Does Baltimore Need More Mega Projects?

Baltimore's history is a mix of innovation and complacency. 

On the innovation side stand history altering projects that put Baltimore "on the map". The B&O pioneering passenger railroad and originating the first line here comes to mind. It brought significant wealth to the City. Baltimore had the first gas street lights and via Bethlehem Steel and the Liberty ships helped turn World War II. 

The grandeur of the B&O (Photo; Philipsen)

In contrast, the 1950s were a time of complacency in which the city had its largest population but offered little in terms of keeping its residents from looking for greener pastures elsewhere. With people leaving in droves, civic and business leaders finally rang the alarm bells and eventually unleashed the Baltimore Renaissance with the urban renewal projects of State Center, Charles Center and the Inner Harbor. This brought us the renowned architects Mies van der Rohe, Ian Pei, John Johansen and Cambridge Seven to the Patapsco as well as new hotels, a convention center and a world trade center. Then another lull followed with record population flight.

Once again, efforts focused on building stuff to turn the tide and brought us Oriole Park, light rail, the Ravens Stadium, a casino, two biotech parks and Harbor East. None of it slowed the out-migration. Thus the pace of intended "game changers" accelerated with HarborPoint, Westport, Port Covington and big plans for Park Heights. HarborPoint with nearly three million sf of development is almost built out. Westport has begun infrastructure work, Port Covington is stalled after the completion of phase one and Under Armour's headquarters.

The luster of grand projects suffered nationwide. Urban renewal, displacement, inequity and the insight that people matter more than concrete and steel began to sink in, a notion that Jane Jacob's kicked off

One Charles Center by Mies (Photo: Philipsen)

with her landmark book about the life and death of the American City. Her focus on the smaller, human scale and the" eyes on the street" become common wisdom, even though these eyes are often still desperately missing especially in downtown Baltimore, even in growing cities such as Denver. 

Yet, the quest for the shot of steroids continues, regardless of past experiences, Jacob's insights or the anticipated cash crunch in light of "structural deficits" that are suddenly found everywhere. 

Maybe the most frivolous attempt of breathing new life in a near corpse is the heroic Pimlico project which is now underway in earnest with an infusion of $400 million of public money. HarborPlace project is also an attempt to put new wine into old wineskins, in this case demolition is compensated with a giant private investment by incompatibly promising affordable housing on the waterfront and a happy synergy between public benefit and private profit. It is only consistent to concurrently talk about the need to prop up the convention center so it would finally be competitive with the one in DC, New York, Philadelphia or Nashville, all cities that are much larger, either historically or by recent growth. Their convention centers are filled by people that want to see those cities. Somehow we think, we could turn this logic on its head. 

Baltimore Convention Center
(Photo: Philipsen)

Baltimore also wants to enhance the two stadia which are essentially private enterprises built with public money ($600 million are set aside for updates). The supposed game changer is the development of land between Camden Yards and M&T stadium, another large expense supposed to be funded, you guessed it, by tax dollars.
There is also State Center, a botched urban renewal enterprise that the State has seen as so obsolete that it transferred its employees into also obsolete downtown towers such as the Schafer Tower which is only steps from condemnation due to structural defects. State Center so far never recovered from having been snuffed out by Governor Hogan. Then there is the Baltimore Red Line, a project now with a price tag around $6 billion and MAGLEV, a high speed magnetic train that has been a glimmer in the eye of a succession of Governors for twenty years.

Architects should be happy about all this stuff in the pipeline wouldn't they know that not all of this will become reality. These mega projects add up to billions of dollars of public money that aren't there even with all the financial acrobatics of tax increment financing, revenue authorities with bonding capacity and the like. 

The Mayor is clearly aware that Baltimore needs investments outside the "White L".  He is a friend of "all of the above" and supports work in the "Butterfly" wings such as the vast  Perkins/Somerset/Old Town project that is quite advanced now and the new Madison Park development by MCB or the West North Avenue redevelopment. He likes to put a "non-contiguous TIF" to the heart of the disinvested butterfly wings with the goal of filling all vacant Baltimore rowhouses in the City's portfolio with a 15-year plan to invest $3 billion in vacant properties combined with efforts to change zoning and

The legacy of the Highway to Nowhere (Photo: Philipsen)

regulations that have made building high-density housing difficult. However, so far the City is mired in a non functional permit system that creates more delays and cost than the zoning and codes he wants to change.

In the Butterfly sits also the Highway to Nowhere, a potentially very expensive reconnecting project, for which the city received a federal promise for $100 million but has no firm plan. The Baltimore Red Line is supposed to connect the Black Butterfly with the White L, but nobody seems to have any idea how to pay for it. The never ending quest of fixing the century old water and sewer systems and old gas lines taxes Baltimore's rate payers and the city's bonding capacity alike. In contrast, the rebuilding of Baltimore's rec centers is well underway and so is the billion dollar school rehabilitation program.

The State has talked all year about its structural deficit. The Mayor seems to blaze a dual path of grand glitz and mundane repair all at once, just when the feds threaten to cut all kinds of local funding so they can provide tax credits for those who don't need them. (Is $125 million for infrastructure too much?)

The big push to get rid of Baltimore vacants (Photo: Philipsen)

The great reckoning can not be far off. Eventually it will yield the insight that not all those game changers will ever see the light of day and that not all of them are a wise expenditure of money.

To weed the expenses, it is necessary to distinguish between actual investments, and bottomless holes that will continue to suck up money year after year, such as the City owned Hilton Convention Center hotel. For this the rosy glasses that always overestimate the indirect benefits need to be taken off in favor of cold calculations. 

Figuring out what exactly will make Baltimore an up and coming city in which people want to live, work and visit isn't an exact science and fraught with peril. Often time it comes down to what residents themselves think about their city which is mostly the result of how well basic services work. To get there will require fixing many very mundane things, like potholes, school fountains, the never ending trash problems and the broken permit system. 

If our half million residents all turn into ambassadors for Baltimore because they are happy to live here the existing beauty of Baltimore should be more than enough to move Baltimore to the next level. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Housing Regulations to be Relaxed in Baltimore

 In the quest for affordable housing a wave of code reform is sweeping America and Baltimore is no exception. A slate of bills under the title Housing Options and Opportunity Act introduced by the Mayor and council members are currently up for debate, all intended to loosen up restrictions and incentivize more housing. 

Baltimore: neighborhoods: Rowhouses and landmarks
(Photo: Philipsen)

While one could argue that Baltimore is not in the same league as San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego or Denver where strong growth and exponentially rising housing assessments and rents have priced out all but the wealthy, and where deregulation in favor of more housing originated. Colorado's governor just signed a bill last week, that would require the state's larger cities to allow buildings with one exit up to five stories.  Yet, in spite of Baltimore's more or less stagnant population, affordable housing is in short supply here as well. Mayor Scott has recently focused on filling up Baltimore's many vacant houses and growing the City back.  He also sees zoning reform in the context of the racial past of exclusionary zoning. 

The issue is the housing they want doesn’t exist in the numbers that we need, this bill directly addresses that challenge. (Mayor Brandon Scott)

Baltimore's efforts are aligned with the State's Housing for Jobs Act, which failed to pass in the last session and would have expedited housing development by requiring local jurisdictions to approve new housing projects in areas with housing gaps or near rail transit. 

• Scott's Housing Opportunity Act would  promote increased development of low-density multi-family dwellings,  strike residential conversion standards for single-family into multi-family dwellings and amend certain permitted and conditional uses bulk and yard standards. (City Council Bill 25-0066)
• Update outdated building code requirements that mandate two staircases in all residential buildings over three stories. By allowing buildings up to six stories to be constructed with a single staircase, this bill is intended to reduce construction costs and allow more compact building types. (City Council Bill 25-0062)
• Move the Zoning Administrator from the Department of Housing and Community Development to the Department of Planning to ensure greater consistency and efficiency in how zoning laws are applied. (City Council Bill 25-0063) 
• Make updates to our bulk and yard standards in residential zoning districts for more flexibility to improve and adapt properties. (City Council Bill 25-0064)
• Eliminate outdated parking minimums that require new buildings to include a certain number of off-street parking spaces, (City Council Bill 25-0065)

Mayor and council in lock step about housing
regulations (Announcement in May 25)

A 2018 bill addressing the permission of accessory dwelling units was withdrawn in 2020. ADU's are currently allowed in certain zoning districts. 

“The bills being introduced today are the first modest step to correcting course, allowing not 20, 30 or 40, but just two, three or four dwellings where segregationists decided that only one could exist. Allowing not 20, 30 or 40 stories, but just four, five or six to become practically possible and affordable to construct in those places where we already say that building height is allowed. Allowing 5, 10, or 15 families’ housing needs to be met without making automobile storage a necessary condition. Allowing families to modestly expand their homes to create a little more square footage as the family expands.” (Councilman Ryan Dorsey)

All these bills make a lot of sense. They have been introduced in Council and are now before the respective committees for further consideration. Some public outreach is also planned. Here an assessment of what they do.

Bulk Relaxation- Curse or Blessing?

The city controls bulk less through Floor Area Ratios (FAR) and more through lot area requirements, lot coverage and required setbacks. Those provisions are relaxed in the proposed bill. From my own experience I know that adaptive re-use (from factory to housing, for example) almost always runs into the issue of lot area requirements where the required lot area required for each unit could not be met where an industrial building almost filled a lot. This prohibits conversions or requires lengthy variance procedures. Importantly, the bulk relaxation will make it easier to divide existing large homes into two or more dwelling units. This can be a blessing or a curse. It would allow the owner of a large historic home to create an in-law apartment or a rental unit that would enable either aging in place for an elderly relative or provide for an additional income stream for those who are thin stretched to maintain large homes by themselves. On the other hand, it also enable developers to jam small and often low quality units into large rowhouses, for example to pack those houses with students. In those cases the benefit of filling a previous vacant home could be offset with nuisance housing. It would probably be wise to give the bulk bill a sunset provision and require a couple of years of careful monitoring that would show how well the bill works and whether it needs refinements.  

Single Exit - Better Dwellings or a Death Trap?

The biggest proposed change may be allowing bigger single exit buildings. The current International Building code IBC limits those to three stories and four units for the residential use group R2. (The IBC, in spite of its name, is essentially the main US building model code which Baltimore adopted with some minor modifications). All larger multi-family buildings require two independent fire exits with the provision that either exit can be reached in a fire with a travel distance no bigger than 125'. On the face of it, it makes sense to provide a second choice should one egress be blocked. 

Yet, in recent decades the fire safety standards were increased, including the sprinkler requirement for all residential uses and strict fire separation between units. In fact, fire deaths in sprinklered buildings are extremely rare. Still, the US has internationally one of the highest fire death rates, almost all in older non sprinklered buildings or buildings that have defective or lacking fire separations or that come from a time when the second egress could be a rickety fire escape on the exterior wall. The larger single exit bill would not apply to any previously permitted buildings but apply only to new construction.

A varied city block with a wide variety of building types
here described as typical Charleston

The two exit building requirement has shaped multifamily housing for decades and critics say, for the worse. By contrast, even tall single exit buildings are quite common in Europe and elsewhere, however, there they are made from steel and concrete, not wood. (Except recently we see more mass timber structures). The housing crisis has brought the issue into focus. Bills to relax the IBC are in discussion around the country.  Two exit housing tends to be a boxy stretched out building with doubled-loaded corridors utilizing the maximum allowed travel distance between stairs for optimal efficiency. Lately the code relaxed the use of wood in construction and these multifamily buildings are now routinely 5 stories tall, usually four stories of wood framed housing sitting on a concrete deck over retail, parking or amenities.  This building type has become so pervasive, that entire urban quarters have taken on a very uniform look. On the other hand, from a fire perspective, it is somewhat ironic that more wood and more single exit buildings should go hand in hand. Theoretically all the wood is clad by fire protective gypsum or cement board and structural walls, ceilings are fire-rated, plus, all units have sprinklers. However, this type of protection requires correct execution.

The two exit block filling apartment building, here shown
single loaded wrapping a parking garage

In the single exit buildings per Ryan Dorsey's bill, up to four units could be clustered around a stairway up to six stories high. This would allow a whole lot of different building shapes that are currently not possible, vastly increasing options for infill on vacant lots or gaps in existing neighborhoods. It would add new building types where we currently see practically only two types of new housing: The 5 story stick-built hotel like rectangle or the three story townhouse. Such clustered units could also be a lot more attractive because they could have a lot more windows and daylight than those with windows only on one side with the other backing to a dark corridor. 

Parking

Even though the Baltimore City zoning reform enacted a few years back loosened certain parking requirements, minimum off-street parking was still on the books in many areas. Demanding parking is driving up the cost of housing or, especially if it results in parking garages. Avoiding it,once again, required lengthy variance procedures. Good urbanism imagines a less car centric city, fewer parking garages and the elimination of surface parking lots, all made possible by better transit and ample walkways and bike lanes.However, in almost any city parking is in short supply in older neighborhoods where curb space is the standard method of parking considered by existing residents as "theirs".

Zoning Administrator 

Finally, the issue of moving the office of zoning administrator including the review of variances and the matter of enforcing compliance with zoning from the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to the Department of Planning (DP).  Given that HCD is blamed for major delays in receiving construction permits and given that DP already conducts a site plan review that deals with zoning this makes sense, provided that the matter of enforcement is organized in such a manner, that inspections of projects under construction don't get any more complicated than they already are. 

Protecting Existing Residents 

One can see that most of the reforms can be seen from different angles. Existing residents are usually weary of developers skimping on parking and making the available spaces scarcer. Existing residents are also the ones who worry about taller buildings taking their views or sunlight or slumlords jamming too much into subdivided larger houses. Legislation certainly has to consider the needs of existing residents.  The desire for more housing opportunities would backfire if existing residents would flee their neighborhoods due to the new construction rules, or, worse, would be displaced by gentrification. As for rising property values, homeowners would generally welcome those as long as the increases in property taxes are mitigated. Renters should benefit from a less tight housing market which tends to reduce rent cost. The Mayor knows he has some convincing to do. 

"So I want to be very clear, this is not about pushing anyone out of their neighborhood, especially those who live in those enclaves of Black excellence. This is not about erasing what you’ve built. This isn’t something we’re trying to do to you. It’s something that we want to do with you.” (Mayor Scott)

All change is difficult. Investment and better housing in Baltimore is imperative, so is filling up the vacant houses. Older cities show that good urban design can be achieved by mixing scales, uses and building types. In Baltimore's own older neighborhoods such as Mount Vernon once can find variations in scale, setback and styles happily sitting next to each other. The more common pattern of endless rowhouses, duplexes or single family homes with essentially the same height, setback and design could definitely use some variation. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA 

Related articles on this blog:

How "One-Plus-Five" is Shaping American Cities

Why 2,400 people die in house fires every year

HarborPoint Park Sneak Preview

The Allied Signal chromium plant, shuttered in 1985, was still standing on what is now known as HarborPoint, when representatives from Honeywell, now the owner of the plant, and members of the now defunct Fells Point Waterfront Coalition huddled around a table in Allied's administrative building on Wills Street to discuss the future of the peninsula. Allied Signal had entered a consent decree that included clean-up and careful monitoring during the demolition of the old plant. 

The Allied Signal Site ca 1970 (HaborPoint website)

Back in 1992 the topic was the future use of the site and for the Coalition leaders, it was clear as glass, that all 26 acres of the peninsula should be a park. Too contaminated the site to do anything else, they thought, plus it would only be just to compensate for the pollution that the processing of Chromium has caused on this site almost 200 years. The dominant contaminant was hexavalent chromium that, when airborne, can get in the lungs and cause major health problems, or when solved in water contaminates the harbor. 

However, Honeywell had invested too much money into the cleanup efforts to leave the site as a park. In addition to their top-notch environmental engineering team, they convened a consulting team of planners and architects to explore potential development. One of the team members was Bill Struever, who had completed his first major industrial redevelopment project in Canton at the time. Another was Marty Millspaugh, who had been the head of Baltimore's Charles Center-Inner Harbor Development Authority. Another was David Benn, an architect working for Struever and I who worked as his project manager. 

HarborPoint overall development rendering (Beatty Development)

The meetings with the Coalition continued for nearly two years, resulting in a compromise that carved out a 6-acre "filet mignon" piece of the site for a future park overlooking downtown, a public promenade surrounding the site, and several additional smaller green network elements. The entire plan was adopted as a Planned Unit Development (PUD). Bit by bit, buildings appeared on the cleaned-up site, built on top of an environmental cap, starting with offices and later including apartments and a hotel. After a split from H&S Bakery owner Paterakis, a partnership between Beatty Development Group and Armada Hoffler Properties emerged as the master developer of HarborPoint.

Now, some 33 years later, with Allied Signal but a distant memory, the development team embarked on the last phase of its development. The area carved out for open space has served partly as a surface parking lot and partly as a very successful pop-up park dubbed "Sandlot", for its artificial beach, which included beach volley lots, an array of wooden decks and planters, and drink and food containers. 

Phase III is scheduled to kick off in March 2022 and will include the new global headquarters for T. Rowe Price, the mixed-use Parcel 4, and Point Park. Ultimately, Phase III will deliver 470,000 SF of new office space, 500 new residential units, approximately 60,000 SF of new retail space, a new 159-key extended-stay hotel. (Beatty news release Jan 5, 2025)

Point Park as seen from the upper promenade (Photo: Author)

With that the park is finally becoming a reality. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held on May 1 for Point Park, a new public waterfront park that is slightly smaller than originally negotiated but high in quality. While Mahan Rykiel Associates (MRA) had been the landscape architect on the Ayers Saint Gross team for the master plan and several other open spaces on the site, iO Studio founder Richard Jones is the landscape architect for this park. He split off from MRA in 2017 after almost 18 years . On Earth Day, he showed me his masterpiece before the full opening of the park, which, like everything else on HarborPoint, has undergone extensive vetting by the Baltimore Urban Design and Architectural Review Panel (UDAAP). 

There was a time when architects tended to look down their nose at landscape architects, whom they considered exterior "decorators". Those days are long gone. Landscape architects are fully engaged in landscape urbanism, occupying a good part of urban design. In the case of iO Studio, even the world renowned architecture firm Kohn Pederson Fox (KPF) didn't pick their own landscape subconsultant but collaborated with the Richard Jones" firm, which Beatty Development had retained in a competitive request for qualifications. The result is that the landscape design around the new T. Rowe Price headquarters building and the design of the park are seamlessly conceived as one cast. 

The T. Rowe Price atrium looking out to the water
(Photo: Author)

The new 4.6-acre park, referred to as Point Park but which with all the historical references  should probably be called "Chromeworks Park," is defined by a large circle and two pathways that partly circumscribe it, with one path becoming a part of it. One path is the famous Baltimore Promenade, winding its way here from the Museum of Industry via HarborPlace, continuing all the way to the Korean War Memorial in Canton. The other is an upper-level pathway that follows the outline of the T. Rowe Price building, extending into the trapezoidal space between the two wings of the complex. Inside the circle is a large lawn that currently serves as the home to a flock of Canadian geese. Outside the circle, Jones arranged a set of landscapes and features that evoke the historic chromium works that began processing chromite ore mined at Soldiers Delight in Baltimore County in the early 1800s. When the local mines were depleted, ships brought in material from far away.

Jones evokes the former docks in a series of wooden piles, steel beams and walls framing gravel bays that are open to the water and planted with seagrasses. Jones mentioned that those old docks still make themselves known today because their fill over which the environmental cap was built doesn't allow the same construction loads as the rest of the cap. iO uses an entire material pallet to related to the Bay, to the industrial use, native culture and area history. There is rough hewn and polished granite, there is polished concrete, Corten steel and cast concrete, reclaimed heavy timber as well as fine gravel rolled into asphalt in the way how older streets were constructed. Aside from seagrasses there are native trees, elms, birches, maples and oaks as well as variety of shrubs. Jones who has some German roots and an office branch in Nuremberg, Germany concedes that some of the austerity and restraint of his design is influenced by what he saw in Germany, notably the rock gabion structures that stand around like sculptures.  An interesting actual sculpter is cast stainless steel in the shape of wood splintered from trees by Baltimore artist John Ruppert.

John Ruppert sculpture wood fragments
(Photo: Author)

Jones' work on the HarborPoint peninsula began with MRA and included other memorable green spaces, notably the Central Plaza, which is very successful and bustling with life at various times of the day. He pointed out that the plant materials there recall what grows today in Soldiers Delight.

Despite the success of "Sandlot," there will be no more beach, nor will there be a café or vendor to allow visitors to enjoy the exceptional views over a drink or snack. Direct access to the water is not encouraged, although it remains to be seen if people will use the simulated boat docking bays to walk toward the water. The meadow will be open for deck chairs and blankets, provided the geese do not interfere. The Baltimore Promenade was always envisioned as a string on which various pearls are strung. Point Park certainly is such a pearl and a welcome non-commercial public respite on the long journey from HarborPlace to here. Even though the park is only a small fraction of the peninsula, the surviving members of the Waterfront Coalition can be proud of their fight for meaningful open space.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Central Plaza: People love it (Photo: Author)

Upper level pathway along the T. Rowe Price building
Note the various paving materials (Photo: Author)

The upper pathway follows the T. Rowe Price building into the
open courtyard (Photo: Author)

The courtyard is open to the public and adds to the public green spaces
(Photo: Author)

Observing the Patapsco River from the Promenade which is elevated to level 13'
1' higher then the required elevation for flood. (Photo: Author)

Cage rock ("gabions) as sculptures of sorts (Photo: Author)

Gravel pathways are part of the rich material palette (Photo: Author) 

Parts of the pathway circle are lined by granit strips that symbolize a timeline
(Photo: Author)

Granit strip, gravel path and Corten Steel gate meet in an area where a
playground may rise in the future (Photo: Author)

The visual bands of differentiated plantings with gravel instead of mulch
simulating the old Chromewerks load docks (Photo: Author)

Gravel and rocks play a large role in theming the park and are supposed to provide a
low-maintenance surface (Photo: Author)

The local tree species, once they grow up, will become important place-making elements
(Photo: Author).

Gabions and steel gates with the T.Rowe Price HQ in the
background (Photo: Author)

Detail of the steel sculpture (Photo: Author)

The transition area from the Central Plaza to the Point Park 
upper level (Photo: Author)

Special Benefits Districts - Good or Bad? (The Case of Midtown)

Complaints about sanitation, lack of green and crime are perennial in Baltimore. City Hall seems to be too cash-strapped and too disorganized to provide its citizens with the basics of safe and clean streets and public spaces. 

Special clean up services for an extra tax (Photo: Midtown)

Enter the special benefits district legally anchored in the City Charter Article 14 in which owners and businesses within certain boundaries agree to pay special taxes to get extra services. Baltimore has a whole bunch of those districts including downtown (managed by the Downtown Partnership), Charles Village, Midtown, the Waterfront Management District, the York Corridor Business Improvement , the Port Covington Community Benefits and the South Baltimore Gateway Community Impact District as well as the Baltimore Tourism Improvement District and four Arts and Entertainment Districts (which are not regulated in Chapter 14). 

Most of the actual improvement districts are located in the more affluent areas of the so-called "white L". The sheer number of those districts would suggest that a whole lot of property owners in the better areas thought that city services are bad enough to warrant extra tax payments. 

Right now one of these Baltimore Districts is in question because the usual quadrennial renewal with a vote in the City Council somehow didn't happen: Midtown, an area that includes Charles-North, Bolton Hill,  Madison-Park, and Mt. Vernon-Belvedere has about 14,500 residents. The district includes several high profile areas along Charles Street, the Cultural District and Penn Station.

We live in Bolton Hill and the Midtown Benefits District is a huge help keeping our green spaces clean and maintained. We do the planting, they mulch, clean up trash and clean up any park debris we ask for. Generally within 24 hours (Comment on the Banner website)

 As it is with benefits districts, only property owners can vote (One vote per parcel).  In Midtown there are 4000 or so owners who received a ballot to vote this district back into existence. The vote is successful if 58% of all voters opt for yes. The Midtown special benefits district exists since 1996. The Baltimore Charter says this about the district:

Midtown Map (Midtown)

There is a Midtown Community Benefits District Management Authority, referred to in this subtitle as the “Authority”. The purpose of the Authority is to promote and market the District, provide supplemental security and maintenance services, provide amenities in public areas, provide park and recreational programs and functions, and after its establishment, other services and functions as requested by the Authority and approved by an ordinance of the Mayor and City Council.[...] The Authority shall: (1) not be or constitute or be deemed an agency of the City or the State of Maryland; (2) to the greatest extent allowable by law, be deemed a special taxing district, and therefore a governmental body, both politic and corporate, exercising only such powers as are provided for in this subtitle;

Midtown safety patrol (Photo: Midtown)

This and other districts have an executive director, staff and a board. In Midtown the Charter stipulates that the board includes a member appointed by the Mayor, one council member, representatives of each community association, and at large members. At least two thirds of the board members must be "owners or representatives of property owners subject to the tax imposed by the district". The tax levy is $0.132 per $100 of a property's assessed value which amounts to an annual budget of  $ 2.17 million. The annual report for 2024 lists clean-up, tree planting, workforce development and greenspace design as the main activities.

The trouble that the Midtown district currently inadvertently encounters puts a spotlight on the question why we have so many special districts and if those are really useful, a question that is rarely asked when those districts have become like another skin of local governance.

What may have been an issue in the 1980s and 90s when these districts were created may not apply anymore today. For example, Baltimore's current Mayor has put a lot of additional money into Recreation and Parks; the 2025 budget calls for $21,066.6 million, up from $16,095.5 million in 2023. Would that increase not allow better maintenance of street trees and pocket parks?  

Equally, the City is forever trying to improve trash collection, recycling and efficiency of trash collection. Is the effectiveness of those efforts obscured by crews of additionally paid workers cleaning up behind the city workers? And what about disadvantaged neighborhoods that don't have the extra street cleaners? The problem of inequity is obvious: While the Charles Village and Midtown appear relatively clean, neighborhoods in the black butterfly are drowning in trash. 

Baltimore's trash stands out. At times Baltimore is called the trashiest city in America.This appears to be more a problem of resident's behavior than one of failing services. This article shows which would indicate that "upstream" measures would be more effective than the most "downstream" of all measures, the clean-up of the tossed materials.

Trash in an alley behind Baltimore Street (SUN photo)

Crime in Baltimore City has gone down significantly, especially murder and violent crime. But quality-of-life-impeding crime such as brazen muggings, robberies and car-jackings have spread across the city regardless of the special districts and cannot be prevented by benefits district workers. 

Owners and residents in the Midtown district harbor a number of misgivings according to a recent article in the Banner. Some think economic development and work force training have distracted the group from its core mission. The effectiveness of the much larger Downtown Partnership has also come into question in recent years. Downtown has fallen on hard times after COVID, just as in many other cities. However, many residents and business owners were angered by the new electronic billboards, decisions to move festivals around and failings at this year's restaurant week.  

Do initially nimble and highly motivated local initiatives calcify over time, befallen by the same ailments of inertia, procrastination and bureaucracy as the general government? Shouldn't the special districts be a temporary fix until local government gets its act together? Wouldn't a full vote every so often be good not only for Midtown all districts?

As it is, having to recreate a special district after 18 years is a unique Midtown experience. It will be interesting to see how the vote will come out. It could be a bellwether on how people feel about their general city services and about the idea of piling special services on top instead of fixing the regular government instead. 

For folks pondering how to vote their ballot or what they should think about these special districts in general, I conducted some research. The most obvious pros and cons that apply, no matter where a district is located.  

Adding additional jurisdictional layers and separating service delivery functions into separate organizations can contribute to “a pathological phenomenon… that there are too many governments and not enough government” (Polycentric Governance)

Trash complaints over time. None of the listed neighborhoods
has a Improvement District (SUN graphic) 

Advantages of Special Districts

1. Limited services and extra cash allow a special focus on clean, green and safe 
2. Owners and residents in the district have someone to go to that is more local than city government
3. Flexibility: The district's board can decide quicker and more flexibly how the collected money should be spent
4. Special districts are relatively insulated from the political agenda of city hall
5. The district allow special branding, visibility and marketing which can enhance property values

Disadvantages of Special Districts

1. In spite of guaranteed baseline services at the creation of the district, it is possible that standard city services in the district decrease because the district provides them better
2. The district board and governance is oriented to private interest and doesn't represent the public in the same was a generally elected city government
3. The extra tax increases the already high property tax burden and may not be affordable to low income homeowners
4. The benefits districts are in many ways an additional layer of governance in response to ineffective local services
5. A multitude of benefits districts can lead to fragmented city planning

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

The Midtown Benefits District was approved by over 80% of the valid votes. 

Resources on Community and Business Improvement Districts

BIDs fare well

Self-Organizing Special Districts: A Tool for Community Change and Development

Polycentric governance and the impact of special districts on fiscal common pools

Improvements for Whom?

Poe Museum: Can Poetry Become Architecture?

Architecture can be like poetry, but is the reverse also possible? Baltimore architect Davin Hong of re:vital Design is trying to do just that. His job: Design the Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Baltimore. More precisely, the expansion of the Poe House from the early 1800s which is listed as a National Register Landmark but hemmed in by the Poe Homes, Baltimore's first public housing development, built in 1940 for African American families. The complex of 288 homes is slated for demolition and redevelopment. In the process, additional land for a Poe Museum expansion has been carved out, also with the help of Hong, who in 2019 with his firm Living Design Lab, took part in a planning charrette that created basic redevelopment options.

Poe, a multi talent lived for four years on Amity Street
(Poe website)

In a tiny brick house on Baltimore’s North Amity Street in 1833-1835 Edgar Allan Poe wrote some of the early stories that would make him the father of the modern short story, and create and define the modern genres of mystery, horror and science fiction. (Poe Baltimore website)

Hong had time to develop his approach, the demolition of the Poe Homes has not yet started and the Choice Grant from the federal government is in jeopardy. Last week Hong presented the fruits of his translation of poetry into architectural form to the Baltimore design review panel UDAAP. 

The challenge of translating the poetry of Poe into architecture originates with the fact that the Baltimore museum doesn't have a lot of objects to exhibit. These are mostly on display in Richmond's Poe museum located in Richmonds oldest building, the Old Stone House on East Main Street, a far more accessible location than the one in Baltimore. Boston, Richmond and Baltimore each claim some part of the poet who never stayed too long in one place. Baltimore has the advantage that Poe not only lived in the Poe House on Amity Street for four years but also died in this city, his grave next to Westminster Hall. Like Poe's life, his death and even his gravesite had its mishaps, mysteries and confusion.

The Poe Museum extension as seen from Lexington Street
(Re:vital Design)

Hong told the Baltimore Business Journal his vision is "a post-modern reading of Edgar Allan Poe's work through architecture that borrows from Poe's writings". Designing museums is an art that has come a long way from dusty shelves and static glass vitrines to today's interactive multi-media experiences allowing a lot of variation in how and what to communicate with a visitor. 

“Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?” (Edgar Allen Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition”)

Hong, at heart a modernist, is unlikely to design in the gothic style, even if gothic is often used to describe Poe's writing style. In his presentation to Baltimore's design review panel UDAAP he describes his goals in prosaic terms, such as "creating a new space for operations, storytelling and exhibits", or "expand the museum's service to community and make the museum "a landmark destination in Baltimore City" In conversation it becomes clear, however, that Hong also sets on mystery, allusion and melancholy as themes, in part this becomes clear in accessories such as the cloudy, gloomy sky Hong selected for his renderings, in part in the architecture itself. 

Overview sketch of the program elements (Re:vital Design)

An innovative architectural move is Hong's use of a double wall that acts like a longitudinal divide that bisects his composition and his program. He says that the wall creates a datum line that defines his Poe garden which mirrors a small park across the street that is part of the La Cite development across Amity Street and calls the wall a backdrop that hides the larger portion of the program, notably the auditorium. He also calls it a threshold, supposedly one from where one enters the combined two open spaces or from where one enters the lobby structure which he describes as an object within the open space. The other pieces of the assembled spaces in front of the wall consist of the historic Poe house, the structure next to the Poe home that will become an exhibit of the Poe Homes development, and a courtyard. Behind the wall are the gallery and an auditorium with an industrial style saw-tooth shed roof optimized for solar panels which he dubs "the Raven". 

When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect—they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul—not of intellect, or of heart—upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating the “beautiful.” [....]
Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. (Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition”)

The phantom house reimagines the original twin house with a
metal scrim (Re:vital Design)

An interesting move is Hong's "phantom house", in which he at the same time preserves the two story neighbor of the Poe House that dates back to the Poe Home development  and also evokes the façade and roof of  the "twin building" that mimics the lost half of what originally formed together with the Poe house a two story duplex. The phantom historical "ghosting" happens via a metal scrim floating in front of the brick building that will accommodate the Poe Homes exhibit. The scrim consists of words and letters of various sizes with punched out ghost windows symmetrical to those in et Poe Home.

Hong's Poe Garden plays with the composition and details of the cemetery next to Westminster Hall on Greene Street in subtle ways. There is no Poe "toaster" nor a tombstone, but the plant selections, the paving, the brick color and the play with letters casting shadows on the lobby wall are supposed to

The proposed Poe garden takes clues from the burial ground 
at Westminster Hall (Re:vital Design)

instill a sense of melancholy. The garden leading to the courtyard could well be the entrance to all the museum elements, whereby the lobby would be entered from behind instead of the front. However, that is not what the architect intends. Instead he enters the lobby from West Lexington Street. The double wall has to traversed via a bridge if one wants to get from the lobby to the gallery or the auditorium, a glimpse of charred wood walls and possibly sinister shadows is supposed to be a bit spooky without being as crass as a carnival haunted fun house. The double wall accommodates also a stair to the basement in which Hong allows a departure from modernist cleanliness in favor of brick vaults and vaulted ceilings evoking catacombs. The effect is that it looks like as if the architect had placed his modern assembly of spaces on top of a historic excavation. The auditorium can double up as a community gathering space with ct access to a small outside patio.

The entirely windowless outside of the auditorium is clad in recycled plastic shingles that look like grey slate, another touch of autumn and gloom. Daylight comes from the shed roof.  

Proposed auditorium (Re:vital Design)

Seen one by one Hong proves in each of the program components that he is a great designer with a firm grip on proportion and excellent placemaking skills. While the multitude of volumes, materials and styles certainly fosters "multiple readings" as the architects set out to achieve, and also reflects the many talents Edgar Allen Poe possessed, one has to wonder if there isn't too packed into this relatively small project.  Given that the client is a non-profit that still has to raise funds for the construction of the project using Hong's drawings, and that the project is still far from a ground-breaking, one can expect that the one or the other idea will be purged towards more clarity, possibly resulting in a loss of mystery, ambiguity and poetry.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA   

 Davin Hong's UDAAP presentation can be viewed here.  All images below are from Re:vital Design.

Current setting

Design Concept

First floor

Lobby as seen from entrance

Gallery

Composition of program elements

Poe Homes today

Site Plan