5 & 6 times what they've paid. If they want to "preserve" the area, how about preserving the asking price?

What's that?? You want to make a profit?? Even if the very thing you fought against...made you that profit??

Ironically, these are the same people that fight for their cultural district, and artistic expression status. Well how can you turn around and fight for all buildings being the same 150 foot height, and blend into the existing community??

And since when did that area become a "you must blend in" area??

I dunno, maybe I'm crazy. But I see through them.

Doesn't Mt Vernon have buildings taller than 230 now??

Mt Vernon hasn't had investments in years. Now there's interest, (U of B, Apts @ Howard & MLK, etc.) and everyone wants a voice. Beautiful area.

But just like the peeps in Fed Hill, Canton, Pig Town, they never have a problem selling at 5 & 6 times what they've paid. If they want to "preserve" the area, how about preserving the asking price?

What's that?? You want to make a profit?? Even if the very thing you fought against...made you that profit??

Ironically, these are the same people that fight for their cultural district, and artistic expression status. Well how can you turn around and fight for all buildings being the same 150 foot height, and blend into the existing community??

And since when did that area become a "you must blend in" area??

I dunno, maybe I'm crazy. But I see through them.

If there aren't buildings that high, they must be pretty close, in fact the apt buildings on Center St are about that high and are almost on the parks. These arguments are always interesting. The historic advocates take an extreme position that nothing can be changed without the whole area going down the toilet and other people will be saying that they ought to put a high rise Burger King next to the monument. This area, however provides an unusual opportuntiy since it has both history and modernity. It isn't "pure" since it already has some relatively new tall buildings that aren't going away, vacant lots, underused areas, upcoming development (the Streuver development on Charles St) and a wealth of historic structures that can be more than they are.

I really think that all the parties have to do is to take a reasonable tone and there will be room for decades worth of development without knocking down the brownstones or shading out the parks. The purists must accept change in some places and the developers should realize that the historic and architectural assets of the area are what make the place worth living in. As good as it is to see new buildings, nobody will ever look on Symphony Place as wondersome architecture and nobody will ever again build anything like the Belvedere. This really can work and Mt Vernon will be a better place for it. More business and foot traffic can take this great area and make it greater.

If there aren't buildings that high, they must be pretty close, in fact the apt buildings on Center St are about that high and are almost on the parks. These arguments are always interesting. The historic advocates take an extreme position that nothing can be changed without the whole area going down the toilet and other people will be saying that they ought to put a high rise Burger King next to the monument. This area, however provides an unusual opportuntiy since it has both history and modernity. It isn't "pure" since it already has some relatively new tall buildings that aren't going away, vacant lots, underused areas, upcoming development (the Streuver development on Charles St) and a wealth of historic structures that can be more than they are.

I really think that all the parties have to do is to take a reasonable tone and there will be room for decades worth of development without knocking down the brownstones or shading out the parks. The purists must accept change in some places and the developers should realize that the historic and architectural assets of the area are what make the place worth living in. As good as it is to see new buildings, nobody will ever look on Symphony Place as wondersome architecture and nobody will ever again build anything like the Belvedere. This really can work and Mt Vernon will be a better place for it. More business and foot traffic can take this great area and make it greater.


Very well stated

Molo, that would work very well. I, personally, think something like that should go at Harbor Point. With the hotel coming to the "real" Recreation Pier in Fells Point, a Chelsea Pier-esque complex could be erected at Harbor Point. It'd be a great draw for neighboring residents and other locals. Tourist would use it too.
Its already getting some recreation uses. The ice rink was there this past winter, and Cirque de Soliel is there now. There is talk of the Pier Six pavilion being outdated...maybe this venue should be moved to harbor point and enlarged...attracting bigger name acts. Then pier six could be more intensely developed.

at the rate baltimore is going , if harborview gets built and the rest of harbor east there will be tall buildings all around the inner harbor shoreline. :) pretty cool to me , but i still say to make downtown larger go east with development along side of 83 towards hoppkins :soapbox: i can still dream.

Ruling is boost for developer
1,300-unit development possible on dump site
By Jill Rosen
Sun Staff
Originally published June 9, 2005

Baltimore industry lost another fight yesterday in its battle to insulate itself from homeowners unlikely to appreciate its noises, smells and grit.
A state panel charged with identifying land to protect for port-related industrial use rejected a 98-acre city-owned dump site in Anne Arundel County. The move boosts a developer's chances of building as many as 1,300 homes on the parcel, which is sandwiched between some of southern Baltimore's most intensive industrial sites and growing county neighborhoods.

An alliance of South Baltimore companies hoping to keep the area industrial had convinced the Port Land Use Development Advisory Council to include it in its report. But yesterday the committee sided with Anne Arundel County executives, Curtis Bay community leaders and a developer who sees residential potential in the property.

"We support residential zoning," said Betty Dixon, Anne Arundel County's land use and environmental coordinator and the county's representative on the council.

Craig Blinke, who leads the South Baltimore Business Alliance, an organization representing 32 companies with 1,200 employees, told the council that if the property goes residential, it could become another Canton or Locust Point, where people pay high prices for homes near the water and then complain about factory smoke or rumbling trucks.

"We have a problem with developing this property, to putting houses right up against these businesses," he said. "We're in a fight for survival here. We sit between the beautiful view and the million-dollar homes."

Developer Stephen P. McAllister wants to turn the former staging area for a Baltimore landfill into as many as 1,300 homes, townhouses and condominiums.

To do that, he'll have to have the winning bid when the city seeks proposals for the land, something it's preparing to do. And he'll have to win a zoning change from industrial to residential, which the county is to consider in August.

McAllister told the council that homes and businesses can coexist in the area.

"I feel I have buffered the industry," McAllister said. "I'm certainly no threat to their goals and their jobs. I want their people to live here."

The dispute embodies the fight that has been playing out on Baltimore's waterfront ever since neighborhoods once home to the city's factories and shipyards have become its hottest, and among the most expensive, residential enclaves.

To keep "condo creep" from pervading the entire waterfront, Baltimore enacted a law last year that prohibits housing, offices and restaurants in industrial areas. The Maritime Industrial Overlay District protects endangered deep-water access sites from Curtis Bay to Canton for 10 years.

Less concrete and less protected is property near the water, such as the 98 acres in question, that both industry and developers covet.

Baltimore planners have struggled with that issue as they try to update the city's aged zoning rules, trying to balance the needs of the city's blue-collar employment base with current business and development demands.

Rupert Denny, general manager of C. Steinweg Baltimore Inc., and the spokesman for the Private Terminal Operators, which represents a dozen private stevedores, has fought for better zoning to protect the ports.

Though the 98 acres is not waterfront, Denny had hoped the committee would realize the importance of keeping it industrial. At the very least, if it ultimately goes residential, he hopes that county zoning officials will understand how critical buffers between the homes and businesses will be.

"People simply don't realize what they're getting into when they buy these properties," Denny said, mentioning the complaints he always hears about smells and coal dust. "A fight's going to break out there in three years time.

"We obviously want to protect industry, but it's also in the interest of people buying those houses."

Going to extremes
Originally published June 9, 2005

UNTIL THIS week, discussions about a revised urban renewal plan for historic Mount Vernon, developed by City Planning Director Otis Rolley III, had led the public to believe that any new construction wouldn't exceed 180 feet, more than preservationists wanted and less than developers did. But the plan as now presented makes it possible for a 230-foot building to be constructed in the midtown neighborhood. That exceeds the stature of Mount Vernon's signature Belvedere Hotel and historic Washington Monument (although a building of that height would be prohibited within close proximity to the square).

The Charles Street Development Corp., whose members include some high-profile personalities in town, had insisted that a minimum of 200 feet was essential to build an economically viable, architecturally pleasing project that would create the buzz and pedestrian traffic the neighborhood could surely use.

Homeowners, preservationists and some businesses argued that more buildings taller than 100 feet would mar the character and charm of the neighborhood's 19th-century townhouses.

The debate all along has focused on height: How tall is too tall? While preserving the integrity of Mount Vernon Square, the proposal calls for graduated heights north along Charles Street, which, with bonuses, would not exceed 180 feet, a plan that we characterized as reasonable.

But the variance provision, which would require a two-step approval process, allows for an additional 50 feet for projects that "add to the character and historic fabric of Mount Vernon through significant architecture and urban design," according to a report by The Sun's Jill Rosen. The authority to grant a variance would rest with the Planning Commission and the city's architectural and preservation panel if the City Council approves the urban renewal plan as proposed by Mr. Rolley.

Certainly the neighborhood's unique character should be enhanced, but that should not be mutually exclusive of a compromise on height.

The proposed variance may be Mr. Rolley's way of refocusing the debate on aesthetics and not height; he's not opposed to tall buildings or increasing residential density in parts of the city, notably downtown and midtown. Or it may be his idea of how to best promote design and control for quality without outlawing innovation and the potential to have it all.

But whatever the reason, it's a bad idea. That 230-foot variance proposal must be stripped out of the plan before it is finally approved -- in order to best serve the interests of Mount Vernon and the city.

Harbor East has a new design for its website.

http://www.harboreast.com

at the rate baltimore is going , if harborview gets built and the rest of harbor east there will be tall buildings all around the inner harbor shoreline. :) pretty cool to me , but i still say to make downtown larger go east with development along side of 83 towards hoppkins :soapbox: i can still dream.

What I can imagine is a series of large buildings to the far east of the city. I think a great development area is where Ed Hale is building Canton Crossing and where Brewer's Hill is. There is a large underused section between there an 95 which would make for some nice high rise condos. They would be great for DC commuters and should allow a decent water and city skyline view.
Thats my next "if I had a billion dollars" fantasy :)

Have you guys heard about DC's metro expanding more toward Baltimore. What do you guys think about that? It sounds to me that their trying to make DC and Baltimore one.

I haven't heard anything about a Metro expansion that would be significant enough to impact Baltimore City residents.

However, the Maglev project, if ever built, would change the way we think about DC and Baltimore considerably. It would make the DC/Baltimore trip in about 15 minutes. Of course it's a huge hulk of a project, costing billions, and who knows whether or not ridership would ever justify it's huge capital cost.

Have you guys heard about DC's metro expanding more toward Baltimore. What do you guys think about that? It sounds to me that their trying to make DC and Baltimore one.


This will simply not happen for 2 reasons.

1. It is fantaboulously expensive to build a subway (even above ground)

2. There are already the 2 MARC lines connecting the cities. Not to mention Amtrak service on the same line.

On the other hand, it is likely that Baltimore/Washington will win the MAGLEV demonstration project. Although this will provide 3 rail connections between the cities and lessen the chance of metro expanson even further. :sly:

Have you guys heard about DC's metro expanding more toward Baltimore. What do you guys think about that? It sounds to me that their trying to make DC and Baltimore one.

I was briefly reading about that this morning. If the DC Metro does expand this far north, I think that would be pretty sweet. Our current subway system sucks, and DC has an excellent system. Also, that would give me reason to want to go to DC. I, like many others, hate driving in and around DC. That's the main reason why I haven't been there in 4 or 5 years.

Have you guys heard about DC's metro expanding more toward Baltimore. What do you guys think about that? It sounds to me that their trying to make DC and Baltimore one.

They are pondering an expansion to Ft Meade (which is supposed to expand by about 5,000 employees). That would get them half way, but given the time line for planning and federal funds, at best it might be 8 - 10 years before they turn the first shovel.

I was briefly reading about that this morning. If the DC Metro does expand this far north, I think that would be pretty sweet. Our current subway system sucks, and DC has an excellent system. Also, that would give me reason to want to go to DC. I, like many others, hate driving in and around DC. That's the main reason why I haven't been there in 4 or 5 years.

^I agree, driving in DC is a nightmare, epecially if you don't know where you're going. If Baltimore and DC were to merge into one huge city what would it be called? I've always wondered about that. :) but yeah our subway system is pretty lame.

I haven't heard anything about a Metro expansion that would be significant enough to impact Baltimore City residents.

However, the Maglev project, if ever built, would change the way we think about DC and Baltimore considerably. It would make the DC/Baltimore trip in about 15 minutes. Of course it's a huge hulk of a project, costing billions, and who knows whether or not ridership would ever justify it's huge capital cost.

I still can't get this one. With a stop at BWI the thing would take about 25 - 30 minutes to make the trip and in order to take in enough revenue to only require a massive operating subsidy they would have to charge about $30 per trip. At that price most commuters are priced out and only those willing to fork out $60 per day would use it. At that it's only 30 minutes faster than MARC. I wish they could spend that money on more conventional transit and let somebody else buy the guinea pig system.

DC driving isnt all that bad unless its in the middle of rush hour. I once thought navigating through the streets of DC was a horrible, horrible task too, but since I go very often now, its easier.

I Saw That Article About Extending the Green Line

This is another excellent example of the State of Maryland's "ass backwards" approrach to public transportation in our state. Why on earth would you spend all of that money, $100M per mile, on one extention and then spend next to nothing on the current metro Baltimore clap trap that is the MTA? How about spending some money on building up Baltimore's transit system so that more people would ride in and spur economic development and jobs. The other thing that struck me about that article was that since housing in the Baltimore metro area is about 1/3 that of the D.C. metro area, why would you build a transit system from an area where housing is more expensive rather than from an area e.g. Baltimore where housing is less expesive and encourage people to live there! Am I missing something here? Especially since Ft. Mead is closer to the Baltimore metro area, why not build up the transportation infrastructure there for people that have no choice at the present time.

I commute from Baltimore to D.C. on the MARC and have done so for almost 20 years. However, it would be nice on occasion to go to D.C. during the weekend when the MARC doesn't run. So why not operate the MARC on the weekends. It would also encourage a lot more D.C. area people to visit Baltimore during the weekend as well. Also it would be nice if they had more frequent service on the MARC after the peak rush hour times because I like to socialise with friends and the current schedule has a lot of gaps in it afer 7 PM.

Given the current financial state of the D.C. Metro, I would doubt that the Green Line extention discussed in that article will ever materialise, thank goodness!

Yellow Pages names Baltimore 'fun'
The number 13 may spell bad luck to most, but not for Charm City.

Baltimore has been ranked 13 on a list of most fun cities in America, compiled by Verizon superpages.com, a Yellow Pages directory published by Verizon Information Services.

Baltimore beat out Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Seattle in the list, which was based on the total number of directory listings for amusement parks, cultural and historic attractions, gardens, movie theaters and nightclubs. Verizon compiled the list using research from 1,000 locations where SuperPages publishes Yellow Pages directories.

Dallas was hailed as most fun city, followed by Phoenix, Miami, Boston, and Portland, Ore.

i thought years ago that the 2 cities were listed as 1 metro area because they have grown so much into each otherhttp://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y238/cfxj530/metroarea2.jpg

Trolley travel could be in city's future
Originally published June 10, 2005

If there's a streetcar named desire, Baltimore boosters are hoping to catch a ride on a trolley named development.

An organization charged with revitalizing the Charles Street corridor is studying whether a trolley system, extinct in the city since the 1960s, could be the answer.

The Charles Street Development Corp. is studying the feasibility of installing a 7.5-mile trolley line that would link the Inner Harbor with the Johns Hopkins University.

It would drop riders at the door of city attractions such as the Walters Art Museum, the Lyric Opera House and the Baltimore Museum of Art - sights that most tourists spend days in the city not seeing.

And, the thinking goes, it might even cause developers to take another look at vacant lots in Mount Vernon, closed-down restaurants in the arts district and struggling neighborhoods that surround Penn Station.

"All up and down Charles Street, business would benefit," said Rebecca Gagalis, Charles Street Development Corp.'s executive director. "It would really, really be a huge benefit to small business."

Though the plan is in its infancy, a study has revealed a few things. For instance, a trolley system, depending on the variety, would cost anywhere from $40 million to $150 million in capital expenses alone. That money would likely have to come from a combination of public and private sources.

Democratic Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, who has helped funnel federal dollars to area transportation projects, said he is intrigued. He has heard about the success of trolley projects across the country, in cities such as Tampa, San Francisco, New Orleans - and particularly Portland, Ore., where business reportedly boomed in the wake of a downtown trolley installation.

"It could really take Baltimore to a whole 'nother level in regards to development," he said. "I've always believed that Charles Street should be much more vibrant than what it is; [it] has never seemed to get off the ground. I think this kind of venture could help that."

Before taking the trolley plan further, Cummings said, he wants to be certain that it won't conflict with the state's public bus system - for money or ridership.

But those behind the trolley plan and others say that buses, with their noise and diesel fumes, aren't going to get tourists out of the harbor, and bus routes, no matter where they are, don't spark development.

"A developer is not going to get excited about a bus, even a nice bus, coming past a project," said Edward J. Myers of Kittelson & Associates, who put together Charles Street Development's trolley analysis.

Portland's streetcar system, which opened in 2001, has become the national model. The city estimates that the $56.9 million project has generated more than $1.4 billion in redevelopment. "People asked us, 'Why not do a bus system?'" said Kay Dannen, spokeswoman for Portland Streetcar Inc. "Buses don't attract developers like a light rail does. It's temporary, you can move anytime. Rail shows commitment and investment."

Portland's success inspired Washington to pursue its own streetcar system, which is expected to be completed next year. The district's estimated $50 million, 2.7-mile line has encountered resistance from residents who worry that the construction and streetcars will worsen traffic congestion rather than alleviate it.

But Washington Transportation Director Dan Tangherlini said that those minor headaches aside, the district will glean undeniable long-term benefits from the streetcars.

"An investment like this," he said, "will send a signal to the development and real estate community, who will respond with their own investments."

Seeing the potential

Baltimore's local and state business and tourism leaders also see the potential. They're looking at a route that is mostly northbound on Charles and southbound along St. Paul Street north of Mount Royal Avenue and Cathedral Street below. Among the things to be decided is whether the trolleys would operate on rails (the more expensive option) or rubber tires.

To get tourists at the Inner Harbor onto public transportation, said Nancy Hinds, spokeswoman for the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, the vehicle has to look appealing, feel safe and - above all else - be simple.

"When tourists visit a city, they don't have bus schedules," she said. "They want to look for something they can just hop on and get to points a, b, c or d. We want to make it as easy and as convenient as possible."

And though downtown Baltimore is fairly walkable, people won't necessarily want to hoof it to some of the farther-flung neighborhoods, said Downtown Partnership President Kirby Fowler. "Even the fittest tourist in the best of health," he said, "on a hot day, standing at the corner of Charles and Pratt, they just are not going to want to go up that hill."

Dennis Castleman, the state's assistant secretary for tourism, film and the arts, said the trolley can only help. "It might spur more tourism," he said. "If they can find an easier way to get around, they might come back and spend more money."

Looking northward

Neighborhoods upstream of the Inner Harbor such as Mount Vernon, Station North and Charles Village would like to see some of that tourist cash heading their way - and if a trolley moves it along faster, all the better.

The best thing for Mount Vernon, said Steve Johnson, the community association's former president, is to make a destination of its restaurants, galleries and historic streets. "Everything is focused on the Inner Harbor, and people don't seem to know about all those things up in our neighborhood," he said.

In Charles Village, people are also excited about the concept, but that enthusiasm, said Charles Village Association President Beth Bullamore, is tempered with concerns about the plan's details.

With parking already tight there, people worry this might somehow take away spots. They also fear that the construction will seem never-ending, and that the overhead wires will be unattractive, Bullamore said.

However, she added: "My husband just retired, and he's all excited about taking [a trolley] downtown to wander the Barnes & Noble - he's all for that."

Baltimore's once-thriving, citywide trolley line ceased decades ago. Charlie Duff, executive director of the Midtown Development Corporation, rode one of those trolleys on the last day of the system's existence. That was in the early 1960s, and Duff was 9 years old.

He's pleased to see the trolley's potential comeback in Baltimore - albeit on a much smaller scale. Though he knows it won't transform living in the city the way the original system did, he said, he thinks a trolley could breathe life up Charles Street. The cultural attractions along that street, he said, are like pearls looking for a string.

"This," he added, "just might be it."

Sun staff writer William Wan contributed to this article.

Developer buying prime Inner Harbor site
Pa. company scouting potential uses, designs for Light Street parking lot
By Lorraine Mirabella
Sun Staff
Originally published June 10, 2005

Philadelphia-based developer of mixed-use projects is buying one of the last undeveloped parcels in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, considered among the city's premier development sites.

ARC Wheeler Group has signed a contract to purchase the nearly 2-acre site on Light Street, near the Harbor Court Hotel, the Baltimore Convention Center and Camden Yards. The property's owner, Central Parking Corp., operates a parking lot on the site where a McCormick & Co. Inc. spice plant once stood.

ARC Wheeler is looking into potential uses and designs for a project and expects to unveil plans this summer, Robert Ambrosi, a partner in ARC Wheeler, said yesterday.

"What we plan to do there will be something world class," probably involving a mix of uses, Ambrosi said during a visit to the Inner Harbor to meet with architectural planners and engineers. "People are gravitating back to the cities again to be part of culture, art, music, and the Inner Harbor offers all of that."

Biff Porter, senior vice president of real estate for Nashville, Tenn.-based Central Parking, confirmed yesterday that the property is under contract to ARC Wheeler, but he said he could not disclose the purchase price or comment on when the sale will close.

The Light Street site is one of two undeveloped sites in the Inner Harbor core. It has been used as a 250-car parking lot since the McCormick factory was razed in 1988, and has long been considered for a hotel or mixed-use development. The other undeveloped site, the former News American site on Pratt Street, is being considered for an apartment building.

Industry experts said the site would be appropriate for a project on the scale of the Renaissance Hotel and Gallery mall downtown, which includes a hotel, offices and shops. Others said housing - possibly condominiums - would be viable in a housing market where demand has outstripped supply and driven up home values.

"It's the gateway to the Inner Harbor from Conway [Street], as well as the gateway to Camden Yards from Light Street," said Rich Burns, a partner in Baltimore-based Design Collective architecture firm, which worked on the Inner Harbor master plan. "I would hope that any development there would be a lively mixed-use project with good active ground-level retail and entertainment uses."

The Light Street project would be the first in Baltimore for ARC Wheeler, a joint venture of Clifton, N.J.-based ARC Properties and Philadelphia-based Wheeler Group.

ARC Wheeler is building a 33-story luxury condo tower in the Rittenhouse Square section of Philadelphia. It is also in the early stages of developing a 400-acre mixed-use project in Stafford County, Va., that will include housing, a hotel, offices and industrial space.

Under the urban renewal plan governing the Inner Harbor, a developer could build about 1 million square feet of space and a range of uses, including a hotel, offices, shops, housing and garage parking, said M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of Baltimore Development Corp.

Brodie said he has met with representatives of ARC Wheeler.

"They said they would be examining all of those uses to see what's feasible and desirable," Brodie said. "They need to come back with a use or mixture of uses that they would think is appropriate and works both architecturally and economically. They have a range of possibilities that they could consider."

Brodie said he and others at BDC encouraged the developers to consider including ground-floor retail to lend a sense of liveliness at the street level.

He said downtown would not be able to support a hotel aimed at convention business in light of the city's plans to build a 750-room convention headquarters hotel adjacent to the Convention Center. Brodie also does not see a market for additional Class A office space because of several large office vacancies downtown.

Some consider the site one of the city's best development sites.

"It's right on the water, it's right off the interstate and it's surrounded by all of the Inner Harbor's premium development projects," said J. Joseph Clarke of J.J. Clarke Enterprises Inc., which is working on two hotel projects in the city, including one on Light Street. "It's on what, in effect, is the main drag in Baltimore. Light Street is our Main Street today."

Development would be subject to city Planning Commission review and must meet the urban renewal plan standards.

Judge says BDC can continue secret decision-making
Lawsuit by west-side businesses challenged closed-door discussions
By Sumathi Reddy
Sun Staff
Originally published June 10, 2005

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge rejected yesterday a lawsuit challenging the closed-door decision-making process of the city's economic development agency, a decision the lawyer for the plaintiffs immediately appealed.

Circuit Judge W. Michel Pierson ruled that Baltimore Development Corp. does not have to follow the state's Open Meetings and Public Information acts.

In his ruling, Pierson determined that BDC was not created by the city and "remains a private corporation with a budget that is independent from City control." Furthermore, he concluded that the agency cannot be terminated by government and that "its actions are not subject to government veto or control."

"For these reasons, BDC is not a unit or instrumentality of the City of Baltimore," Pierson wrote.

Attorney John C. Murphy, who sued BDC on behalf of nine west-side businesses that stand to lose their shops as part of a redevelopment project, filed an appeal in Circuit Court yesterday. He also filed a motion asking the Court of Special Appeals to expedite the process.

Murphy's clients want court action to void a Nov. 18 decision made by BDC's board at a private meeting during which it decided to recommend four developers for the extensive west side redevelopment known as the superblock.

BDC declined to give the plaintiffs copies of the developers' proposals and did not respond to a request for information about scheduled meetings, according to the suit.

Yesterday, Murphy said he was hopeful that his clients will prevail in an appeal.

"The freedom of information acts were passed to provide citizens with access to the workings of government and the ability to attend public meetings," said Murphy. "It's hard to conceive of a case where this principal is more important than in a case where people's properties are being taken away from them and they're having to move their businesses."

BDC has argued that as a quasi-public agenda, it is not subject to the same scrutiny that other government agencies are.

Assistant City Solicitor Joshua Auerbach, who represented BDC in the case, praised the decision.

"The BDC has been doing good work for the city of Baltimore for almost 50 years, and there's a certain sense at the BDC and here at the city that if it ain't broken, don't fix it," said Auerbach. "This is a good development for the city because it allows a good arrangement to keep going as it's been going for a long time."

Jerald Goldfine, chief financial officer of Carmel Realty Associates, the lead plaintiff in the suit, questioned BDC's being represented by a city attorney in the suit.

"We feel that on appeal we will be successful since there is such a close relationship between the BDC and the city," said Goldfine. "The BDC was represented by a city attorney. I don't think a city attorney would be willing to represent me if I asked them."

Md. quietly plans for a rail link to Meade
Discussions described as conceptual; new line would be at least 20 years away

By Phillip McGowan
Sun Staff

June 10, 2005

State transportation officials have quietly stepped up planning of a major rail link between the Washington area and Fort Meade, where Pentagon shifts are expected to prompt significant growth in coming years.

Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan said his agency began looking at extending the Washington-area Metro several months ago, and he described the discussions as conceptual. The project is at least two decades from completion and could cost a minimum of $1 billion.

"[The] initial concept is somewhat daunting ... but it's worth pursuing," he said.

Political and transportation leaders said that decades of planning would have to be done before the rail line could be extended to Fort Meade. Residents would have to be won over, and environmental obstacles would have to be overcome before the project could become reality.

Flanagan's comments came a day after officials at Fort Meade revealed a three-decade master plan to manage growth in and around the 5,400-acre Army post in western Anne Arundel County. One of the master plan's provisions includes extending the Washington Metro's Green Line by 10 miles, from Greenbelt to Fort Meade, and potentially on to Baltimore. Such a move would accommodate tens of thousands of defense-related jobs expected to be generated by Fort Meade, which has seen its profile rise nationally as a center for defense and information technology.

Echoing other political and business leaders, the transportation secretary said that the anticipated jobs and development in the coming decades along the Baltimore-Washington corridor necessitates seeking transportation solutions, one of them being the possibility of a Metro rail extension.

40,000 jobs

Fort Meade is one of Maryland's largest employers, with about 40,000 jobs. The on-post presence of the National Security Agency generates thousands more in nearby high-technology complexes that house some of the nation's largest defense contractors. More large-scale office space is going up around Fort Meade to accommodate more of these companies.

The transportation secretary said that he has not been in contact with Fort Meade representatives about this concept, which includes continuing the rail extension from the Army post an additional 10 miles to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The potential cost of that extension could be another $1 billion.

"We want to talk to all of the possible parties and interests," Flanagan said. "Fort Meade is among those interests."

He added: "We take the support of Fort Meade very seriously and give it a great deal of weight."

Some said that the challenges of building the line may prove to be overwhelming.

"That won't happen in our lifetime," said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat whose district includes Fort Meade.

Flanagan declined to estimate a specific cost for such a project, which, as detailed yesterday, would run along the CSX line that is used for the MARC Camden trains.

The CSX line, going north from Greenbelt, cuts through a Department of Agriculture research center, runs alongside U.S. 1 and continues through Laurel. Flanagan said that line could then follow Route 32 toward the Fort Meade area and continue to BWI.

Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens and Fort Meade's commander, Col. John W. Ives, who oversaw development of the master plan, said that a location near the National Business Park, which is across the Baltimore-Washington Parkway from Fort Meade, could serve as a Metro stop.

$100 million a mile

A spokesman for Flanagan confirmed what other transportation officials have said: That each mile of rail would cost at least $100 million. At that rate, the price tag for the Greenbelt-to-Fort Meade extension would be at least $1 billion.

Flanagan mentioned two possible funding sources: One involves creating a special tax assessment district for nearby businesses that would benefit from a rail line. He said a similar concept is being used to help fund a Metro extension to Washington Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia. Another revenue generator could involve an incremental real estate tax on businesses that move into the area, he said.

Maryland projects are usually funded in equal parts from state and federal sources, Flanagan said, but he hoped that the U.S. government would contribute a greater share, considering the benefit to Fort Meade.

But the question remains whether federal funding could be obtained. The Dulles line is one of 14 projects from across the nation that federal transit officials have recommended to Congress for next year.

The 23-mile extension from Metro's Orange Line to just beyond Dulles is expected to cost about $3.5 billion. The first environmental study was conducted in 2000, and the project is not expected to be finished until 2015.

Pentagon proposal

The Pentagon recently recommended transferring 5,300 jobs to Fort Meade as part of its base realignment and closure process, mostly related to the National Security Agency. State officials estimate that influx would generate at least 5,000 more jobs, mostly in the form of NSA contractors, in the next seven years.

Part of Fort Meade's master plan includes using the post's 400-acre golf course as a site for several federal agencies seeking more secure confines that Meade could provide. Such a move could create 20,000 more jobs on post.

Through a spokeswoman, Owens said she was "pleased that the secretary has listened to the concerns of the BWI Business Partnership," which serves the interests of business along the Baltimore-Washington corridor and lobbies on behalf of the fort. "This is good news."

This is awesome, I can't wait to see the plans for the Old McCormick site this summer. I'm sure it will include a tower, this sounds big. :)

This is awesome, I can't wait to see the plans for the Old McCormick site this summer. I'm sure it will include a tower, this sounds big. :)

"What we plan to do there will be something world class."

This says it all!

In the first article from the BBJ it was said that ARC Wheeler was prepared to invest 400 million dollars. Maybe we sholud be glad that the Westin proposal did not come to. Speaking of the Westin proposal that building a nice slender tower for 200 million, one can wonder what 400 million can bring

"What we plan to do there will be something world class."

This says it all!

I agree.. this is much different than the city awarding a site to a developer who may or may not do something with it (see JJ Clarke) . These people actively pursued the property and have pushed it along all the way. Now lets just hope the city and or BDC doesnt stop this from being something world class.

Pretty interesting take on the Baltimore property boom:

==========================================

Playing Monopoly in Charm City
by Lila Rajiva
www.dissidentvoice.org
June 10, 2005

June, and downtown Baltimore is a few degrees cooler than the tropics but more stifling. There is greenery here but also more concrete and glass buildings, overheated asphalt, an endless twinkling stream of cars, and lightless parking lots. Not a bullock cart or rickshaw in sight to break the monotony.

Mornings, the sun beats down, late afternoon, a convectional shower or a muggy stillness. Near the water -- sticky dimpled thighs, sticky floral shirts, and sticky wafer cones. The Harbor is all the rage. Again. We old timers remember the past and shake our heads. Not again. But the newcomers are believers. This time it’s different. This time -- it's for real.

Mencken's tough old broad is moving on up. So they say, anyway.

“They” are quite a crew. Leading the cast -- Streuver Bros., Eccles, and Rouse, fat from earlier gentrification schemes, now churning soil relentlessly wherever you look, like that sixty million dollar rehab of a shuttered Proctor and Gamble soap factory.

From Federal Hill on up, billboards announce the opening of glittering apartment complexes under the gritty eyes of the old ones. Everywhere, streets are cordoned off and the grind of bulldozers shatters the familiar buzz of traffic. Little Italy, Bayview, Locust Point, Butcher's Hill, Brewer's Hill, even Union Square, home of the old cynic, is back in fashion again.

“You want to buy where there's building going on,” says Dave, nudging his gleaming white SUV around a grimy corner not too far from Druid Hill Park. Nearby, a couple of construction workers are swaying on a scaffold in front of the house, opposite a three-story brick row house with windows boarded up. Municipal notices are plastered like band-aids over the house fronts.

Dave is showing me a house on the outskirts of Reservoir Hill which is “hot, hot, hot,” according to the real estate web site where I first saw it. Dave is a broker officially, but actually, he tells me, he does this because it helps his own investing. He grew up in Baltimore and then spent ten years in California where he lived through the dotcom crash. Shortly after, he pulled his money out, clubbed together with some friends, and started buying property in San Francisco.

“Then I moved back here,” he smiles wolfishly. “It was dirt cheap compared to SF.”

But even the dirt is expensive now. The Housing Authority of Baltimore pimps burnt-out shells in drug-shadowed ghettos for a small fortune. A hundred grand gets you a dank, rotting hieroglyph, a skeleton with gouged out eyes and a deadline -- two years and two hundred grand more in rehab work to be completed as specified. The city is getting tough with delinquent landlords, finally. All down St. Paul Street and Calvert, near the railway station, there are notices to repair... or else. Last time round, the city sold the boarded up homes to individual investors, but it didn't work. One rehab wasn't enough to pull up a block, so the little guys gave up and became absentee landlords. It wasn't worth it to them. Then the drug gangs moved in and the middle class fled. This time around, the BHA has got wise. The houses are being offered in blocks to scare away the small fry and get in people who mean business. Eight shells on North Avenue in a package. A block near the Greenmount cemetery. Even the shadiest of neighborhoods have catchy little monikers -- Sandtown, Old Goucher, Marble Hill.

And people are buying. Greenmount Avenue, once the bright line between the drug havens and respectable Baltimore, is now porous. It's not just the city which is buying and improving housing stock either; Johns Hopkins University, bulging with massive donations, is throwing its turgid coils past Greenmount, pushing the drug line back. The Hospital area used to be a war zone. Today, North Broadway is another hot neighborhood, a future prospect for hospital employees. South, near the Bayview campus, modest row-houses are nearly two hundred thousand; further north, near the main campus, in what used to be the student ghetto of Charles Village, small row-houses are over 200, the bigger ones between 300 and 400 and on the main thoroughfare, Charles Street, half a million. Charles Village is no ghetto anymore. The old dormitories have been rebuilt stylishly, a Xando's and Ruby Tuesday at the corner, dark green awnings plump and cool in the heat. Hopkins has cleared a flourishing corridor through the city, but elsewhere? Who knows.

There is no Xando's on Druid Hill Drive for sure. Litter floats across the street. A surly looking man slumped on the steps of a house blows smoke out of the corner of his mouth and narrows his eyes at us. The SUV gleams temptingly. I give a nervous glance back. “Think it'll be okay?” “Oh yeah,” says Dave. I wonder how many times he has been down this street to show the place. In the ad it was a graceful neglected marvel, painted a delicate teal with a decorative tin roof inside and five fireplaces. Reservoir Hill and the fringes were once the home of the great merchants of Baltimore, and their streets have some of the grandest and most ornamental architecture in the city. Flourishes of woodwork, imposing marble mantels and floors, elegant spiral staircases, swirling wrought-iron work. In the 20s, Gertrude Stein once lived in a mansion here. Then things changed. The residents became absentee landlords, the mansions were chopped up into apartment blocks, drugs took over, and the neighborhood fell into the shadows.

Until the last three years. Suddenly the poor cousin of Bolton Hill is selling for half a million.

Dave fumbles with the lock box and then pushes the door in. The place is dark and there is an overpowering smell of mold. He switches on his torch. “Watch your step.” The floors are crisscrossed with planks and the walls have been stripped down to the frame. The torchlight bounces off the wood and onto a black tendril of exposed wire. Through the fragment of a door, we can see what must be the kitchen area, although there are no appliances to prove it. The torchlight gestures toward the stairs and I follow. The contours of the stairs, still gracious, sweep us upward to the next floor.

“What do you think?” he asks as I look around at the torn walls, the gaping emptiness of the roof, the piles of plaster and rubble, the broken frames that lean menacingly toward us in the gloom.

“I know it looks like a lot of work now, but seriously, you could do it for maybe, eighty, ninety.”

A hundred plus ninety.

“Across the street is selling for two fifty,” he adds. How long would it take? “Three -- four months.” He shrugs. “Maybe faster. Depends on who you know.”

Who I know.

I know Ralph, the handyman at my old condo. But Ralph is retired and likes to sleep in or play b-ball with his grandson. I wasn't certain he was the right person to turn me a profit on a broken down mansion in Druid Hill.

And if it took longer? “Then you just sell it next spring.” That wolf smile again.

Next spring? The bottom might drop out of this thing by then.

“Don't you think we might be in a bit of a bubble here?” I asked, as we gingerly picked our way through the debris and climbed down the stairs back to the front door. Outside, the sun was still beating down. “Naah. Way too much demand. This stuff goes on the market and it's gone in days. Too many people around now.”

If so, they weren't in Druid Hill. The smoker had left leaving his smoke hanging like a Cheshire smile in the hot air.

“People from DC, you mean?” Everyone was talking about them. That's why the area around the train station was so hot suddenly. A few years back, you would have risked being shot if you'd been out there in the night. Now, someone had bought up even that raggedy old Chesapeake restaurant, fixed it up, and was trying to sell it. People were talking of trendy cafes and artsy shops. A place to eat after the theater. Night life. Station North, they called it now. And even four streets away, past the drug line of Greenmount, houses were selling steadily in Greenmount West.

Live Baltimore, the housing campaign, has signs all over Union Station in DC about it. Pictures of a solitary potted plant and the caption, “If you call this a yard, you need to get out of DC.” Designed by a Baltimore ad agency, the Campbell Group, Live Baltimore has been selling the idea to Washingtonians of all stripes but especially mid-level managers, administrators, librarians, people who work in DC but don't make the big salaries that the law firms and businesses pay. A townhouse that would cost a million in DC is “only” half a million here. And with Penn Station connected at the umbilicus by the speedy little MARC train, Baltimore is now a DC suburb. Or so they say.

Too bad they forget to mention that the half-a-million dollar mansion is only a street or two away from an open-air market for drugs. Or that Patterson Park, now selling for a quarter of a million, used to be a row of flophouses. Or that the drug problem isn't going anywhere soon. Or the school problem. Or the jobs problem. Or the race problem.

The Baltimore problem.

We got into the SUV. “Look -- there's always a risk,” he said, pulling out into the street. “Nothing's guaranteed in life. But you can see this is for real. Everyone wants in on this. It's not coming down anytime soon. Maybe never.”

“Didn't they said that about the tech stocks too?”

He shook his head. “You really are pessimistic, y’know? A home isn't a piece of paper. There's value there. The people who saw that value and bought in five years ago, they had the vision.”

Five, ten, fifteen years ago, those Druid Hill houses couldn't be given away. And the landlords boarded up the windows and let them sit vacant for years, eyesores that destroyed the neighborhood. I knew an artist who fell in love with one of those beautiful ruined ghosts and sunk his savings trying to breath life back into it. After ten years of smashed windowpanes, broken steering wheels, reefers and condoms tossed into his yard, he gave up, sold for a loss, and went to France. He had vision. I wondered what he was thinking now.

“You better buy now,” said Dave, as we swung back onto North Avenue. “Look at the construction.” He was right. Right across from Penn Station, land had been cordoned off for condominiums. “Station North Town homes,” said the sign. “Starting in the two hundreds.” They'd probably all been sold and sold again, though there was not yet a brick in place. That fast commute to DC was going to lure a whole new population into the city and landlords were ready for them. Yuppie analysts driven out of New York by the prices. Californian dotcom couples hardened by million-dollar sticker tags for modest bungalows. Baltimore looked cheap to them. Baltimore was cheap for them. They weren't making Baltimore salaries. After 9/11, the federal government began hiring with a vengeance -- computer analysts, accountants, engineers. In DC's bedroom communities, in Virginia and Maryland, recession never hit. The defense giants, Northrop, Lockheed, Boeing, and the newcomers, Titan, CACI, began hiring as though their lives depended on it -- which in a way they did -- and the money was great.

The money is still great. You only have to skim the Washington Post's online ads to realize where all the housing money is coming from. Bush has created the biggest government program since FDR.

And it's all going to the middle-class and upper middle-class who want to put it someplace where it will grow, not crash and burn like the stock market. More and more money looking for a safe hideout. And what's safer than land? What's easier to understand? The primal urge to own your own dirt, to put a roof over your head. Land's the only thing that lasts, Katy Scarlett....

Dave handed me a card. A mortgage banker. “She's good,” he says confidentially. “Someone who'll give you a fair deal. Not just looking for a commission.”

Were there any fair deals left? The real estate web sites consider Baltimore “fair value” now, not overvalued but not undervalued anymore, either. But the old-timers aren't so certain. They've lived through the winds of gentrification twice before and each time things have sunk back. Of course, there's more money coming in now -- from the federal government, from private developers, from the city. But if you look closer, you begin to wonder.

SCOPE, the city program offering rehab properties, sounds like a public-spirited effort -- Selling City Owned Properties Efficiently. What could be wrong with that? But what the efficient part only hints at is the raw truth that the city makes a profit when it sells those properties through the commercial agents. The city makes money; the realtors who get to broker the deal make money. But the homeowners who buy and then put in the mandated hundred or two hundred thousand dollars worth of work are spending money and spending it on spec., because there's no guarantee that prices are going to keep going up, although that's the chorus from everyone -- the banks, the realtors, the mortgage brokers, the newspapers. And if prices fall 5%, or god forbid 20%, as they did after the last few spasms of gentrification, what happens to that two or three hundred grand you owe on a gutted shell that no one can live in but on which you still have to pay mortgage and taxes?

Shells for a shell game....

The greater fool theory is in full throttle. People trying to buy and sell before they get left holding the bag. With New York Times bestsellers salivating over an impending real estate crash, the hot potato jumps from hand to hand quicker and quicker, buyers flipping before the ink gets cold on the deal. And they're making money. Baltimore properties are up on average around 20% a year over the last few years.

“I wouldn't want to put much money down,” I say hesitantly. Not to worry, I didn't need any money down, it seemed. 100% financing -- hadn't I heard of it?

Apparently anyone with a pulse can get a loan. Appraisers boost house values -- appraisal fraud is at an all-time high -- but it keeps everyone happy; the banks make loans based on the inflated values knowing that the loans aren't any good, only it doesn't matter because they're going to get sold off in packages as securities; the buyers borrow money they don't plan to return because they're going to turn a quick profit by selling fast; the investors -- many of them foreign -- buy the packaged securities because with the dollar falling American real estate looks cheap.

An elaborate, delicate house of cards teetering on disaster.

“I don't have much of a credit history,” I falter. His eyes shift away. “But I do have savings.” They brighten.

In this intricate leveraged game, cash -- real hard cash -- is in short supply in America, even though, ironically, it's an excess of liquidity in international markets that's driving the assets boom at home.

“That helps,” he says. “The more you can put down, the more house you can buy.”

But how much house do I want to buy? A single woman, I don't really need a house, but if rents go the way prices are going, I might soon be as priced out of the rental market as I am out of the housing market. A house isn't a home to me, really, but a hedged bet on the market. Commodities are not something a novice can easily get into, and aren't commodities taking a beating this quarter anyway? Gold has been up for some time, but might be on its way down. Your average savings account isn't paying more than three percent. Bonds -- too much complicated math. Short of buying jewelry or stuffing the mattress, land’s the answer.

So, how much land does a man need? Tolstoy once asked the question and answered it. Six feet. Enough to die in.

But the American mortgage industry has no use for parsimonious solutions, however elegant. Six feet of house will not get them interested in you. You have to borrow beyond a certain amount, and in most cases you'll be slapped with a penalty if you pay back too early. Seems like they need to make the loan more than you need to borrow the money.

Having savings doesn't help either. They don't want to know you have the money to pay them back. They'd rather have proof that you're used to the drip-drip of intravenous credit. They want you brain-dead and hooked up to their monthly payments. They need you playing their lethal little game. They need you to be one more sweaty little Sisyphus, shoulder to the rock.

And with the dollar plummeting, you don't know how not to be. If you don't buy, you risk being left behind as prices thunder away, pulverizing your savings into the dust. If you buy at these inflated prices, you know you've gifted over a chunk of your savings to someone who bought before 1999 and you’d be doing it just when the market has probably topped out and is ready to fall. To those who have, more will be given; to those who lack, what little they have will also be taken away. So says the Gospel somewhere, and the Bush government is working overtime to prove it. In fact, the current housing boom is the biggest re-distributor of wealth since the New Deal, only this time it's from those who haven't homes to those who have.

Not that many homeowners, unless they're ready to retire, can directly cash in their inflated assets by selling. For a conservative minority, the housing boom has only meant another reason for the city to raise property taxes, forcing some of those on fixed incomes out of their overpriced digs. But for the vast majority of homeowners, the new boom has turned their homes into an ATM card through refinancing and home equity loans that allow them to tap the appreciation for new credit. And the creditors are lining up to give the junkies their fix.

It's predatory banking and it's no different from what sleazy credit card companies do when they mass-mail plastic purchasing to penniless immigrants, students in debt, grandmas on fixed incomes, the struggling poor, and those on the verge of bankruptcy. They want you to go under. And when you do, they want to be there to collect.

Loan sharking of the worst kind. But at least you could easily pick out the old-time loan sharks. They were the polyester-suited, gold-chained hustlers on the corner, charging you 20 percent as they forked over a billfold with their greasy pinkie-ringed paws. But today's loan shark is camouflaged as your neighborhood banker in wire-rimmed glasses and button-down shirt, ready at your elbow with a no-money down, 100% financed, adjustable rate mortgage under 4%. There's even negative amortization. That's right. They're willing to pay you to borrow money. Your monthly payment is kept artificially low because not only are you not paying the principal you borrowed, you're not even fully paying the interest. So the amount you're borrowing actually keeps rising. And the more interest rates rise, the bigger that amount becomes until at some point the bank decides to pull the cozy rug from under your feet and your monthly payment skyrockets to cover both P and I. That's when all those $30,000 wage-earners brandishing $300,000 plus homes bite the dust. All over the country, it's already beginning. Foreclosures are up dramatically this year. In Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, officials talk about a Depression era level. If it hasn't brought prices down any, it's only because these days the banks are holding back and selling through the realtors not just to recoup costs, but at profit-making prices. It's only because at swanky auction houses like Alex Cooper in Baltimore, properties that go to auction are frantically bid up by greedy speculators and their shills who want to keep the game going.

But somebody knows what everybody pretends they don't -- that someday this is all coming down. Otherwise, why have so many realtors sold their homes and begun to rent? Why have the bankruptcy laws been tightened up effective from October this year just as interest rates start the slow but inexorable climb that will make defaults cascade into an avalanche?

“You've got to believe,” says Dave, watching me finger the card slowly before I put it in my wallet. “This city is only going to get better.” He opens the door and I slide out. He smiles, the little sunbursts on his green and yellow shirt smile, even the SUV, opulently, extravagantly energy-inefficient, smiles. I feel the spoilsport I am.

I think suddenly about how the stock market “crashed” and nothing really changed -- not so many jobs maybe, but no bread lines or gas lines, people still spending and living as they've always done. I think about all the doomsday predictions before the war, and yes, it's a mess but the Middle East didn't implode, nuclear war hasn't broken out. I think about the dollar bears and how, this spring, the Euro has fallen instead. America acts and the world falls in line... for the most part, anyway. A Chavez here, a Kim Il there, a little grumbling, but no more. I remember someone saying, it doesn't pay to bet against America. I wonder with a sinking feeling if I've been wrong all along.

Dave shouts out, “You'll see!”

Then, just for a second, I do see. How it works, what it lives on, this country of perpetual optimism. As he waves to me from the car, he looks suddenly boyish, quintessentially American, puer aeternus despite the first bulge of middle age.

And it's I who feels old suddenly and somehow cheated. Not because I didn't buy a house four years ago, but because having grown up in the third world, in an old culture, I've never bought and could never buy what seems to ultimately drive this country and fuel its endless consumption, its bountiful credit -- I’ve never made a down payment on that relentless waking dream in which it sleepwalks toward the future, the brittle dream that tomorrow is always better than today.

Lila Rajiva is a freelance writer based in Baltimore, Maryland. She has taught music at the Peabody Preparatory, and English and Politics at the University of Maryland and Towson University. Her new book, The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the US Media, will be published this month by Monthly Review Press. Copyright (c) 2005 by Lila Rajiva

Pinko Commie Rag... (Shameless Seinfeld reference)

Nevertheless, it was an interesting take and a good read.

I agree.. this is much different than the city awarding a site to a developer who may or may not do something with it (see JJ Clarke) . These people actively pursued the property and have pushed it along all the way. Now lets just hope the city and or BDC doesnt stop this from being something world class.

AMEN! You said it! I sure hope that no one messes this great project up.
This could be Baltimore's new tallest tower.

Right at this site: http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/mapimage/2005-06/17960706.gif

:)

BTW, I would LOVE to see Baltimore build that railed trolley system. It brings great charm. People, mostly tourists love to ride them. When I was in San Francisco last year I loved riding them. They are so great for a city as dense as Baltimore. And this would be WAY cheaper and a much better investment in the longrun than a light rail/subway system. It could serve a part of Baltimore where other rail lines could be used at other parts of the city. :) IMO. :D

http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/graphic/2005-06/17958952.gif

BTW, I would LOVE to see Baltimore build that railed trolley system. It brings great charm. People, mostly tourists love to ride them. When I was in San Francisco last year I loved riding them. They are so great for a city as dense as Baltimore. And this would be WAY cheaper and a much better investment in the longrun than a light rail/subway system. It could serve a part of Baltimore where other rail lines could be used at other parts of the city. :) IMO. :D

I'd love to see this too. It could serve both locals and tourists. I do wonder how they would fit it on to those tight streets. The one that is pictured on the Daily Record looks like a modern version of the old "Trackless Trollies" that had rubber tires, no tracks but ran from overhead wires. It could steer to a limited extent to change lanes and didn't have nasty noisy diesel engines like MTA buses. Something like that just might work since it would not require a dedicated right of way and wouldn't require expensive, disruptive rail construction. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope some money materializes. The last time we had a tease like this was the cable cars at the harbor but that never happened.

the main dream project of mine that i would like the city to build besides a supper tall tower , is extending i- 70 to i-83 under downtown amd conecting to each other. they did that in philly with i-76 to i-95 and it opened a whole new section of development and is still going on.

does anybody remember the 3 trolley lines that they had proposed a couple of years ago! that ran oround the harbor over to the b&o museum and down to ft mchenry!! i still wish they would have gone through with it :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash:

the main dream project of mine that i would like the city to build besides a supper tall tower , is extending i- 70 to i-83 under downtown amd conecting to each other. they did that in philly with i-76 to i-95 and it opened a whole new section of development and is still going on.

That project has been gone for a long time. There was once a project to connect 83, 70 and 95. Unfortunately it would have required the destruction of the inner harbor, Fells Point, Canton and Federal Hill (not only the neighborhood but the hill itself. It would have been all above ground. I think the Big Dig in Boston and all of its endless cost and complications have doomed underground highways for a few decades. For some details on the variations of unbuilt Baltimore highways, check out http://www.roadstothefuture.com . They also have info about the aborted subway. It's a shame it didn't happen -

http://home.comcast.net/~dswanson35/baltosubway.jpg

does anybody remember the 3 trolley lines that they had proposed a couple of years ago! that ran oround the harbor over to the b&o museum and down to ft mchenry!! i still wish they would have gone through with it :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash:

That and the various time that they proposed using the blocked lane on Pratt St and Light St around the harbor for some sort of trolley. Maybe some day, one of these things will happen.

Has the Zenith started construction? Anyone hear any new news about the Water Tower?


That and the various time that they proposed using the blocked lane on Pratt St and Light St around the harbor for some sort of trolley. Maybe some day, one of these things will happen.

http://www.mddailyrecord.com/newspics/trolley.jpg

BTW, I've heard nothing new on the two projects, fanofterps. Sorry. :(
www.414waterstreet.com is a good site though. :)

Hopes rise with city's growth
Jacques Kelly
Originally published Jun 11, 2005

Jacques Kelly

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IHAD ONE of those mental explosions a few days ago while riding on South Street and heading through the Inner Harbor. There, where for 16 years I drew a paycheck at the old News American, I looked around at a vastly changed world: darting busboys at the Renaissance Hotel, a bustling Power Plant and an Aquarium that seems to grow a new wing every spring.

This transformation of the old port city has taken a long time, but its accumulating parts and new additions still possess the power to jump up on me.

I thought of it the other day coming home from a trip to New Orleans. Being the thrifty Baltimore resident, I opted for the $1.60 light rail ride from the airport. I passed the old Carr-Lowrey glass plant in Westport, a new renovation candidate, and thought to myself, look fast, it'll be a condo or apartment by the time I get back to New Orleans again. I spotted a rusty red bridge over a Patapsco River backwater near Russell Street and thought, could it be an extension of the Gwynns Falls Trail? Indeed, a newspaper story a few days later confirmed my hunch.

I get a case of Baltimore goose pimples often these days when I observe another chunk of the old city change for the better. It could be a clutch of new homes in Locust Point, the tidy cottages that have replaced the dreadful housing projects along Martin Luther King Boulevard or a nest of construction cranes at Johns Hopkins.

I say this because I spent a childhood in a Baltimore that seemed to suffer plenty of social and economic setbacks while it was locked in a kind of fearful, naysaying spell of inertia. We had our thrills with the Colts and Orioles, but much was gray.

The other morning, I was scooping up the paper off my porch when I caught another kind of proof. I glanced over at neighbors' yards, and there, after years of minimal maintenance, were two well-tended front gardens. I thought I'd never live to see this.

So the news that the Charles Street organization would like to see streetcars return - and even pass my house - did not come as such a shock. While in New Orleans, I rode both branches of the Canal Street car line that has been restored after four decades of bus operation. Streetcars disappeared from St. Paul Street three years before I was born, but this onetime get-around-the-city conveyance might well return.

After all, only this past winter, on a snowy Sunday, my brother and I were driving home from the Hippodrome. Who would have thought, we said, that all the downtown department stores would be gone? Yet, who would have thought we'd be watching a movie in a restored Hippodrome and heading home alongside a Howard Street light rail car?

http://www.arcwheeler.com/projects/414lightstreet.php

Way to go, BigBalto! :)

http://www.arcwheeler.com/projects/414lightstreet/414lightstreet_3_lrg.gif

This two-acre site on Baltimore's famed Inner Harbor represents one of the last development opportunities on the waterfront. ARCWheeler currently is undergoing due diligence to fully comprehend the market in order to determine feasibility to implement the company's established "10" brand, which features mixed-use elements including retail, destination spa and luxury condominium components designed by a name architect and situated on either parks or on waterfront properties. A hospitality component possibly may be included as well. ARCWheeler expects to determine feasibility by August 15, 2005.

BTW, the address is 414 Light Street
Baltimore, Maryland. uh......... does anyone else find that address number kinda strange? 414 Water street/414 Light street? Go figure. :D

Looks like developer has a track record of building projects. This is the opposite of 1 Light St(Joe Clarke), Zenith(still wondering if it will break ground, and Citiscape(what large projects have developers built?).


BTW, the address is 414 Light Street
Baltimore, Maryland. uh......... does anyone else find that address number kinda strange? 414 Water street/414 Light street? Go figure. :D

Are there any plans to extend the Baltimore Metro/Subway, or open any new lines in the future?

I hear alot about a proposed Red Line of 11 to 12 miles. Will go from Security Square Mall to Patterson Park with stops in Harbor Est, Fells Point, Canton, etc.. This is about it right now.

We really need a subway from Columbia to White Marsh. The traffic on 695 is terrible.


Are there any plans to extend the Baltimore Metro/Subway, or open any new lines in the future?

Looks like developer has a track record of building projects. This is the opposite of 1 Light St(Joe Clarke), Zenith(still wondering if it will break ground, and Citiscape(what large projects have developers built?).

Do you think that this could be a very tall project?
I'd like to know how many of us feel like this might be the ONE! :D

If it is a 5 star hotel, who would have thought 5 years ago that Baltimore would have a Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton and hopefully this new 5 star project.



Do you think that this could be a very tall project?
I'd like to know how many of us feel like this might be the ONE! :D

Are there any plans to extend the Baltimore Metro/Subway, or open any new lines in the future?

Very remote chances of any new subway any time soon. There is a "Red Line" under study that would go from the Social Security Complex across the city to Fells Point and Canton. The exact route remains to be seen as does the type of transit but subway is not on the list of possibilities (the possible formats are light rail, bus-rapid or "no-build"). Last week MTA had a public meeting in the Charles Center subway station and gave out maps. This could be an interesting project but construction won't start until about 2010 if all goes well. If that happens and is completed, the next project would be and extension of some sort of the current subway out to the northeast, but that is many years out. You can get some details on all this on the MTA web site at www.mtamaryland.com.

Good article on Baltimore firm looking for 150,000 sq. ft. of space in the city. :)
http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/06/13/story1.html

:D

Yet another article about the Johnson Hotel: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/06/13/story3.html

:)

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/06/13/story5.html
High-end Italian chain eyes Harbor East; Little Italy restaurateurs object
Julekha Dash

Do you think that this could be a very tall project?
I'd like to know how many of us feel like this might be the ONE! :D


I think it may Steve. This guy has a 33 story residential tower going up in Philly and it looks pretty tall for it to only be 33 flrs but it looks cool. I forgot the name of it. Its on the "Philadelphia development news" thread. He's talking about residential/retail and a possible hotel as well. I can't wait to see renderings :)

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/06/13/story5.html
High-end Italian chain eyes Harbor East; Little Italy restaurateurs object
Julekha Dash

I understand where they're coming from, but honestly whats the big deal? Their gripe isnt even fiscal windfalls, they're concerned that it'll give the waterfront a "mall" feel? Hmmmmm....in that case I guess nearly every retail unit on the waterfront would be empty.

Either way it looks like Harbor East will be adding three new resturants soon, including this high-end Italian place.

I understand where they're coming from, but honestly whats the big deal? Their gripe isnt even fiscal windfalls, they're concerned that it'll give the waterfront a "mall" feel? Hmmmmm....in that case I guess nearly every retail unit on the waterfront would be empty.

Either way it looks like Harbor East will be adding three new resturants soon, including this high-end Italian place.

I agree.. i think having Harbor East next to Little Italy can only be a boon to the restaurants in that area.. More people will come to Harbor East to shop.. more people will be hungry and will say, "hey we're next to Little Italy, lets go get something"
Everything they are doing there is win-win situation

btw: the harbor east website has been down since someone last posted about it a few days ago. I only got to look at it quickly, but one thing that I thought was great that they were calling Alicianna street "Baltimore's main shopping street" or something.. so it looks like they really want to ramp up the retail in that area.
Whenever the page comes back online, I'll post the pictures

It sounds like everyone is afraid of a little comp. I don't think they'll have a problem if they stepped up thier game.

Didn't anyone learn from Peter Angelos about things like this?

It wouldn't be called Little Italy with just 3 Italian joints.

Also, why is Little Italy involved with what's happening at Harbor East?

I know the two are close, but come on with the gripes.

I think it is a good thing. ;)

http://www.harboreast.com/images/project_map.jpg

http://www.harboreast.com/images/project_map.jpg

Aliceanna Street, Baltimore's Main Street of Retail

Parcel A
Marriott Waterfront Hotel

Located at the westernmost edge of Harbor East, this is home to the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel, the largest hotel in the city.

http://img194.echo.cx/img194/8987/parcela9tp.jpg

Parcel B
800 Aliceanna Street

Designated to house a 7-screen art themed cinema theater, 800 Aliceanna Street will also include a health club and 131 luxury residential units

http://img194.echo.cx/img194/8134/parcelb2gs.jpg
note:
bookstore
urban fashion
home furnishings
sporting store
3 more fashion
Cafe
Movie Theatre

Parcel C
1000 Aliceanna Street

This is a center of activity for Harbor East residents and visitors, featuring -- Whole Foods Market, Cingular Wireless, Bin 604 Wine Sellers, Chui's Sushi, Harbor Cleaners, Baltimore Exchange Company and Taco Fiesta.

http://img265.echo.cx/img265/3582/parcelc9mz.jpg
note:
in addition to current tenants, they are expecting a Cafe, Fashion botique, an internation newstand, and additional retail

Parcel D
The Four Seasons

The location for the Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts - 200-room hotel with 105 luxury condominium units, as well as a world-class spa, two waterfront restaurants, and fitness and luxury pool facility.

http://img283.echo.cx/img283/3083/parceld4qn.jpg
note: 8 additional retail locations, home furnishings, restaurant, lounge, and bar

Parcel P
Spinnaker Bay

This is the location of Spinnaker Bay - 320 luxury apartments and 32 condominiums. Spinnaker Bay is also designated to have over 30,000 square feet of retail space and will soon be home to The Oceanaire Seafood Restaurant and Lebanese Taverna.

http://img16.echo.cx/img16/5277/parcelp0wn.jpg
note: 2 contempoary fashions, 1 designer fashion, 1 beauty and skin care, 1 bistro

Parcel H
720 Aliceanna Street

The heart of the dining experience in Harbor East, highlights include Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar, Roy's and James Joyce Irish Bar and Restaurant.

http://img16.echo.cx/img16/4228/parcelh4oz.jpg

Parcel G
1000 Lancaster Street

Opened in 1996, this holds one of Harbor East's first buildings and includes - The Promenade, a 113-unit luxury apartment building and Charleston Restaurant.

http://img254.echo.cx/img254/2826/parcelg3ui.jpg
note: additional women's fashion, retail, and accessories

Meyer Seed, Shepard Electric and the gray spots(empty land) on the map will be replaced with retail and residential buildings. Harbor East will be twice the size of what it is today in 5 to 10 years. It will be Baltimore's mini version of Bethesda or Newbury St in Boston.

Does Anybody Know?

I am curious whether Victor's Cafe will still be there when the 4 Seasons development gets built. I have seen conflicting reports and I can't help but noticing that all of the plans show Victor's as still there. I know that at one point Victor's was going to take legal action against the developers but I never heard if they actually did or not.

I'm not sure, Hugh. Sorry.

Meyer Seed, Shepard Electric and the gray spots(empty land) on the map will be replaced with retail and residential buildings. Harbor East will be twice the size of what it is today in 5 to 10 years. It will be Baltimore's mini version of Bethesda or Newbury St in Boston.

Since it will end up on Caroline St., it will also flow great into Harbor Point and Fells Point.. as much as I love the inner harbor, I think this is going to replace it as the premier destination point in the city.

Isn't there going to be some apartments/condos to be built on the old Bohager's site? :? If those apartments go up plus the Harbor East PLUS the Harbor Point development......... WHEW! :eek2: That'll be a big combined development. If Harbor Point has some tall buildings in the mix too, then, WOW! What a nice little skyline that'll make for Baltimore's east Side! :D ;)

Steve,

Elm Street Development Corporation has broken ground on the old Bohager's site. I have not driven by there in a month but I saw a bulldozer
the last time I was there tearing up the ground. The old Bohagers's site
is suppose to have 236 residential units. I see Harbor East having 1,600 to 2,000 residential units in 5 to 10 years.

Isn't there going to be some apartments/condos to be built on the old Bohager's site? :? If those apartments go up plus the Harbor East PLUS the Harbor Point development......... WHEW! :eek2: That'll be a big combined development. If Harbor Point has some tall buildings in the mix too, then, WOW! What a nice little skyline that'll make for Baltimore's east Side! :D ;)

ON THE BOHAGERS SITE THERE IS ALSO STEEL BEAMS STUCK INTO THE GROUND AND ALL OF THE GROUND SCRAPED AWAY. AS FAR AS THE MCCORMIC SITE IM PUSHING FOR AT LEAST 50 FLOORS!!!!!!OR MORE :) :) .
I DROVE BUY BAYVIEW TODAY AND THEY STARTED ADDING MORE STEEL TO THE SECOND TOWER WHICH IS UP TO 6 FLOORS. THE FIRST TOWER IS GOING TO BE BEAUTIFUL WITH ITS CURVED WALL FACING TOWARDS 895 AND DOWNTOWN!!! THRERE IS ANOTHER BUILING ALSO BEING ERECTED AT TTHE END OF THE COMPLEX AND A BIG SIGN FOR A 4 STORY BUILDING ACCROSS THE STREET NEXT TO 895

ALSO ,THE BOHAGERS SITE IS SUPPOSED TO BE 3 TOWERS ABOUT 8 TO 10 FLOORS EACH???I THINK THATS WHAT I SAW. AND THERE IS A COUPLE OF OTHER APT BUILDING PLANNED TO GO UP IN THAT AREA TO.

Getting people to walk between Piers 1, 2, 3, and 4 has never really been an issue, but getting them from Pier 4 to Pier 5 and further east has been a problem until recently. Developers have done a pretty good job of increasing foot traffic in that area. Obviously when you add more stuff (i.e. Chipotle, Pier 4 Cafe, Ernst and Young office space, etc) you're gonna attract more people. Hardscape changes like the new lighting fixtures that the Aquarium has added, the extended brick promenade and plaza that leads to Pier 5 and other things have certainly helped draw people to Pier 5 Hotel, the new Ruth Chris @ Pier 5 and McCormicks.

Now, what to do about that damn Pier 6 Pavilion and its bland parking lot. We have these two great places to come (the Inner Harbor and now Harbor East) but seperating them are two ugly surface parking lots, lots of random pathways and foot bridges.

I wonder if the Harbor East developers plan to place signage in and around the Inner Harbor area directing people to Harbor East similar to what Cordish Co. did with signage for Power Plant Live.

Do you guys know if Harbor West will be this elaborate or if its going to be more residental in nature?

Hi everyone, this is my first post here. Some of you may know me from SSP. I was just at Harbor East on Saturday and I have a photo thread including pictures of current construction over at SSP. I love the development already and when it's complete it will be even better. The Aliceanna "main shopping street" sounds great. I really hope Harbor Point gets underway soon because the Inner Harbor-Harbor East-Harbor Point-Fell's Point will create a continuous beautiful, vibrant urban waterfront.

Does anyone know if it is possible to walk along the Locust Point waterfront? In my photo of Tide Point taken from Fells Point it looks like there are people sitting on benches in front of the building.

The Tide Point prominade is really the only waterfront access available in Locust Point (save for magnificent Fort Mchenry of course). The prominade is a wonderful space open to the public, with spectacular views of the city. There are even a few Adirondack chairs and some hammocks to relax in...

The problem with Locust Point waterfront is the CSX railroad tracks that loop around the residential development. They really create a barrier to the water. Even the new Silo Point is within the CSX tracks, so who knows how all the new development there will turn out. I don't believe, at least initially, there will be any development outside the CSX tracks for the Silo Point project. (Except for the demolition work the MPA has been doing.)

The Inner Harbor prominade will (I imagine) continue from its current stopping point at the Rusty Scupper all the way to the end of the proposed Key Highway redevelopment. Depending on how the zoning works out, that'll probably end up being the Museum of Industry.

From that point until Tide Point is all Industrial, with the grand-daddy of them all, Domino Sugar anchoring that area. It will be a long time until that portion of the waterfront, if ever, is publicly accessible.

But as a Locust Pointer, I take enormous pride in both Tide Point and Fort McHenry, my two favorite waterfront spots in the whole city... :)

Hi everyone, this is my first post here. Some of you may know me from SSP. I was just at Harbor East on Saturday and I have a photo thread including pictures of current construction over at SSP. I love the development already and when it's complete it will be even better. The Aliceanna "main shopping street" sounds great. I really hope Harbor Point gets underway soon because the Inner Harbor-Harbor East-Harbor Point-Fell's Point will create a continuous beautiful, vibrant urban waterfront.

Does anyone know if it is possible to walk along the Locust Point waterfront? In my photo of Tide Point taken from Fells Point it looks like there are people sitting on benches in front of the building.



Welcome to the forum Jeremai. Can you post the link to the thread on SSP :)

Yes Welocme to the Forum Jeremai

Please post your thread from SSP. What does SSP stand for? I searched the main board under the NE section but didn't see your thread. I think a lot of other posters would be interested in seeing your thread too.

SSP is SkyScraperPage.com, right?

I looked for it there and didnt see it either. I'd love to see it though.

SSP is SkyScraperPage.com, right?

I looked for it there and didnt see it either. I'd love to see it though.

Yep. They refer to this site as, "SSC", and we refer to that site as, "SSP". :D
Boy, I love acronyms. :D


Oh yeah, WELCOME, Jeremai! :) Glad you could be with us. :)

Here is the Harbor East Photo Thread (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?threadid=78567). I wasn't sure if there was any forum rivalry hence I didn't post it to begin with ;)

Those pics are awesome jeremai :)

Great Pics!!

These two show why I'm so excited for Harbor Point to get underway. Its so close to Harbor East that you could practically spit on it (well if there was a good strong head wind);)

http://images3.fotop.net/albums3/jeremai/Harbor_East/100_0471.jpg

http://images3.fotop.net/albums3/jeremai/Harbor_East/100_0474.jpg

Check out Midtowncanton.com. Ed Hale is partnering with KSI of Virginia. 505 condo's to break ground spring 2006. Great highrise building.

Complex will also include hotel, retail, marina and current 17 story office building under construction.

I'm loving Harbor East and Canton Crossing.

^For some reason that site isn't coming up :?

^For some reason that site isn't coming up :?

no problems here.. the site looks great!

http://img300.echo.cx/img300/2107/plan011aj.jpg
I like the freestanding retail/restaurant space. I kind of hope they put in some generic suburban style restaurants there. In general I don't often like or go to places like TGI Applebee's, but every once in a while I get in the mood to go there and for some reason they are quite popular. We'll have to see what Mr. Hale has in store for us:)

the condo towers from canton croosing look great . nice that they are 24 floors but they will tower over everything else. i dont think i would like a view of industrial. but still let it get built , im just glad that something in baltimore is actually getting built!!!! :)

no problems here.. the site looks great!

http://img300.echo.cx/img300/2107/plan011aj.jpg
I like the freestanding retail/restaurant space. I kind of hope they put in some generic suburban style restaurants there. In general I don't often like or go to places like TGI Applebee's, but every once in a while I get in the mood to go there and for some reason they are quite popular. We'll have to see what Mr. Hale has in store for us:)

Oye, that looks a whole hell of a lot like a big box retail center down there. I hate to see all that surface parking on an urban site. What a big disappointment.

Oye, that looks a whole hell of a lot like a big box retail center down there. I hate to see all that surface parking on an urban site. What a big disappointment.

Yeah because its better to leave it as oil tanks and uncut grass and as a vacant industrial site. Some people are never happy.

BUILD on Mr. Hale.

Why should I be happy and satisfied with suburban crap in my City? The western portion of the project is dense and urban and will be a destination. The eastern portion seems like an after thought slapped on as a sea of parking with pad sites and big box retail. I can’t argue that it’s better than oil tanks, but you can’t argue that this is a great development plan worthy of being an urban destination. Parking lots are barriers to city life. Nothing happens there except for parking. You get rid of that parking and make the east end of the development as dense as the west and you can annex yet another swath of industrial land and make is a real part of the city. People will want to live by the water and if they can walk to it, that makes is a real part of the city. Look just north; there is a dense city grid that can be connected to this project to the NW corner. Reclaiming industrial land, especially so close to the water and so close to the vibrant canton neighborhood, will create a crossroads of pedestrian activity that will flow through the west portion of the site, with the water being the magnet. You put that sea of parking and you have a dead side of the trophy portion of the project. What a wasted opportunity. Will it keep people from going to white marsh and keep taxes in the city? Absolutely, and yes that is good. But, it could be so much more and I refuse to cheer on mediocrity.

Wow.....Ed Hale's pet project just continues to get bigger and more grand each day. The Midtown brand is a very respectable development and is highly coveted address in suburban Maryland and northern Virginia.

That site is awesome, I was finally able to pull it up. Canton will have its own little skyline :) It seems that Baltimore's skyline is growing eastward.

I Couldn't Agree With You More, JeffBmore

What a wasted opportunity when the best thing that you can say about Ed Hale's Canton Crossing development is that it's better than a bunch of gas tanks and empty industrial land!

As for Ed Hale himself, I think his taste is in his mouth. The entire feel of what he is putting up there looks like a tackier version of White Marsh and really to waste all of that space on surface parking, it just adds insult to injury. Couldn't he have chosen a better architect to design the project? As it is now it's certainly not going to be an urban destination and apart from the people that will live in the condos, it's really not going to attract many other visitors. Oh well for somebody who grew up in Dundalk, I guess he did pretty well for himself but a Medici he isn't!

Well listen, there are reasons companies move and patrons shop at Arundel Mills, White Marsh, Owings Mills, and beyond. SPACE.

Although we as city slickers, and tower gazers love to see dense building and crowded skylines, Hale actually has something that most developers lack. The actual space to build some highly profitable parking.

Hale is not dumb. He's a businessman 1st. I'm sure the plan is to clear the industry out first with paving. Once the area has sprung back to life, he'll put out RFP's. By then, he would have made tons of cash, just like Paterakis.

The same thing that has happened at Camden Yards, Ravens Stadium, Zenith, Convention Hotel, Harborview, Harbor East and virtually everywhere else.

I think that the skyline is spreading so fast that sometimes, if there is any break in it, we get disappointed a little.

Maritime museum granted $2.7M
Lauren Himiak
Staff
Baltimore Business Journal - 1:51 PM EDT Wednesday

The Frederick Douglas-Isaac Myers Maritime Park in Baltimore City has received a $2.75 million state grant, which will help the museum complete renovation and construction projects.

Maritime Park is located at Thomas and Caroline streets in Fells Point, and will include a museum showcasing the contributions that 19th century African-Americans made to Baltimore's economy, particularly the maritime industry. The project includes renovation of a 10,000-square-foot building and the construction of a three-story, 17,000-square-foot addition, both set to open in January 2006.

"Maryland's rich African-American history is also part of its economic future. Maritime Park will not only provide a history-related tourism opportunity, but also heritage research, education and recreation programs," said Gov. Robert Ehrlich.

The Maritime Park is one of three African-American heritage attractions in Maryland. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, will open in downtown Baltimore June 25 and the Annapolis Banneker-Douglass Museum will re-open with a $6 million expansion next month.

Construction at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum and the Banneker-Douglass Museum has been coordinated by the Maryland Department of General Services (DGS), which is an administrator of the State's Capital Grant and Loan program.


© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

Maritime Park is located at Thomas and Caroline streets in Fells Point, and will include a museum showcasing the contributions that 19th century African-Americans made to Baltimore's economy, particularly the maritime industry. The project includes renovation of a 10,000-square-foot building and the construction of a three-story, 17,000-square-foot addition, both set to open in January 2006.

So at the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I'm opposed to this museum as it is simply b/c it sounds like it will only focus on African Americans. Fells point has a long and storied Maritime history and to ignore all of that and to only focus on contributions of African Americans is not really fair to every one else.

If I could somehow have a say in this, I would make it a Fells Point Maritime Museum and I would make sure that they made sure they paid special attention to African Americans, especially since they are buidling on a site once owned by Frederick Douglass, however, I would also pay tribute to all the other peoples who have lived and worked on that water for almost 300 years now.

:soapbox:

So at the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I'm opposed to this museum as it is simply b/c it sounds like it will only focus on African Americans. Fells point has a long and storied Maritime history and to ignore all of that and to only focus on contributions of African Americans is not really fair to every one else.

If I could somehow have a say in this, I would make it a Fells Point Maritime Museum and I would make sure that they made sure they paid special attention to African Americans, especially since they are buidling on a site once owned by Frederick Douglass, however, I would also pay tribute to all the other peoples who have lived and worked on that water for almost 300 years now.

:soapbox:


Welcome to politically correct Maryland. But at least one Marylander agrees with you. However, do you think that our state assembly would have given the money if it wasn't only honoring African Americans??

http://www.midtowncanton.com/condos.html

http://www.midtowncanton.com/images/Mid_Can_Web_Map.jpg

Oye, that looks a whole hell of a lot like a big box retail center down there. I hate to see all that surface parking on an urban site. What a big disappointment.

It is a shame to see so much space devoted to parking. This should be built with a more urban feel. Instead of all that surface parking why not build a multi level garage? That's what is done downtown and even in Towson.

Gary

I agree with others here…the Canton Crossing development by Hale is tacky. Unless someone steps in soon, the entire development will look like the Baltimore Travel Plaza on Boston Street…only on a larger scale.

From day one when the initial renderings were revealed I groaned. The project belongs in Owings Mills.

However, the parking lots really don’t bother me too much. After all, that’s how things get built in Baltimore. As presented in renderings, they would mostly serve the cruise ships or his retail.

As, and if demand for Canton real estate grows, I’m certain all those parking lots will transform into garages. After all, Harbor East sat as surface parking for twenty years?

In the end, at least the parking lots can be improved upon; by then we’ll be stuck with whatever Hale actually gets built.

I'm not a big fan of the designs that I have seen so far but, I also think Hale would be a fool to not take advantage of the parking potential of the property. Considering the rather poor state of transit in the city, he has an opportunity there to make sure the thing has a chance to succeed. Given Americans' potential to evaluate a lot of things in terms of whether parking is easy, those lots will probably insure that the place gets tenants. They will probably out-compete downtown buildings where storing autos costs $15 per day. And... if transit ever improves or the place is a wild success, well bulldozers can make a quick job of removing asphalt. It may not be my ideal either but I can't imagine his passing up the opportunity. If it looks like the suburbs, there will be lots of people that like it.

I have to admit that I'm happy to see this development built despite the surface parking lots. While the eastern portion of the site does look strikingly suburban, at least it's away from the waterfront and has tall towers in front of it. There are two realities that we have to come to terms with concerning this development. First, the absence of good public transit access for this site (it's pretty far from downtown, too), and second, the consumer demand for big box retail stores that are non-existant in the city thus far. If Baltimore city wants to attract the affluent homebuyer, it has to provide the amenities that they demand. As for a parking garage, I think the extra cost was the main deterrent.

I have to admit that I'm happy to see this development built despite the surface parking lots. While the eastern portion of the site does look strikingly suburban, at least it's away from the waterfront and has tall towers in front of it. There are two realities that we have to come to terms with concerning this development. First, the absence of good public transit access for this site (it's pretty far from downtown, too), and second, the consumer demand for big box retail stores that are non-existant in the city thus far. If Baltimore city wants to attract the affluent homebuyer, it has to provide the amenities that they demand. As for a parking garage, I think the extra cost was the main deterrent.
Couldn't agree more. First, this development is a considerable distance from downtown, so it really won't be part of the skyline. Second, he has the land available for surface lots, so it only makes sense to build them, for now, as parking structures are awesomely expensive to build. They can always be built later, if needed.

It does look a little suburban, but there is a growing demand for this type of development within the city limits. It's not the first...Port Covington has been open for a few years, and I'm hearing further development could happen there soon.

Lots of suburban malls started with only surface lots and added parking decks later as needed. Towson Town Center is the biggest example of this, and it's happening at Annapolis Mall as well...2 more garages and a major expansion is slated to start this fall.

Charter riverboat wins city's OK for use of dock
Originally published June 16, 2005
Despite significant opposition from a Fells Point community group and a state delegate who represents the waterfront neighborhood, the city's Board of Estimates yesterday unanimously permitted a private charter boat operator to use a public pier as its permanent dock.

The Black Eyed Susan, a Mississippi-style riverboat, will begin its three-year lease to dock at the Broadway Pier "as fast as possible," said boat owner J. Leonard Schleider.

City officials said Schleider has agreed to pay $1,000 per month through November. For each of the lease's remaining two years, Schleider must pay a percentage of his gross annual revenues from ticket sales and charters or an amount between $20,000 and $25,000, whichever is greater.

Representatives from the Fells Point Task Force and Democratic Del. Peter A. Hammen opposed Schleider's request to dock on the pier's west side because they claim it will obscure harbor vistas. Opponents argued unsuccessfully that the boat's paddlewheel rear is not suited to Fells Point's historic character and that permanent use of a public pier by a private enterprise is not permitted under pier policy.

In addition, task force spokesman Robert C. Keith argued that his group approved the plan two years ago when the boat was 88 feet long. It is now 111 1/2 feet long. He said the five-member board's three elected officials - Mayor Martin O'Malley, City Council President Sheila Dixon and Comptroller Joan M. Pratt - have failed to safeguard the neighborhood's interests.

- Doug Donovan

Couldn't agree more. First, this development is a considerable distance from downtown, so it really won't be part of the skyline. Second, he has the land available for surface lots, so it only makes sense to build them, for now, as parking structures are awesomely expensive to build. They can always be built later, if needed.

It does look a little suburban, but there is a growing demand for this type of development within the city limits. It's not the first...Port Covington has been open for a few years, and I'm hearing further development could happen there soon.

Lots of suburban malls started with only surface lots and added parking decks later as needed. Towson Town Center is the biggest example of this, and it's happening at Annapolis Mall as well...2 more garages and a major expansion is slated to start this fall.


Completely agree. Sometimes we get so hung up on how something looks and we forget that these developers are not stupid. Free parking lots on prime real estate are not in a developer's best interest. However, with the way Baltimore and America are we have to ensure there is ample parking with every new development. Even in our residential communities everyone has a fit if they build new homes without parking being a consideration. If you don't have parking and you have to drive around for 15 minutes to find parking for a store, you would be more efficient to drive to white marsh. Ed Hale has to make this project work. I ask some of the people on this forum who were so against the Key Highway development what one of their biggest concerns was... PARKING!!!! Ed took care of that and he is not going to build a parking garage when the economics don't make sense.

Personally I believe in Ed Hale and I like his business practices. Ed is currently taking on this project and every several months the project continues to grow. I am sure that one day WHEN THE ECONOMICS ARE RIGHT Ed will make more efficient use of the land. However, he is going to reclaim industrial land that probably has to be cleaned up, return it to the tax rolls, and provide big box stores that most in the city would agree are greatly needed. Although a lot of people on this forum and also the heavily involved 'community groups' would love to see everyone going to 'Charlie's Hardware' and 'JK's Corner Grocery', this is not the 50's anymore and those small stores are not cost efficient to the average American, plus most young people could careless about the small stores and those are the people moving to Baltimore.

If you also try and think big picture on what Ed Hale is trying to do with Canton Crossing it all begins to fit. He has proposed 1000+ units in the Greektown development which is only blocks from Canton Crossing. Also you have Canton crossing close enough to I-95 that it can be seen and used by commuters leaving the city. Then you have the Brewers Hill development which will feature more 'trendy' stores and and restaurants across the street which will add to the 'charm' of shopping at Canton Crossing. The last thing you have to remember is that Ed's dream is to have large cruise ships dock at that location. Although the governor didn't agree with him, I still think that Ed believes those Cruise ships are going to be very soon since O'Malley is very in favor of it. Ed is a brilliant businessman and is not going to make the mistakes of the Port Covington development. This is actually a very well thought out and 'slow moving' plan that I believe is great for Baltimore and Ed himself (there is nothing wrong with having a development that is great for the developer himself).

he is going to reclaim industrial land that probably has to be cleaned up, return it to the tax rolls, and provide big box stores that most in the city would agree are greatly needed. Although a lot of people on this forum and also the heavily involved 'community groups' would love to see everyone going to 'Charlie's Hardware' and 'JK's Corner Grocery', this is not the 50's anymore and those small stores are not cost efficient to the average American, plus most young people could careless about the small stores and those are the people moving to Baltimore.


Now I am just speculating, but I would bet one of those big boxes would probably go as a new grocery store. If the other one ends up being a target, or something like that, then that would probably be a great selling point to anyone who wants to buy a condo right there. You could probably have most of your shopping needs met by those two stores.
I know people are concerned about small cornershop businesses, however, I think for the most part, a lot of those went down with the city over the past 40-50 years. The ones that are left are the survivors and I think they will be able to survive these big box stores on the far side of town.

Im hoping for a Best Buy there too.

Im hoping for a Best Buy there too.

We've already got our Best Buy at Howard and Franklin ;)

Personally I believe in Ed Hale and I like his business practices. Ed is currently taking on this project and every several months the project continues to grow. I am sure that one day WHEN THE ECONOMICS ARE RIGHT Ed will make more efficient use of the land. However, he is going to reclaim industrial land that probably has to be cleaned up, return it to the tax rolls, and provide big box stores that most in the city would agree are greatly needed. Although a lot of people on this forum and also the heavily involved 'community groups' would love to see everyone going to 'Charlie's Hardware' and 'JK's Corner Grocery', this is not the 50's anymore and those small stores are not cost efficient to the average American, plus most young people could careless about the small stores and those are the people moving to Baltimore.

In regard to those big box stores, I don't really see much of a problem there. Like it or not, retail has changed and the small stores that survive do it by offerring merchandise that isn't part of mass marketing. Art, crafts, unconventional clothes, specialty items, etc are what moves the store fronts these days. Over the years I have lived in a bunch of city locations and the one thing that alway aggravated me the most is that if I need something conventional and basic like a bag of tighty-whities or a shower curtain, unless I am willing to buy a $200 one from an artist, I have to drive out the the burbs to Target or whatever (I'm not desparate enough to go to WalMart).

It's not like those store front places SELL everyday stuff and it's a big discourager to city living to have to drive out to Cockeysville just to find that basic "un-fun" merchandise. Like it or not, you get that kinda stuff in big stores now. Just TRY to buy a TV or a refrigerator in the City. That hasn't happened since the dark day when the Sears store on North Avenue closed. If Hale could lure a Target and a Best Buys to Canton, it would be a big deal for that area and would make life easier for all of the Fells Point, Mt Vernon, etc folks. Somebody enterprising could even make a living selling paper bags to put over one's head so nobody would see the elite metrosexuals entering something as mundane as Target when they need a pack of white socks.

In regard to those big box stores, I don't really see much of a problem there. Like it or not, retail has changed and the small stores that survive do it by offerring merchandise that isn't part of mass marketing. Art, crafts, unconventional clothes, specialty items, etc are what moves the store fronts these days. Over the years I have lived in a bunch of city locations and the one thing that alway aggravated me the most is that if I need something conventional and basic like a bag of tighty-whities or a shower curtain, unless I am willing to buy a $200 one from an artist, I have to drive out the the burbs to Target or whatever (I'm not desparate enough to go to WalMart).

It's not like those store front places SELL everyday stuff and it's a big discourager to city living to have to drive out to Cockeysville just to find that basic "un-fun" merchandise. Like it or not, you get that kinda stuff in big stores now. Just TRY to buy a TV or a refrigerator in the City. That hasn't happened since the dark day when the Sears store on North Avenue closed. If Hale could lure a Target and a Best Buys to Canton, it would be a big deal for that area and would make life easier for all of the Fells Point, Mt Vernon, etc folks. Somebody enterprising could even make a living selling paper bags to put over one's head so nobody would see the elite metrosexuals entering something as mundane as Target when they need a pack of white socks.



hahahahaha.... good comments, I'll take five bags please!

More seriously the rumors that I have heard from real estate agents and developers in Canton is that Ed Hale is working with Target to bring in a Super Target (with grocery). Supposely the hold up on the announcement is a battle with Safeway.

IMO, Safeway and Target can both reside in Canton for exactely what your comments were above. If people from Canton want good quality food they go to safeway or Whole FOods. If they want things like canned goods, frozen food, or other boring stuff they can go to Target. It really is a hardship that everytime I need to get lightbulbs, cleaning stuff, even a vacuum, I have to drive to White Marsh. Go Ed Go!

IMO, Ed Hale is GREAT for Baltimore. He has such passion for the city and it's people. He want's the city to succeed AND he is actually doing something to contribute to that success. :) Allot of others just "talk". :D ;)

Hey guys, this is a very interesting topic. What do you think of this article?

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City considers 'affordable housing' law
Heather Harlan
Staff
The developers of the planned Four Seasons luxury hotel and condominium complex could be "FORCED" to include "affordable" housing as part of the swanky, waterfront project in downtown Baltimore if legislation being debated in City Council passes.

The mixed-income housing bill requires residential developments with 30 or more units to have an affordable housing component if they are built with monetary help from the city or built on city land acquired for less than market value. In those cases,10 percent of the total number of units must be available for rent or sale at a price that is considered affordable.

Under the measure spearheaded by Councilman Bernard C. "Jack" Young, the Four Seasons development is one of a handful of proposed projects in Baltimore City that could be subject to the affordable-income stipulation. Young represents the 12th district, which encompasses a big chunk of East Baltimore, including the Johns Hopkins Hospital campus.

"I think the concept is a good one," said M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's leading economic development agency. "But I am concerned about the projects in the pipeline."

He pointed to the Four Seasons as open to interpretation because the hotel and condo complex will be built -- technically -- on city-owned land. St. James Place, a downtown residential project of local developer Wendy Blair, could also be affected.

"There are a lot of aspects of the bill that need interpretation," Brodie continued.

Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., chairman of the council's powerful Taxation and Finance Committee, said he will continue to hold hearings on the issue. The next one is scheduled for July 6.

Council members are not only debating the projects in pipeline and definitions of city assistance but also about the percentage of required affordable housing. Some want to increase the percentage to 20.

"I think it's a long time coming," said Mitchell. Neither Young nor Larry White, a development director for Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc., one of the developers on the Four Seasons project, could be reached for comment.

The bill has surfaced as housing prices in Baltimore have skyrocketed. The Ritz-Carlton waterfront condominium project on Key Highway in downtown Baltimore is marketing its waterfront units from $800,000 to $5 million.

Some townhomes near the water in Federal Hill are topping $1 million for the first time ever. And once-affordable homes in up-and-coming areas such as Reservoir Hill are going for $250,000 or more.

Home prices in the Baltimore area and state rose almost 21 percent for the first three months of 2005, compared to the first quarter of last year, according to a recent report from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. The increase nationwide was roughly 12.5 percent over last year.

"The timing of the bill has a lot to do with what is happening in the market," Mitchell said. "I think the city wants to go in the direction of mixed-income housing."

Many jurisdictions across the country are starting to adopt similar legislation as housing prices soar. In Maryland, Montgomery County already has similar legislation, city officials said.



© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

Similiar legislation exists in lots of cities across the country. The problem with legislation like this is that it doesnt really help much. Because the number of reserved units are limited, it doesnt make finding nice, affordable housing any easier. I guess its great for those who are lucky enough to get into a great building for a reduced price.

I think its a terrible idea. Its just politicians pandering to the poor folk in the city, which we seem to have a lot of.

The point of someone spending $5 million dollars for a house is that they get to live some place ultra exclusive. For the city to come in and demand that they give it away to some poor shmoe takes away from that exclusivity.

I grew up in Rehoboth Beach DE. We lived in a nice house but we lived a few miles away from the beach. I never once expected that the town would mandate that some beachhomes be made cheap just because only the rich could afford a beachfront home. Thats the way life works. Some folks got money to spend and some don't. It's not always fair, but thats life.

I don't think the city should consider such legislation until its apparent that ALL cheap housing in the city is going away. Overall, Baltimore is one of the cheapest cities on the east coast to live in. Thats how I was able to afford to buy a house here. I knew right from the start that I had no chance to buy a place right next to Federal Hill Park overlooking the harbor, so I stayed within my means and got a place a few miles west.

I think if the city starts making asinine demands like this, it could potentially hurt future projects.

Low-income housing at the Four Seasons?! What's next, The Projects at The Ritz-Carlton? Please, let's try to make better decisions about where and how we incorporate this type of housing, not just impose a ridiculous mandate on every single large development. How about we incorporate mixed-income housing where it actually makes sense, like in West Baltimore and Waverly for instance.

Getting back to the big box retail in the city, I know an example that Hale should try and follow;

My family is all from Pittsburgh, so we often go back there to visit. Just outside the city is an old steel mill site on the Monongahela River that was razed and then rebuilt in the "Town Center" format, as seen in White Marsh.
They built a Target and Giant Eagle Grocery store there, then they built an outdoor Mall. Filled it up with select national restaurants like PF Changs, Dave and Busters, and some other. Lastly they built a Loew's Movie theater and it was complete.

Now this is a bustling area filled with people. People are moving in to brand new waterfront homes in an area that was once a dead steel mill town. If Hale can do something like this, I think it would turn the tables and make it the kind of place that people in the suburbs would drive into the city for.

Here are a few links, however the pictures on the sites don't do the site any justice.

http://www.waterfronttowncenter.com/index.htm
http://www.inlandgroup.com/inlandma/23_121.html

Charter riverboat wins city's OK for use of dock
Originally published June 16, 2005
Despite significant opposition from a Fells Point community group and a state delegate who represents the waterfront neighborhood, the city's Board of Estimates yesterday unanimously permitted a private charter boat operator to use a public pier as its permanent dock.

The Black Eyed Susan, a Mississippi-style riverboat, will begin its three-year lease to dock at the Broadway Pier "as fast as possible," said boat owner J. Leonard Schleider.

Maybe I missed something about that controversy, but it was always my impression that docks were there in order that boats be tied to them.

It's good that they finally got that approved. I can't believe that some of the nieghbors were whining that the boat is 110ft long instead of 88ft and doesn't look like "historical" bay boats. Neither does the Lady Baltimore!! Anything that adds to the tourist options has to be a plus.

As an aside, it has been about 1 year and now my 100th post after reading that article in The Sun about this board. This has really been a fun and informative place to be! :)

Hey guys, this is a very interesting topic. What do you think of this article?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

City considers 'affordable housing' law
Heather Harlan
Staff
The developers of the planned Four Seasons luxury hotel and condominium complex could be "FORCED" to include "affordable" housing as part of the swanky, waterfront project in downtown Baltimore if legislation being debated in City Council passes.

The mixed-income housing bill requires residential developments with 30 or more units to have an affordable housing component if they are built with monetary help from the city or built on city land acquired for less than market value. In those cases,10 percent of the total number of units must be available for rent or sale at a price that is considered affordable.

Under the measure spearheaded by Councilman Bernard C. "Jack" Young, the Four Seasons development is one of a handful of proposed projects in Baltimore City that could be subject to the affordable-income stipulation. Young represents the 12th district, which encompasses a big chunk of East Baltimore, including the Johns Hopkins Hospital campus.

"I think the concept is a good one," said M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's leading economic development agency. "But I am concerned about the projects in the pipeline."

He pointed to the Four Seasons as open to interpretation because the hotel and condo complex will be built -- technically -- on city-owned land. St. James Place, a downtown residential project of local developer Wendy Blair, could also be affected.

"There are a lot of aspects of the bill that need interpretation," Brodie continued.

Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., chairman of the council's powerful Taxation and Finance Committee, said he will continue to hold hearings on the issue. The next one is scheduled for July 6.

Council members are not only debating the projects in pipeline and definitions of city assistance but also about the percentage of required affordable housing. Some want to increase the percentage to 20.

"I think it's a long time coming," said Mitchell. Neither Young nor Larry White, a development director for Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc., one of the developers on the Four Seasons project, could be reached for comment.

The bill has surfaced as housing prices in Baltimore have skyrocketed. The Ritz-Carlton waterfront condominium project on Key Highway in downtown Baltimore is marketing its waterfront units from $800,000 to $5 million.

Some townhomes near the water in Federal Hill are topping $1 million for the first time ever. And once-affordable homes in up-and-coming areas such as Reservoir Hill are going for $250,000 or more.

Home prices in the Baltimore area and state rose almost 21 percent for the first three months of 2005, compared to the first quarter of last year, according to a recent report from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. The increase nationwide was roughly 12.5 percent over last year.

"The timing of the bill has a lot to do with what is happening in the market," Mitchell said. "I think the city wants to go in the direction of mixed-income housing."

Many jurisdictions across the country are starting to adopt similar legislation as housing prices soar. In Maryland, Montgomery County already has similar legislation, city officials said.



© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.


I think the city is big enough to have "affordable housing" elsewhere. I agree with jaysonjaz. The politicians in this city make me ill. From stalling the convention hotel, to bankrupting the school system, it amazes me how they continue to grand stand. In no way would I build an address like the Ritz and Seasons in a city if I had to lower my standards, just to cater to the poor.

I don’t live there, nor do expect to--with my current income. (And I don’t make a bad living.) I’ll bet they won’t propose “affordable housing” next to Jack Young. And I know Jack, and he’s the biggest hypocrite on the planet. Tell him to visit some bus stops and pick up some folks in one of his luxury cars. Idiot!

Also on the big box retail. Just like the lack of housing in downtown over the past 40 years has sparked an incredible demand now, the same can be said for the retail.

If you want to keep people moving in, you have to supply them with daily living demands. I know they have the Sams at Port Covington. Canton Crossing is waaay on the other side of the city though. You can't want people to move into the city, and fight against big retail.

The more people move in, the higher the demand. And once the people's needs are not met, they move to where they are met. (Owings Mills, White Marsh, Columbia)

The little guys (like me) will be fine. Big retail will only help us in the long run. Baltimore's not small, and big retail will make the city more of a destination...a very good thing indeed. (Example; tiny Bethesda.)

I think the city is big enough to have "affordable housing" elsewhere. I agree with jaysonjaz. The politicians in this city make me ill. From stalling the convention hotel, to bankrupting the school system, it amazes me how they continue to grand stand. In no way would I build an address like the Ritz and Seasons in a city if I had to lower my standards, just to cater to the poor.

I don’t live there, nor do expect to--with my current income. (And I don’t make a bad living.) I’ll bet they won’t propose “affordable housing” next to Jack Young. And I know Jack, and he’s the biggest hypocrite on the planet. Tell him to visit some bus stops and pick up some folks in one of his luxury cars. Idiot!

Completely agree. People spend millions on property because they want to live with people of similar lifestyles. All this will do is drive the four seasons to leave and keep that site a parking lot. Unfortunately when you have a unanimous partisan city council, they get away with whatever they want. I think people should realize what their means are and live with it. I cannot afford the four seasons and wouldn't want to get a voucher to live there. But too many of the underpriveledged are GIMME GIMME GIMME.

I can understand the idea behind the proposal; lower income families should be able to afford to buy homes in the neighbourhoods where their parents and grandparents grew up. But is the city not capable of approving the right mix of exclusive and "affordable" developments? To dictate that an individual development like the Four Seasons should be partly "affordable" is ridiculous.

Port Covington is somewhat different in that its isolated and cut off from pedestrian access to the adjacent thriving neighborhoods because of CSX and I-95. That site absolutely needed to be accessed by car so big box made sense. But the Canton Crossing project, despite that fact that economics drive developers to develop big box on wide open space, is wasting a golden opportunity to create an amazing place. Harbor East, including all the bread manufacturing properties that will ultimately be converted to mixed use is just a little bit less in acreage as canton crossing. That project will have several millions of square feet of space adding to the urban fabric of Baltimore. I hear what you all are saying, but I honestly think that a development set up for big box retail within walking distance to the waterfront and is a big big mistake. Parking on the site can be provided as surface lots just like harbor east, just waiting for the economy to be ready to absorb new dense development, rather than setting up your site to serve what I see is being served: yet another target with a 3 fast food joints on the out parcels. Or maybe we will be spoiled with an applebees of tgif that we can drive to and park right next to. Oh, boy! Just like the suburbs. Another thing to remember is that the red line is also being planned to serve this site.

What would I do in Ed Hale’s position? Probably what he did. It’s the sure thing, the easy bet and I am a conservative sort of guy. But, as a looker on, I can dream big and hope for better and that is what I am doing here. I don’t fault his business sense, just stating that I am disappointed that he isn’t being more of a dreamer on this site.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I highly doubt that the proposal would do anything to help people who are already established in a neighborhood stay there. My guess is around 95% of the time, they move in some family that for generations have been a leech on society. It always reminds me of around ten years ago when the city was imploding all the highrise projects. There were people on tv actually bragging that they were the third generation to live in the projects. Now they have all those nice houses with the well kept streets and a little front lawn. Good for them, but when are they going to get a diploma and a job other than McDonald's so that they can legitimately live in the upscale neighborhoods with the people who have worked their butts off to get to where they are?! I'll step down from my soapbox now.

Yeah. All those folks who worked their asses off. Or inherited money from their parents. Pretty sure THEY didn't work their asses off. People, it is important not to generalize classes. Not all wealthy people are great, honest-to-goodness, worked-hard-all-their-lives individuals. Just as not all poor people are lazy idiots. There are hard working poor people and lucky, free-loading rich people.

Yeah. All those folks who worked their asses off. Or inherited money from their parents. Pretty sure THEY didn't work their asses off. People, it is important not to generalize classes. Not all wealthy people are great, honest-to-goodness, worked-hard-all-their-lives individuals. Just as not all poor people are lazy idiots. There are hard working poor people and lucky, free-loading rich people.

You're absolutely right, but those most certainly weren't the people I was referring to.

As the above title states, I feel obliged to defend working class and poor people. They're taking a beating. But this line drove me crazy:

"But too many of the underpriveledged are GIMME GIMME GIMME"

WRONG. What underpriveledged person has demanded a spot in the Four Seasons? None. They're not thinking about the Four Seasons. Probably don't even know it's being built. YES, the POLITICAL CLASS, specifically those on the Baltimore Council, have this bill. But the poor did not propose it, and, I bet, the vast majority would not feel right moving into a property at a discount that others are paying hundreds of thousands and millions for. Most are not Gimme Gimme Gimme, as you say. They want development in THEIR neighborhoods, safe streets, retail, ya know all that crap the rich folks down on the Harbor demand. But when the poor ask for this, they're somehow free loaders. Give me a break.

I happen to think, generally, that rich folks are the gimme gimme gimme class, if there really has to be one. You look at government, all government, state, federal and local, and tell me who gets catered to, the rich or the poor?

Has anyone heard of anyone potential Maryland sites of Wegmans or Harris Teeter or Whole Foods? I love these sort of upscale stores. I know about that Wegmans up in Hunt Valley. And I read just today that Columbia rejected Wegmans last year (idiots). Any one got any info?

The very rich and very poor both get catered to. It's the middle class that always gets sucker-punched.

Agreed.