Baltimore Development News

[SoBo]

A welcome positive note...

9 Reasons To Visit Baltimore This Spring (Or Anytime)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george...b_1387864.html

[Dirk Ironside]

Originally Posted by PeterSmith

Anyone know anything about this?

Given how badly they overpaid for the Globe, I can't imagine this deal will be feasible without a lot of public money for bulkhead and foundation work. On the bright side, it doesn't look like anything is happening on the HarborView sites so at least they won't lose 90% of their waterviews for a while...

[rockin'.baltimorean]

here's an updated rendering of john hopkins biopark's new proposal....


http://www.sasaki.com/project/164/ea...duse-district/

[Dirk Ironside]

Originally Posted by rockin'.baltimorean

This is some epically bad photoshopping...

[Darryl]

Originally Posted by marcszar

Maybe this is a kooky prediction, but I see many US cities trending the way of European cities over the long run: who knows how long it'll take, but maybe someday the wealthiest will live in the city centers and the poorest will live on the outskirts. You already see the crime in many US cities (including Baltimore) drifting further and further out (as projects are demolished) while close-in neighborhoods become quieter and more desirable.

Your prediction is true already in Washington DC. Remember when they were the "murder capital of the US" and we Baltimoreans loved to pronounce them that to diffuse attention away from our almost as bad crime problems? Do you think that crime disappeared? No, it just moved to PG County. DC priced the criminals out.

[Darryl]

We need to do whatever DC and New York did. If they can do it, we can.

[Dirk Ironside]

Originally Posted by Darryl

Do you think that crime disappeared? No, it just moved to PG County.

Actually, the crime did disappear...

http://leftcall.com/wp-content/uploa...7_image001.png

[Darryl]

Originally Posted by Dirk Ironside

Actually, the crime did disappear...

http://leftcall.com/wp-content/uploa...7_image001.png

Ok, but thats for the entire country. You can't deny that much of (formerly) DC's crime is still being commited in PG County. If you look at PG County's crime rate it rivals Baltimore City's. Funny how that county borders DC's city line (and the part of the city line where the "murder capital" designation came from).

[Frank265]

"We think [the proposal] is reflective of the city's master plan and reflective of the west-side renaissance," said Vernon Marrow, chief operating officer of ESmith, which has offices in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Dallas and includes as one of its principals Emmitt Smith, the former Dallas Cowboys running back. "It's complementary to other [development] taking place over the last several years, from the Hippodrome to development at Hopkins Place."

[marcszar]

Originally Posted by Darryl

Your prediction is true already in Washington DC.

Yup, the same trend can be observed (in varying degrees of progress) in many other cities: Chicago, Boston, New York (where distressed upstate towns like Newburgh turn even more violent as displaced poor folks are forced to move there), San Francisco, etc. Even battered cities like Memphis (which, like Baltimore, still has a lot of problems) are seeing a similar thing. And the whole housing voucher + exurban foreclosure phenomenon is possibly fast-tracking the migration: Housing vouchers a golden ticket to pricey suburbs

Originally Posted by Eerik

In Baltimore it is fascinating how the wealthy merchant class moved north and away from the stench of the harbor starting in the late 1700s...

Yeah, it may not have been the idea of city living per se that was untenable, rather the increasing foulness of the Industrial Revolution drove away those who could afford to move away. I mean, who would want to live next to this unless they had no other choice:


More cool historical photos here; I really like this old shot of Light Street:


And it's certainly true that wealthy people have lived in suburbs for a long time. Even ancient Rome had its "villas suburbana," and the suburban phase in the US started long before the car came along (first we had the railroad suburbs for the wealthy, then the streetcar suburbs for the upper middle classes, then the auto suburbs for the middle classes). And B'more has some very beautiful streetcar suburbs in need of TLC.

But I still think the European 'inner city = wealthy' trend could grow stronger here. (BTW it's interesting that over there, with the possible exception of the UK, the very phrase 'inner city' has a positive connotation whereas here the same phrase has a negative one.) Most of the heavy industry is now gone from our city centers, leaving us free to gentrify them (which Baltimore has indeed already done). Even if new industries do locate in urban neighborhoods, the manufacturing processes are so much cleaner and quieter than they were a century ago.

One of the reasons I think the 'inner city = wealthy' phenomenon managed to hold on in Europe was that they planned their cities much better during the Industrial Revolution. Most of their city centers had already been built up long before the IR ramped up, so most of the heavy industry was relegated to self-contained pods on the outskirts of town. It didn't ruin the center of town. We put our heavy industry right in the center of town because our cities grew in tandem with the Industrial Revolution. I think this led to a split mindset on the two continents: we had the cultural memory of a city being a grimy, unpleasant collection of smokestacks, something you had to escape at all costs if you could afford it, whereas they had the cultural memory of the city center being the pristine, smoke-free jewel of culture (the old, ornate, monumental Beaux Arts centers of Paris and Berlin - two giant industrial cities with most of their industry on the outskirts - comes to mind).

Likewise, if you consider the quality of the suburban housing stock, it really is crap. So much of it, especially that built within the last 30-years is of such marginal quality. It really wasn't built to last and god only knows what it will look like in another 20-years. By then I wouldn't be surprised to see tracts of boarded-up bi-levels like the boarded-up rows we see along North Avenue and elsewhere within Baltimore.

The poor quality of many of these houses is really unsettling. All those modern "engineered materials" - the wood composites, the OSB, the glues, the plastics - age very poorly and fall apart pretty fast. And mold really likes to eat this stuff. They've already had to demo houses in Florida that were foreclosed and unoccupied for only a couple months because the heat and humidity down there destroys these shoddy materials so quickly.

B'more's working class rowhouses aren't necessarily the sturdiest (even though many of them solidly sit for decades and decades slowly crumbling away), but I can't imagine houses built in the last 30-40 years being able to take such a beating. Most of B'more's rowhouses were built on speculation, but in the last couple of decades we've taken home speculation to absurd levels: building disposable, throw-away vinyl shacks that, in some extreme cases, weren't even intended to be occupied. They were flippable 'investment vehicles.'

[Coldspring]

Originally Posted by Dirk Ironside

This is some epically bad photoshopping...

Agreed... the guy in the Blue Under Armour gear looks like he is running way to fast to be jogging.. Its as if he is trying to get out of the way of the guy on the bike

[shakman]

Perhaps he robbed the person on the bike.

[Dirk Ironside]

Originally Posted by shakman

Perhaps he robbed the person on the bike.

My theory was that he was running away from the shadowless vampires...

[Mirage52]

Originally Posted by waj0527

Does anyone know what's being done to the streetscape ringing the Inner Harbor near Pratt and Calvert? Looks like the sidewalks are being rebuilt as well as the trolley lane that rings the Harbor.

I think a waterfront trolley from Ft McHenry to Canton would be huge in Baltimore.

Could this be something along those lines?

[Mirage52]

Originally Posted by scando

Bad press is good press if it adds to good press that's already there. New York can survive years of weekly celebrity murders on Law and Order because everybody knows NYC is also full of money, culture, museums, big companies and skyscrapers. Unfortunately, the only thing a lot of people know about Baltimore is the maggots on The Wire. Yes, there IS such a thing as bad publicity and The Wire is probably the worst thing to happen to Baltimore since the 1904 fire. If only we had SOMETHING to balance out that malignant view of our city.

I'd say the crack epidemic of 1984-1993 was the last bad thing. You know, the thing that actually allowed The Wire to exist?

The Wire would have been completely bad if it were filmed elsewhere and set in Baltimore. But aside from the negative image it gave Baltimore, it did a lot of good for the city and I don't think it should be overlooked. I think most people who watched The Wire would know that it could take place in most American cities and that it doesn't mean that the entire city is one big ghetto.

Can anyone prove that The Wire hurt Baltimore tourism? Caused people to move away? The city's population loss is slowing, the murder rate falling...I'd say the biggest negative about The Wire in Baltimore is that it ended.

[Clipper123]

Originally Posted by Dirk Ironside

This is some epically bad photoshopping...

Looks like runner and bicyclist will soon have a collision with the shoppers and family. Its just rendering, but it would be nice if there was a bike and running areas seperate from the market and pedestrian walkway. Don't need unnecessary accidents just because there are a bunch of doctors and nurses milling about. I am sure they can't help you even if there was an accident for fear of a lawsuit!

[SoBo]

Originally Posted by waj0527

Does anyone know what's being done to the streetscape ringing the Inner Harbor near Pratt and Calvert? Looks like the sidewalks are being rebuilt as well as the trolley lane that rings the Harbor.

It's for the last part of the Jones Falls bike trail.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features...,2146475.story

[scando]

Originally Posted by Mirage52

I'd say the crack epidemic of 1984-1993 was the last bad thing. You know, the thing that actually allowed The Wire to exist?

The Wire would have been completely bad if it were filmed elsewhere and set in Baltimore. But aside from the negative image it gave Baltimore, it did a lot of good for the city and I don't think it should be overlooked. I think most people who watched The Wire would know that it could take place in most American cities and that it doesn't mean that the entire city is one big ghetto.

Can anyone prove that The Wire hurt Baltimore tourism? Caused people to move away? The city's population loss is slowing, the murder rate falling...I'd say the biggest negative about The Wire in Baltimore is that it ended.

I've just run into too many people who want some sort of label for the City and The Wire gave it to them. Admitting the ephemeral jobs created when the show was shot, what other benefit came from it? The Wire didn't bother to come back and fictionalize the population stabilizing or murder rate decreasing. They left town the moment the last episode was in the can. Of course later, one of the cast members got a nationally publicized arrest and Anthony Bordain did an episode on "ruined cities", reflecting back on HIS time here as an addict that featured the same Wire alumna showing off our best "Lake Trout".

[scando]

Originally Posted by Dirk Ironside

My theory was that he was running away from the shadowless vampires...

It looks like Ray Lewis and I usually don't think of him running FROM anybody.

[scando]

Originally Posted by Darryl

We need to do whatever DC and New York did. If they can do it, we can.

All we need is either the Federal government or half of the big money in the world. NY and DC are the beneficiaries of the gentrification and high prices of real estate that push less affluent people out of city neighborhoods. The gentrification came because of all the moneyed people in those cities. I guess we just need a few 10's of thousands of millionaires in Baltimore...shouldn't be too hard?