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| Filling in a freeway: Inner Loop, Rochester NY |
Both cities are industrial legacy cities hit hard by the demise of their key industries (Kodak and Bethlehem Steel, respectively), both try a recovery driven by knowledge and universities (Rochester Institute of Technology, Hopkins) and rely on the power of the waterfront as a driver for quality of life (The Genesee River and its famous falls, Inner Harbor). Both cities are highly segregated by race, class and income and in both Caucasians are a minority.
Both have their very own civic unrests (Rochester in 1964, Baltimore in 2015).
Both cities once had a thriving downtown retail district, both were hit hard by suburbanization and urban renewal. Both are now plagued by the many vacant structures as a testament of drastic population loss. It made some sense, then, that the Community Design Center of Rochester (CDCR), a non-profit, invited me to talk as part of their lecture series Reshaping Rochester, now in its 14th year. Past speakers included many better known urban advocates, such as Paul Goldberger, former architecture critic of the New York Times, Earl Blumenauer, Congressman from Portland, Chris Leinberger from Brookings, Dr Richard Jackson of UCLA and John Norquist, former Mayor and president of the Congress for New Urbanism.
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| Downtown Rochester buildings which were demolished for a convention center |
The first thing we can learn from Rochester is the format of the lecture series itself. The CDCR invites the speakers to talk at a really cool place, the auditorium inside the factory of Gleason Works, a still flourishing part of manufacturing legacy industry which makes gears of all kinds. Walking from the entry of the historic factory to the lecture hall exposes one to the smells and sights of a place where actual things are made to this day! Not relying on the movers and shakers of Rochester willingness to show up for the evening lecture, the organizers precede the event with a lunch workshop, where stakeholders and officials can quiz the guest in a smaller setting.
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| Povertry concentrations in both cities |
Even after the lecture, the organizers are not done. Once the speaker has left town, the CDCR is inviting for a follow up discussion sorting through suggestions and ideas that were part of the presentation and which could be applied in town.
This type of "wrap around" isn't just making best use of the effort of bringing outside speakers to Rochester, it also makes the visit much more worthwhile for the speaker. It is very clear that the City of Rochester has greatly benefited from 14 years of lectures and keynote addresses around various themes and topics compiling the best practices of urban planning around the nation.
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| Some comparative figures Baltimore/Rochester. (Data USA) |
My topic was housing as a tool to achieve equity and health in a divided city. Shortly after landing at the airport I already toured an excellent already partly completed example of a progressive housing project in Rochester: Charlotte on the Loop. It is a mixed-income, mixed-use project with contemporary architecture with extremely low income housing units and transitional housing units right next to market rate, 60-80% area median income (AMI) and condos. This alone is courageous and quite rare, even in a time where mixed income housing is generally promoted. But the kicker is this: The project sits in part on top of one of the past injustices of urban renewal: It sits on the filled in portion of what used to be Rochester's Inner Loop, a depressed freeway of the kind we call the highway to nowhere in Baltimore.
The Inner Loop East Transformation Project converted a sunken section of expressway to the east of Downtown to an at-grade "complete street," that will include bicycle and walking paths. (City of Rochester website)
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| Charlotte on the Loop rendering (Home Leasing) |
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| Erie Harbor: New mixed income housing on the foundation of "a project". |
A similarly innovative mixed income project is Erie Harbor, a mixed income development on the shore of the Genesee which re-used foundations and first floor walls of a public housing project to save the cost of new foundations on the poor soils of the shore area and build an up to date mixed income community. The colorful new upper stories are now attractive riverfront apartments, an affordable highrise tower received the same color treatment but remained low income housing.
Of interest for Rochester could be the two Baltimore models of specialized affordable housing for artists and teachers employed by Jubilee and Seawall respectively, in the artist case with new construction and for the teachers with adaptive reuse at Miller's Court in Remington and the former Union Mill in Hampden.
Rochester is also a good example of innovative and socially just adaptive re-use. The best example maybe the conversion of Cunningham Carriage factory which was converted to seventy-one affordable and special needs apartments by DePaul, a private, not-for-profit organization founded in 1958 that provides services in Addiction Prevention and Support Services, Affordable Housing, Mental Health ResidentialSenior Living Communities, Support Programs and Vocational Programs. The building is located directly next to the thriving Susan B. Anthony historic district but is part of a collection of similar still vacant warehouses awaiting to be used.
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| DePaul Carriage Factory conversion to low income and service housing (Photo: DePaul) |
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| Downtown: Wide streets, pedestrians on bridges, historic churches and modernist towers make for a not very pedestrian friendly setting (photo: Philipsen) |
There is an impressive influx of housing into downtown, including the conversion of the 1972 modernist Lincoln Tower (later Chase Tower) into mixed use with 11 floors of office space, 7 floors of market rate apartments, and 4 floors of condominiums. In Baltimore no urban renewal type office towers such as the ones at Charles Center have yet been converted to apartments, possibly because of a stronger office market.
According to the Rochester City Newspaper, a total of 822 new units have been completed downtown since 2010, and 22 new projects with nearly 1900 units are planned. (Baltimore reports 8,800 new and planned downtown units).Still, Rochester's city center is still far from featuring a contiguous urban fabric. The demolition of a large indoor mall complex was the right idea, but so far the carved out development parcels sit unused and the community is split about future uses, especially for the so-called parcel 5.
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| Downtown Rochester in its hey-days |
A key piece of the former Midtown Plaza property, Parcel 5 is one of the most important development sites in the city. It's in the heart of downtown, and it fronts on Main Street, and whatever goes there could have a major impact on the city's center for generations. It's also at the center of a major controversy involving City Hall, developers, leaders of performing arts organizations, and public-space activists....City officials have been trying to figure out what to do with the Midtown Plaza site literally for decades. The Plaza, which occupied 8.6 acres, was once a bustling retail center paired with an office tower. As suburban development and consumers' shopping habits changed, Midtown Plaza slowly emptied out. And city officials looked for new uses.(City Newspaper 7/2018)A big boost for downtown could come from using the secret weapon which put Baltimore's renewal on the map: Waterfront revitalization. Reclaiming the downtown section of the Genesee River, though, is mostly still an idea on paper for downtown where the 24 miles trail system still needs to be completed.
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| Genesee Falls, the local attraction |
Just like in Baltimore, several neighborhoods near downtown are experiencing a renaissance, in part driven by breweries. In 2012 CityLab attested Rochester a unique place among "rustbelt" revival cities. Just as in Baltimore, some neighborhoods have always been great and remained that way. Strong City once mentioned three, especially the Park Avenue neighborhood on the East end of town. The north side of town with its many two story walk up public housing units is very different. Except for a few historic churches all the historic urban fabric is gone in favor of low density vinyl siding housing sitting on barren lawns. While Baltimore's disinvested neighborhoods are located in once thriving communities, Rochester's poor live in areas that were designed for poverty making a recovery even more difficult.
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| Park Avenue, an intact historic neighborhoods with popular restaurants at its commercial nodes (Photo: Philipsen) |
Rochester's planning director is fully vested in the "middle neighborhoods" strategy which Baltimore had also embraced under Martin O'Malley and Planning Director Otis Rolley. It is based on the "building from strength" "triage strategy" that states that it is cheaper and more effective to invest in a middle neighborhood and keep it from sliding than investing in an area that has no market at all, such as Sandtown. After Freddy Gray which made Sandtown nationally known, the "middle neighborhood" strategy has become untenable because it had been recognized as perpetuating inequity and disproportionally spending capital funds in white areas. For 2019 Baltimore ramped up its capital investments in African American communities.
The equity coordinator in Planning, the Green Network Plan with its emphasis on equity and green spaces in disinvested communities, Baltimore's reinvestment fund, Opportunity Zone designations, the community benefits agreements and the brand-new Baltimore Sustainability Plan, are all items which Rochester could use as best practices gleaned from Baltimore.
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| The power of a peaceful snow covered historic neighborhood (Photo: Philipsen) |
One piece of resilience and sustainability, of course, Baltimoreans can learn from folks in Rochester: How to deal with snow. My lecture took place when it snowed all day. By evening all roads were covered in white, plowing and salting not withstanding. The lecture was not cancelled and the auditorium filled at least two thirds, even though everybody had to get the snow off their cars afterwards in temperatures in the teens. The next morning I noticed that side streets remained not salted, and cars were gliding by in the kind of silence only a snow covered road provides. The idea of saving money and protect trees and groundwater from salt pollution is one we should adopt.
Klaus Philpsen, FAIA
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