More car sharing in Baltimore

The week of COP 21 in Paris, the climate conference, may be as good as any to think about how car sharing can increase mobility in cities while reducing trips, automobile ownership and the space needs for parking.

The link between car sharing and city government is parking: Without parking in a public space car sharing is difficult to do, especially if one considers a model in which cars are not sitting in a designated zone as in the ZipCar model but in regular parking spaces anywhere on the street. Since car sharing wouldn't work if the last user would have to feed a meter when dropping off the share car since she wouldn't know when the next user will come along the privilege to park free is a key component of a system that does not rely on private car corrals.

Could this be the next car sharing service coming to Baltimore?

This is why the Baltimore City Parking Authority has a hand in issuing a request for proposal for a "one way" trip car share model such as the car share program developed by Daimler Benz (Mercedes) "Car2go" which is headquartered in Austin, TX and currently operates in Denver, Seattle, San Diego, New York City and a bunch of other cities including nearby Washington DC. Unlike ZipCars which need to be brought back to the same spot where the trip started and has a membership and one hour rental minimum, Car2go allows dropping off the car anywhere within a designated large city area ("home area"), can be rented by the minute and has no membership fee.

ZipCar which came to Baltimore in 2010 starting with a few cars near the Hopkins campus has currently 225 cars in operation serving 10,000 members. ZipCar is now owned by Avis-Budget, the car rental company.

Typical cost for a 15 mile round-trip in various modes
(Source: Victoria Transport Institute 9/15 study)

Car2go started in Germany and uses only the Daimler Benz Smart cars (which come in very very small and very small sizes). In some cities those cars are only offered in a fully electric version.
As in all mobility sharing concepts (including bike sharing), the one way model requires intervention in order to keep the vehicles equally distributed. In the case of free locational choice it also requires a sophisticated software for tracking down available vehicles. Car2go users have a good number of "war stories" about their frustrations when a car isn't actually where it is shown in the app, when a car doesn't open with the app or when the car doesn't operate as envisioned or it has not enough fuel.

Zipcar came to Baltimore in 2010

Baltimore's Peter Little, the parking czar, has not mentioned Car2go as the one service he is trying to get, but as far as I can see there are not many others who provide the share model he prescribes and can provide the required 200 car minimum fleet. The operator is required to pay an estimated annual fee of  $1,500 to 2,500 per car for the free parking privilege. While this won't be a huge revenue source, the hope is that the additional car sharing will resolve the parking shortage in many Baltimore neighborhoods by allowing residents to have no car or only one instead of two, in other words, reduce car ownership.

The more one drives the higher the cost of car sharing.
Source: Victoria Institute

Car sharing options would theoretically be a contribution to transportation equity by allowing low income residents to save the large fixed cost of car ownership in favor of the higher per use cost of the share model. However, the reality of all current share services is, that low income participation is far below what the demographic city profiles would suggest. Baltimore's Little will require placement of car share vehicles in the "food deserts" so residents could go shopping in such a car. While that idea is laudable, it probably won't be enough to entice poor people to use the system. With the usual Car2go rate that would set them back about $0.40 per mile including gas, cheaper than a cab but more expensive than a hack or transit. Car ownership often drives transportation cost in low income households above 30% of the total household income.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Baltimore Sun article
Car Sharing methods comparison (Earthsfriends)

Here is a precedent for the suggested Harbor bridge

Out of all the ideas contained in the Harbor 2.0 masterplan prepared by Ayers Saint Gross, the pedestrian bridge spanning from Rash Field to Pier Five has sparked the most heated discussions. As it goes with those grand ideas, they tend to be straw-fires, bright but without endurance. So today the remaining discussion topics are the McKeldin Plaza, Rash Field and the Harborplace pavilions.  All that could change of course, if Cordish comes through with his idea of a new Arena on Pier 5 and 6.  Then the bridge may come back into focus. 

rendering of the suggested Harbor 2.0 bridge (ASG)

But my curiosity regarding the bridge topic was peaked also when I saw this article about a proposed ped/bike bridge for London's Docklands. It looks elegant, it opens for tall ships and it isn't supposed to cost a fortune. As I noted in earlier comments, a direct connection from Federal Hill to Harbor East (where I would land the bridge instead of Pier 5) would be a real game changer in terms of the mobility shed for alternative modes. In plain English, how far you can walk and bike within a mile or two. The suggested bridge would connect north and south shores of the Patapsco in a new way. Of course, striving for the most enlarged walk or bid-shed, a connection between Locust Point (the foot of Hull Street) and the Broadway Pier would be even more enticing.

The new London bridge was designed by reForm Architects and Elliot Wood Engineers.

“It’s a no-brainer,” says architect Nik Randall, a Southwark resident for 30 years, whose practice ReForm has come up with a design for the bridge with engineersElliott Wood. “It has the potential to unlock journeys way beyond the surrounding area, encouraging people to cycle to work who might not ever have considered it before.”

The proposed bridge does what a Baltimore Harbor bridge in either location would have to do as well, be lean, elegant and very light so not to interfere too much with the vista of the water opening out. The Guardian is quite complementary of the design which has some creative aspects described by the Guardian this way:

In an ingenious – and the designers say unique – move, the 100-tonne counterweights, required to open a “bascule” drawbridge of this kind, are embedded in the length of the two masts, doing away with the need for hefty enclosures to house them in the rest of the structure. The two sides simply pivot, allowing the angled masts to slot effortlessly into the wishbone-shaped decks at either side. The result is an exceptionally lean structure, which looks like a pair of whale bones held in fine balance. It would be an appropriately graceful gateway to greet boats arriving in London.

The price tag is given with £88 million ($132 million) but public officials are already talking about a a range up to £200 million ($300 million).  Eyeballing the renderings, the Harbor 2.0 bridge may be shorter than the Thames bridge. By comparison, the four lane bridge across the narrow body of water at the bottom of Central Avenue that connects to HarborPoint is estimated to cost $15 million. That bridge, however is neither elegant nor as useful as a ped-bike bridge could be. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Guardian article

The perils of contextual design: Sad looking rowhouse facades

Baltimore has always been pretty conservative when it comes to style and taste and its architecture is no exception. Even the new zoning code repeats those requirements for being "contextual" and has a bunch of pictures that shows what that is supposed to mean, mostly based on a classical order of facades "with a base, a middle and a top". (The Baltimore AIA is trying to get those prescriptive guidelines as exhibits into an appendix of tyhe code instead of being part of the code itself). The Planning Department argued for those rules not as a measure to prevent creative architecture but to ensure that the bad architects can't do anything terrible.

the new "townhomes" at 1500 S. Charles Street

I believe the real terrible things happen in the guise of contextualism. One example was sent to me by a developer who was really upset about this example of what he considered particularly bad rowhouse facades located prominently at the corner of S. Charles Street and Fort Avenue. I am happy to put his case up for debate. On the face of it the architect was very contextual: There is use of the obligatory brick, the choice of brick even varies from house to house, the windows have mutins, the roof has some kind of cornice, what could possibly be wrong?

the new homes include the two story house in the foreground

Well, it turns out a lot. 

Windows that are too low relative to the height of the facade and look the same on all three levels, a front door that sits too low, lacking the typical Baltimore stoops and the elevated first floor that removes residents a bit from the sidewalk, an extremely skimpy cornice that carries straight across the three houses negating the variation suggested by the brick differences. The low first floor results in odd spacing that creates these massive areas of brick between the first and second floor on the two story house and between the third floor and the cornice on the three story houses. Then there is the total disrespect for the corner. At an end unit the typical Baltimore rowhouse wraps the cornice around the corner for a few feet at least, possibly places even a turret or other means to make the side facade more than a firewall with a few openings in it. The fixed, fake exterior shutters and the mutins (the fake glass dividers on the window sashes) are the final straws indicating suburban rather than urban design roots. 

(article continues below the images)

Proper rowhouse proportions and window sizes (Butchers Hill)

typical entry door treatment of the Baltimore rowhouse

corner rowhouse on McCulloh Ave. The cornice turns

Even this modest small two story rowhouse in East Baltimore shows the typical proportions of windows, brick, and cornice

another example of a proper cornice and how it turns at a corner

Everything above the designers could have discovered easily by looking up and down the same street and by taking contextual much more seriously. For a sales price just slight under a half million dollars one could expect special care in the design that goes beyond the obilagtory granite kitchen counters. Personally, I think that a new rowhouse should better not emulate the historic houses and be of its own time. It can still be contextual in shape, massing and scale.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Below some of the design guideline language included in the New Baltimore City Zoning Code still under review by the City Council:

DESIGN STANDARDS
2 § 8-501. IN GENERAL.
3 (A) SCOPE.
4 DETACHED DWELLINGS ARE SUBJECT TO THE DESIGN STANDARDS OF THIS SUBTITLE.
5 (B) ADMINISTRATIVE EXCEPTIONS.
6 AN ADMINISTRATIVE DESIGN REVIEW EXCEPTION TO THESE STANDARDS CAN BE GRANTED AS
7 PROVIDED IN § 4-406 {“ADMINISTRATIVE EXCEPTIONS”} OF THIS CODE.
8 § 8-502. FRONT FACADE.
9 THE FRONT ENTRY MUST BE A DOMINANT FEATURE ON THE FRONT ELEVATION OF A HOME. THE FRONT
10 ENTRY SHOULD BE EMPHASIZED AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE STRUCTURE, USING FEATURES SUCH AS
11 PORCHES AND RAISED STEPS AND STOOPS WITH ROOF OVERHANGS OR DECORATIVE RAILINGS, TO
12 CREATE A PROTECTED ENTRY AREA AND ARTICULATE THE FRONT FACADE. WINDOWS AND OTHER
13 ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES ARE REQUIRED TO AVOID THE APPEARANCE OF BLANK WALLS FACING THE
14 STREET. {SEE FIGURE 8-502: ARTICULATED FRONT FACADE.}
15 § 8-503. SIDE FACADES.
16 SIDE FACADES DESIGNED AS BLANK WALLS ARE PROHIBITED. WINDOWS, SIDE ENTRANCES, OR OTHER
17 ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES ARE REQUIRED TO AVOID THE APPEARANCE OF BLANK WALLS FACING
18 NEIGHBORING HOMES. {SEE FIGURE 8-503: ARTICULATED SIDE FACADE.}
19 § 8-504. CORNER LOT FACADES.
20 HOUSES ON CORNER LOTS MUST VISUALLY ADDRESS BOTH STREET FRONTAGES. THE PRIMARY
FACADE
21 ON WHICH THE ENTRANCE TO THE STRUCTURE IS LOCATED MUST INCLUDE THE FRONT ENTRY AS A
22 DOMINANT FEATURE AND BE DESIGNED IN ACCORDANCE WITH § 8-502 {“FRONT FACADE”} OF THIS
23 SUBTITLE. THE SECONDARY STREET-FACING FACADE MUST INCLUDE ARTICULATION, SUCH AS
24 WINDOWS, PORCHES, AND OTHER ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES, TO AVOID THE APPEARANCE OF A
BLANK

24 ROWHOUSE INFILL DEVELOPMENT MUST MATCH THE WINDOW PATTERN OF THE GROUP. {SEE
25 FIGURE 9-502(G): FRONT FACADE DESIGN REQUIREMENTS.}
26 (I) FRONT ENTRANCE.
27 ROWHOUSE INFILL DEVELOPMENT MUST MAINTAIN THE RHYTHM OF FRONT ENTRANCES IN TERMS
28 OF SPACING WITHIN THE GROUP. {SEE FIGURE 9-502(G): FRONT FACADE DESIGN REQUIREMENTS.}
29 (J) ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES.
30 (1) ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES, SUCH AS PORCHES, STEPS AND STOOPS, CORNICES, AND BAY
31 WINDOWS, THAT ARE COMMON TO THE GROUP MUST BE INCLUDED AND MUST MATCH OR
32 COMPLEMENT THE DESIGN AND PLACEMENT OF THE GROUP.

74 Design Conversations and more to come

When about 100 people who had crammed into the Load of Fun in 2006 decided that there should be a design center in Baltimore, they had set into motion a series of now 74 "Design Conversations", casual presentations on all matters that relate to design, creativity and art that all have taken place in Russel Campo's Windup Space, a gallery, bar and event space all in one.

The even poster for Design Conversation #1

The organization of those Design Conversations is relatively simple: A curator thinks of a topic for a conversation, applies for a spot on the first Tuesday of each month calendar, finds presenters, invites and coordinates them, advertises the event and another Design Conversation is going down. 

Unlike lectures by the AIA (American Institute of Architects) or other professional organizations, the Design Conversations draw not only architects or urban designers, landscape architects and planners but a young crowd of diverse interests and backgrounds resulting in audiences that were different from what had been reached before except that African American participation remained low.

After two years the D center has lost its gallery space located next to the Wind-Up Space for lack of funding and is in a state of re-organization. But the Design Conversations continue. Last month the topic was Baltimore's transportation and the many new ways of getting around. December's Design Conversation will be held coming Tuesday, December 1, at 6:30pm.

We're at our 75th Design Conversation! Join us for a BIG Night.
Hosted by Prescott Gaylord and the Baltimore Improv Group
What might a design conversation be if it was improvised? We will have three guest storytellers - an audience prompt to kick us off and a very talented improv troupe to answer that question. (Event link)

The D center board convened a curating committee to ensure that the Design Conversations will remain a fixture in Baltimore in 2016. The committee decided that a request for (conversation topic) proposals will be prepared and issued soon. (article continues below the pictures)

Add caption

Design Convo #49

Design Conversation #72 and presenter 

#17, The Visible Process

Design Convo #72: Good News Baltimore, three projects (see my blog article)

Baltimore needs the broad ranging conversation about art, culture and design more than ever. Not only are these fields usually way ahead of the actual political and planning practice, they open the mind to the "out of the box" type of approach that has recently been described as "design thinking", a new way of problem solving.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Rotunda Sneak Preview

On a dark and foggy night it may be hard to squeeze the bright aspects of any project, even one that has shown as much resilience as the Rotunda project by Hekemian Development. Acquired in 2005, fought by some in the community, fully designed as a 200,000 sf retail, 414 condominiums, rentals and town home project including a 22 story tower in 2007, only to be  scrapped in the last minute due to the Great Recession, the now $90 million plus project has finally risen as 379 apartments with 130,000 sf of retail and a over 1000 space parking garage slated to open for leasing after the holidays in early 2016.

Rotunda, the preserved old structure

"I like the project better this way" says the Hekemian project manager about the value engineered project. He is confident that he won't have trouble to find tenants for the units ranging from efficiencies to 2 BR units. "Its hard to find those empty nesters", he confides about an age group that many planners say should fuel the trend back to the city. Hekemian Vice President Chris Bell is showing his project to outsiders for the very first time, he says, when he and his design team lead a group of ULI guests through the complex dubbed the Icon. The project architect is Design Collective of Baltimore (they did also preformed the landscape architecture services), the interior designer the Hartmann Design Group of Rockville, the contractor is Bozzutto Construction.

Even beyond the cost of the original acquisition and for designing the whole thing twice, the project has a lot of special expenses such as 40' of fill to achieve a level surface relative to 40th street, a 1000 car parking garage that was constructed up front to allow the historic Rotunda building to remain open as offices throughout construction on the large lot that used to be the surface parking lot for the old interior mall Rotunda complex. These "sunken" costs required to design the apartments as lean as possible. The no frills facades are more a reference to the local preferences obtained through extensive community outreach than cost savings, but the through wall heat pump HVAC units throughout are clearly a VE measure and so are the pretty spartan unit interiors with solid vinyl wood imitation in the living room and the obligatory beige carpets in the bedrooms.
Rents are expected to fall slightly north of the $2 per squarefoot (monthly) mark with the more expensive units reaching about $2.40. This is lower than the $3 threshold that the Baltimore rental market has passed in select areas. While Hampden has transformed from a working class community to a place with hipsters there is no good gauge what the market will allow in this location when it comes to large scale development.
As with the Fitzgerald, the Union Wharf and the 520 Park apartments, most of the costlier efforts are going into sprucing up the common areas and the amenities. (article continued below the photos)

rendering of the entire complex looking southeast

Site plan

Tenant plan

Hartmann Design Group lobby rendering

DCI rendering of the central plaza

the six levels of apartments over the tall level of retail 

Hekemian representatives (Chris Bell, foreground) explain the project standing in the partially completed lobby 

Typical hallway 

Typical kitchen in a 2 BR unit

The old power plant building in the fog, It will become a restaurant

the Italian sales kiosks in the central plaza

 Certainly $450,000 worth of imported Italian cast iron structures that look like Florentine news stands placed on the central plaza to give the square some flair belong into that category and so do the carefully selected materials that will grace the lobby and gathering spaces.

With all the apartment construction still underway in the central parts of the city, one has to hope that Baltimore will finally not only gain millenials and artists as new residents while loosing an equal number of middle class families but that the city will really turn the corner and actually grow by at least the 10,000 households the Mayor had given as her target.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
updated

2013 Baltimore SUN article of groundbreaking event and community involvement
2007 Baltimore Magazine about the Rotunda as urban renewal

http://www.baltimoremagazine.net/old-site/this-month/2007/09/urban-renewal

2012 SUN article about UDARP review

Celebrating light in dark times - "Light City Baltimore"

It has been all over the news this week, that Lyon scrapped its festival of lights this year because of the Paris attacks. That could easily have been the first time you may have heard of the  Fête des Lumières, even though this year is also the International Year of Light.

Fête des Lumières, Lyon, France (cancelled for 2015)

It isn't easy to keep up with all the designations of special days or international years of this and that. Lest you are a physicist speaking on November 16 in London about light in the company of  high-energy, optical, quantum and solid-state physicists who discuss recent developments enabled by Maxwell's Equations and will try to predict future innovations, you may think of this as a commercial gimmick.

The various "festivals of light" that have been around for some time received a boost by new solid state lighting technology (LED) but essentially harp back to the "dark" ages. And, yes, Baltimore is now on the bandwagon as well!

Baltimore will celebrate its own very first Festival of Lights in 2016, a full eight years after Belgrade in Croatia admitted it was a late-comer to the idea with this programmatic announcement:

"BELGRADE, THE CITY OF LIGHT “ is unique cultural event, festival dedicated to light, platform for creative innovations, experiments, art and expert discussions and exchanges of ideas on a topic of illumination. This year, Belgrade proudly enters into the sparkling net of light festivals that exist over the world and cherish this tradition for a long time, such as Lyon, Tallinn, Helsinki, Lisboa, and Eindhoven. 

The already mentioned Lyon festival of light happens every year since 1643. Having started with candles in the windows, as a motivator during the plague, the fete des lumieres is today's Lyon's most well known attraction and spans over four days. I love the English version advertising the event on their website (before the cancellation) for the last sentence in the quote below:

The programme promises four nights of enchantment, each night brings a different theme, color scheme and vibe.
Designers from all over the world partake in the wonderful event. Video, Music and Sound effects are used to accompany the vibrant images dotted around the city.
The exceptional spectacle showcases the city at its best and incorporates buildings, rivers and parks into the show. This enables tourists and locals alike to experience many different routes and areas throughout Lyon over the 4 day event.
The best spectacle is located in the city centre.
If you are still not convinced, what better to do then to experience the mayhem (sic!) yourself, Lyon awaits your visit.

Festival of Lights, Sidney, AUS

Festival of Lights, Berlin, Germany

Festival of Lights, Amsterdam, Netherlands

An overview of what such a light spectacle entails can be found on this 2014 Lyon video.

Of course, there is Hannukah, also called the festival of light, and several other religious celebrations of light known around the world including, of course the Christian tradition of Christmas lights often noted as having been derived from earlier heathen celebrations of light. All were designed to fend off the darkness of the long nights of December and encourage people against demons, darkness, ghosts, depression and the fear that the sun may never come back. Such fear is quite understandable in northern latitudes where night sets in as early as mid-afternoon and doesn't lift until mid-morning.

Inaugural event: Light City Baltimore 2016

 Baltimore's celebration of light has been dubbed "Light City Baltimore" and has been placed way into the lighter season of spring and will take place from March 28 to April 3. There is good reason why Baltimore picked the year 2016 to have its own festival of light: The 200 year celebration after Baltimore was reportedly the first US city to illuminate its streets with gas lights. The website describes the event this way:

Premiering in 2016, Light City Baltimore is the first large-scale, international light festival in the United States, homegrown right here in Baltimore. Light City will provide a backdrop for the celebration of ideas, ingenuity and creativity through art, music and innovation.
Light City will shine a light on Baltimore’s abundance of creative, cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary talent, and we welcome participants from across the globe to join us.
Light City’s innovation programming will generate an ecosystem of ideas and learning during the day – while lights, performances and live music reimagine the Inner Harbor at night.

Light City, Baltimore

The event will combine light as a visual art with performances and a innovation conference which, in turn, will emphasize how "social change can be powered". A list of participating artists can be found here. For more detail go to the organizer's website, BOPA.

The idea of moving the concept of light fests from being a romantic festival to lighten the mood during dark times to one that celebrates innovation and shines the path to the future has been taken from Sidney, organizers say according to an article published in February in the BBJ.

"The whole focus is this longer-term vision to have Baltimore viewed as an international city.This will highlight both the innovation happening in Baltimore, but also bring to Baltimore the big thinkers — the people who are thinking about what's next in the world" (Jamie McDonald, a founder of GiveCorps and a Light City Baltimore steering committee co-chairwoman). 

Innovation, light, international, big thinkers? Who could be against that!

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

See Baltimore SUN article about the recently released preliminary line-up of artists.

520 Park Development Success Spawns another Project

The success of the conversion of the rather not very attractive Hochschild Kahn warehouse into high end apartments is very welcome but rather unexpected.

Welcome, because it finally brings the northern edge of Baltimore's Westside (where I have my office) into play, surprising, because that northern edge has so much blight that it didn't look like a bland building could easily turn things around.

520 Park Ave is the large rectangle with courtyard at
the top of the image. The new project is located
south (below) the atrium building on the surface
parking lot.

But the Time Group and Dominic Wiker together with Marks Thomas Architects' creative design have done just that. First the apartments, then the Ceremony coffee shop, then the Mt Vernon Marketplace and now the next strike: 153 new apartments, a pool and some retail will be added to fill the prominent corner of  West Franklin Street and Park Avenue, currently defined by the Pratt Library for the Blind and the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women and tow vacant lots with surface parking.

Alexander Design Studio and Floura Teeter landscape architects presented the revised schematic design to UDARP last Thursday and were approved for the final review of complete working drawings in the next round.

UDARP had rejected the first submission of schematic concepts for being somewhat over the top, something that was unusual for UDARP typically encouraging designers to be more courageous.

A view of the proposed L shaped apartment (looking south-west) building
 with Park Ave and the pool in the foreground

The new design approach is more subdued, has subtle references to the Kohn warehouse and gives up on a large black sign band facing traffic coming down Franklin Street. It also reduced the splash for the pool house along Park Avenue. There will a bio-retention courtyard for green stormwater management.

The parking level placed underneath the L shaped six story building replacing some of the surface parking makes an attractive facade along Franklin Street difficult. Pedestrians there have to be contend with a jumbo concrete block wall topped by a screened opening providing a band of ventilation towards the street. There will otherwise be sheet metal on the first floor facade and a hard stucco on the upper levels. Some bedroom windows are setback with a sloping sill and recessed lights washing the opening at night. (Not sure how much occupants will cherish that feature).

The corner at Park and Franklin with the entrance tucked into the recess

The facade facing Franklin Street. The first floor is rather unattractive due to the parking level behind 

The entrance to the apartment building is tucked to the side of the building near the corner of park Avenue, sliding in next to the parking level and leading into a skinny lobby with a clear-story getting light from higher up.
UDARP panelist were generally appreciative of the new design, although David Haresign observed that there was an awful lot of solid wall in the overall facade.


Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Links:

BBJ article from May 15, 2015
BBJ article Nov 12, 2015

Typical floor plan (upper levels). 

When do we get serious about protecting the Bay?

In light of the unanimous but irresponsible decision of the Baltimore County Council to phase out the fees for stormwater run-off, the decision that the State Board of Public Works today, weighs doubly: Will they allow a wetleands permit for over 1000 dwelling units to be constructed in the tidal buffer that has been established around the Chesapeake to protect its waters. Recent studies show that those buffers are even more important than previously imagined. However, each jurisdiction had been granted a cretain amount of exceptions for construction inside of these buffers. The question is, if Queen Anne's County should allst its entire allowance to be used for one of the most egregiously wrong developments that has come up in recent years and has been rejected before when O'Malley had the deciding vote on the Public Works Board.

Sun photo of activist fighting the Four Seasons development

I wrote this note to Comptroller Franchot and Tresurer Nancy Kopp yesterday:

Dear Comptroller Franchot, As someone who worked as a consultant on a Chester/Stevensville masterplan in 2009, I am quite familiar with the growing pains oft Kent Island and with how contentious the growth related issues have been for years among residents, the local government and State agencies. In spite of all the good principles of local land use control, areas like Kent Island need to respond to a larger responsibility, namely the one to the quality of the Chesapeake Bay, the role of the Eastern Shore overall in light of tenuous transportation connections and the threat of rising sea levels to name just a few issues that are larger than an individual jurisdiction. Democrats in this State have a long and good tradition of trying to manage growth in a responsible way. I have served under Governors Schafer and Glendening on the MD Growth Commission (subcommittee on Planning Techniques) and have been a founding member of the 1000 Friends of Maryland. As a planner and architect I have to say that the Four Seasons development has been the wrong development in the wrong place all along and newer insights in the importance of undisturbed shore lines (Clean Water Blueprint) for water quality reinforce the stand that previous administrations took on the matter as correct. I implore you vote against giving this development a wetlands permit.  

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA 

It is about time we really protect our environment if for nothing else but our own well being as the human species.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Baltimore SUN article about the Four Seasons project