Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Copycat - Baltimore's largest Arts Experiment Comes to an End

On the Auction Block

The Copycat building in Baltimore's Station North Arts District shows up in several chapters in of Baltimore's history. As a building constructed for the fabrication of an exclusive Baltimore innovation and invention - the crown cork for bottles.
Copycat building in Station North
(Photo: Eli Pousson, Baltimore Hertitage)

As a factory building that could adapt to changing needs from making clothing to accommodating  municipal workers providing relief in the Great Depression, to printing presses spewing out reams of paper. The final chapter was a maze of artist studios with all the forms of live-work one can imagine, including indoor skateboard ramps. The future is uncertain. 

Thus the building is testimony of Baltimore's industrial legacy and an example of artists being pioneers in urban rejuvenation. While future chapters are still unwritten, it is almost certain that its life as an art catalyst for Station North has come to an end. The building now faces the auction block and the need for substantial renovations to become useful for any use. This last chapter as a home and workplace for artists isn't as much about the building itself as about people, specifically the role of artists in a gentrifying district.

The auctioneer's  description is dripping with developer speak which conveniently hides the torturous years of its most recent history where a landlord and a part of the artist community battled it out in court and in the press.
 The Copycat Building is a rare landmark redevelopment opportunity located in Baltimore’s thriving Station North Arts and Entertainment District. This massive 265,000-square-foot, 6-level building encompasses a full city block and is a prominent feature of the Baltimore skyline. With its rich history and prime location, the Copycat Building is an ideal investment for a visionary developer. 
Originally built in 1897 as the main factory for the Crown Cork & Seal Company, the building is a marvel of Victorian Industrial architecture. For decades, it was a hub of innovation, producing the world-famous crown-style bottle caps. In the 1980s, the building transformed into an iconic live-work space, becoming a haven for Baltimore's burgeoning art scene and fostering a vibrant community of creative professionals. This unique heritage makes the Copycat Building more than just a property; it's a piece of Baltimore history. The Copycat Building is strategically located in the heart of the Greenmount West Planned Urban Development and the Station North Arts & Entertainment District. Its location offers unparalleled access and visibility. (Alex Cooper website)
Baltimore Street Art 2022, Graffiti Alley
Artists as Window Dressing?

The view of artists is notably different. Two quotes in a 2022 article in the SUN illustrate this.

“Developers use artists like window dressing, once they’re done using the artist, they dispose of them and put up condos the artists can’t afford … and then you’re left with a bunch of people in condos listening to Ed Sheeran.” (Ed Schrader, musician)

“If you guys really think that Baltimore is going to be just as fun and cool a place to live in without any of the artists, any of the show organizers, any of the public art installers that make this city beautiful, you’re in for a really dark, disappointing dystopia.” (Cam Alvarez, musician)

Reflecting the increasing acrimony between artists and landlord is a website organized by Indigo Null, the most vocal spokesperson of the artists' discontent who also organized a rent strike against the landlord that lasted through the pandemic. In an op-ed in Baltimore Beat they claimed:
Indigo Null in their studio space (Photo: Baltimore SUN)

The building was never brought up to housing code or properly licensed in this transition, and was thus operating with severely inadequate fire safety, unabated lead and asbestos, faulty and dangerous wiring, and elevators that were often dangerously inoperational, among other issues. 
After a four year battle Indigo Null was evicted in January of 2024, with media coverage. In a recent Facebook post rent strike organizer Null defended the rent strike with the dire conditions of both tenants and the building:
To be clear, the rent strike started because the landlord tried to evict the majority of the tenants in the building in a situation where many of us did not have any money coming in because of the pandemic. Rather than end up broke and homeless, we chose to preserve our resources so that we could end up in housing that wasn’t full of asbestos and lead. (Indigo Null)
 
"All Over Street" 2-5-2016 (Photo: Philipsen)

The Copy Cat - A Free Space

The third point of view is the one of the public. The Copycat as a hidden gem that was mysterious and a bit frightening in its otherness. It was an experimentation what can be done with space. The cavernous inners chopped up in such a confusing manner that it was easy to get lost which is beautifully demonstrated in this NPR video. Of course, creativity, innovation and artistic expression in pictures, music, sculpture and in the decoration of the spaces themselves. For a time, the public was eager to enter, the slight thrill from knowing that not everything was up to code and that may not find an exit mixed up with the excitement of a truly "free space".

Is Community Development Gentrification?

In many ways the Copycat landlord - tenant fight is also a reflection of the larger housing crisis and the ongoing lack of affordable housing which affects many segments of the population. Depending on the political stance, solutions vary wildly between a market driven view arguing from the supply and owner side and a view focusing on human hardships on the tenant side. Squaring safe and code compliant living with extremely low rent without subsidy may be quite impossible.  The court taking up the Copycat conflict expressed the legal view of this conflict in dry words:
The balance between a property owner’s right to repossess his or her property after the expiration of a tenancy and a tenant’s right to safe and habitable living conditions during a residential tenancy. That balance has been struck by the Legislature through its enactment of a comprehensive statutory framework that governs landlord and tenant relationships, including its modifications to the common law ejectment action and the remedies afforded to tenants to ensure safe and habitable housing. Anna Velicky v. The Copycat Building LLC, No. 1, September Term, 2021; Christopher Walke v. The Copycat Building LLC, No. 2, September Term, 2021, Opinion by Booth, J.
In a city like Baltimore that is angling for any foothold that let it climb out of the deep troubles that deindustrialization has wrought, the fight over the Copycat building has an even bigger horizon. It encompasses the issue of the City's shrinking population, the many vacant buildings, the branding of the city as a heaven for artistic people and the need for safer neighborhoods. The City can't be a neutral bystander and has to step up to bridge and mitigate the conflicts between protecting renters and stabilizing communities. The Copycat building should matter to the City administration.
Studio space (Screenshot NPR video)


Bridging Artistic Vibe and Development

Baltimore has invested in the idea of being an attractive destination for creativity, arts, innovation and quirkiness. The Copycat building with its chaotically creative studio spaces was the perfect expression of this self image. The City designated four arts and entertainment districts and for some time Station North seemed to be the one flourishing the most. During its heydays between 2009 and 2014  Station North organized Art Walks dubbed All Over Street during which the public came in droves to see the hidden city, the work of artists, the creative live work-spaces, and to drink and party. 

At the same time, Baltimore is working on stabilizing its ailing neighborhoods so they can keep their existing residents happy and become a destination for new residents. To this end the Greenmount Avenue corridor, the North Avenue corridor, Barclay, Johnston Square and Station North itself have made significant progress. Depressed property values, abandoned homes and vacant lots are a burden on existing residents and a detriment to attracting new ones. Therefore, one of the goals of neighborhood stabilization is to increase property values so owners can obtain loans,  generate generational wealth, or sell their homes and developers can recover rehabilitation and new construction cost through rent or sale without subsidies. 
City Arts Building in Station North (Jubilee Baltimore)


That makes keeping the artistic vibe parallel to neighborhood revitalization so difficult. When the neighborhood recovers, dirt cheap rents disappear. Is the path that the two musicians described in 2022 where the artists in the end get kicked inevitable? It was the case at the Bell Foundry in Station North, the H&H building in the Bromo arts district, the Copy Cat Annex and now for the Copycat itself. It will probably happen for the large complex in East Baltimore where the Crown Cork and Seal company had moved after moving out of their original quarters. In light of the Oakland fire then Mayor Pugh the City briefly stepped up to solve the problem of cheap artists housing that is also safe by creating the Safe Artist Space task force. The workgroup issued a report but didn't yield any substantial results, even though the City obviously tolerated a not code compliant Copycat building for some time. 

Station North Matures

Today in Station North there are no longer All-Over-Street events, the artist hang-out at the Windup Space has long closed and so did Joe Square Pizza and a number of other places that gave Station North its original vibe. The Bell Foundry evicted all tenants soon after the devastating fire in a similar space in Oakland that killed 36 people. Then a developer snapped it up. 

But things are not entirely bleak for artists. The Station North Arts District is still there, organizing events such as monthly art walks, with 20 venues this August. The Central Baltimore Partnership is working to revive the large former North Avenue Market where the Windup Space was and Liam Flynn were located. 
The Market, 10-30 West North Avenue, demonstrates Central Baltimore Partnership’s collaborative approach. 
In 2024, CBP and Central Baltimore Future Fund purchased this anchor in partnership with the building’s longtime owners Mike Shecter and Carolyn Frenkil and future owner, Twenty-Two Lanes.
The Market is now activated by interim tenants, including Baltimore Youth Arts, Club Car, and Mobtown Ballroom and Cafe, while plans and resources for the restoration are assembled. (CBP website)
The creative spirit in Station North is still alive. Open Works is flourishing as one of the nation's largest maker spaces, the Impact Hub is actively "supporting a community of innovators and entrepreneurs to scale and sustain their initiatives", two modern artist live-work spaces developed by Jubilee are fully booked. 
North Avenue Market 2024 (Photo: Philipsen)


Area 405, a building around the corner from the Copycat may be illustrative. Its function as an artists refuge and creative center had also been in jeopardy  because of code issues and the building's condition in spite of heroic efforts of an artist cooperative who owned the building since 2001 and provided a home to 45 artists working in the building, the Station North Tool Library, and the AREA 405 the exhibition space.  After 20 years of independent artist-run ownership  the anchor of the Station North Arts & Entertainment District, and Baltimore City had to close in 2021. But it wasn't gentrification that followed. Instead, the CBP together with developer Ernst Valery stepped in to save the structure and its use by artists with the help of a slew of funding sources including the France-Merrick Foundation, the Goldseker Foundation, the Baltimore City Neighborhood Impact Investment Fund, Reinvestment Fund, the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, and the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.  Area 405 will host the annual "Sweaty Eyeballs" animation show on August 22.
“I cannot find another example of a community coming together to save an arts space like what has happened with Area 405. With a very strong development team, we took a calculated risk on a revitalization strategy. We couldn’t find the model, so we created it. I hope to see it replicated again in Baltimore and in other parts of the country. It is feasible, and it is critically important.” (Ellen Janes, Executive Director CBP)
 CBP is not likely to come to the rescue of the Copycat, it would be far too big a bite in addition to all their other projects. Could it be that another entity steps up to save the Copycat from being moved out of artists reach? Whether it will happen or not, change will continue in Station North and across the city and the art scene will change as well. After reading this article Indigo Null sent me this statement which sums it up quite nicely:


Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Related article on this Blog:

Other sources:

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2022/07/28/copycat-building-photos/

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Friday, July 11, 2025

Retired Baltimore Subway Cars for the Homeless?

 After almost 40 years of service the MTA subway car fleet has reached its end of life and will be replaced with new cars beginning this year. In spite of four decades of hauling riders, many people in Baltimore don't even know that the subway exists. Maybe that would change if subway cars would be converted to a homeless village?

Baltimore subway. 80 Budd Universal Transit Vehicles (Image: MTA)

What to do with old subway cars is a nationwide problem. Transit agencies are eager to order new equipment, but leave unresolved what to do with the large amounts of scrap. 

New York dumped thousands of old subway cars into the ocean so the could harbor marine life as artificial reefs. It turned out that this method worked successfully for the old steel cars but not for the newer stainless steel models. Baltimore has to get rid of 80  Budd Universal Transit Vehicles which are clad in stainless steel. The US company Budd, at the end bought up by German Thyssen and now defunct, stopped making those cars in 1986. This specific model is in use only in Baltimore and Miami. 

Given the housing crisis and the soaring homelessness it isn't surprising that folks trying to end homelessness as well as architects and makers continue to come come up with the ideas of how to cost effectively and humanely house the unhoused.  It was inevitable that using the old train cars for housing would come up. Is it feasible?

Dimensions, sides and ends of the train cars

A Baltimore subway car wouldn't be a tiny home; with its 75 ft length and 10 ft width and overall 12' height (7'-2" clear) it would offer a gross area of 750 sqft or exactly the size of an average US  one bedroom apartment in 2018 (Statistica).

The idea of repurposing train cars as structures is not new. In fact, the concept of the "diner" originated with silver train cars about a 100 years ago. 

Diners look like rail carriages because they once were for the most part – they were converted into mobile eateries and built to replicate them. Learning how the trend started requires a time travel back in time to the 19th century and then forward to New Jersey which remains America’s undisputed diner capital to this very day. (Article)
Hollywood Diner Baltimore (SUN photo 2018)

When the Washington Metro modernized their subway cars, the late DC architect Arthur Cotton Moore suggested housing for the homeless and got a lot of media attention. (Huffington Post, CityLab, WaPo). 

The idea never got off the ground and some of DC's famous 2000 series metro cars reportedly wound up as scrap in Baltimore. Judging from the sketches, Moore seems to have been a bit loose with the specifics of the rail car, though. With similar dimensions as the Baltimore subway car, its not clear how he came up with the two 560-square-foot one-bedroom apartments in each railcar that he had sketched and described to the Huff Post. 

Cotton Moore sketch for a Metro car converted into two apartments

Subway cars were not yet turned into housing as far as I can tell. Portland, OR held an idea competition in 2020 for the re-use of the MAX articulated light rail cars which are narrower but longer than subway cars. The MAX Village (Jury award) and Afro Village (People's Choice Award) were the most notable concepts.

"MAX Village" proposes a mobile, synergistic series of spaces that create living, learning sustaining and growing opportunities for Portland's most vulnerable populations.The concept reuses multiple Type 1 MAX cars at a time and proposes simple changes to the cars' interiors to accommodatea range of new functions including a learning center, a health clinic, a community kitchen and a warming shelter. Bringing the four functions together generates an inclusive and forward-looking atmosphere that empowers people to grow and learn new skills while addressing pressing needs of health and shelter.(Competition Board)

Portland MAX Village competition board

NDC volunteer and expert for homeless villages Todd Ferry who at the time worked on the Portland MAX Reuse Design Challenge organized by Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design showed me the Afro Village concept which is now closest to realization. The articulated tram cars are slated to become a resource center for the unhoused.  

The AfroVillage team is working to transform a retiring MAX train and a site on N Larrabee into the AfroFuturism Oasis— a sanctuary space that harmoniously integrates nature, clean energy, green infrastructure, and Afrofuturistic design to create a healing oasis for Black, Indigenous, and People of
Color in Portland. (Afro Village website)

In London a few Tube subway cars became artist studios. 

Located on top of an old brick warehouse in Shoreditch, London, Village

Underground provides affordable studio space for young artists (around 15 pounds per week). The subway cars act as working spaces for the artists, while a lower-level restored warehouse is used to host events and exhibit the artists’ works. The four subway vehicles that make up the village were purchased for a grand total of 200 pounds each. They were then moved on top of the warehouse, and retrofitted to create a working space. The seats inside the carriages were removed, but everything else remains as is (one can even go into the cabin to play around with all the buttons and levers).The best bit? There are plans to expand this concept to Berlin, Lisbon, and Toronto. Needless to say, we love it. (In-Habitat)

London artist studios (In-Habitat)

Montreal also held a design   competition in 2016 for a future use of discarded transit cars. As a result a couple of Montreal subway cars became a cafe in 2018 in the F-MR station project which is slated to become a bigger multistory installation of eight metro cars.  In  In DC a couple of cars are converted into the brewpub Metrobar.

What speaks for using the subway cars for housing is that they have windows, doors, are wider than trailers, have some insulation and also ground clearance useable as a crawl space. They also have ducts for heating and cooling as well as electric conduits. The Baltimore cars are made from stainless steel that is pretty corrosion proof. It would have to be investigated whether the cars would need to be stripped top the shell in order to install more insulation and an acceptable interior finish or whether ceilings, current wall cladding and conduits could be kept and used. Possibly HVAC could run through existing vents and ducts and a heat pump installed on the roof could provide heating and cooling. Since the cars have only minimal insulation a solar array could shade them in combination with awnings, trellises and other devices that would make a subway car look less austere. 

In his proposal DC architect Moore pointed out that the most expensive items would be the bath and kitchenette in each of his mini apartments. Since kitchens and bathrooms need water and sewer, this is, indeed and addition that would require significant modification, even if one could run the pipes in the crawl space underneath. Moore envisioned a village of up to 80 cars. This would have been 160 baths and kitchens in an arrangement that in the architect's sketch looked like a refugee camp. 

Cotton Moore suggestion for a subway car village

The cost for bathrooms and kitchenettes could be avoided by not equipping all cars with them and using a campground concept instead, where the cars are housing pods and a central facility would provide space for kitchen, showers and laundry. These central amenities could potentially also be built from subway cars if they were paired into doubles with parts of the exterior wall removed. The campground concept with central facilities has been applied in homeless villages around the country, especially in Portland and Seattle. 

Solving the technical issues of conversion isn't enough to realize a subway car village. For this to happen one needs a site, the proper zoning, agreement in the surrounding community, amenities in the vicinity and a way to make converted subway cars acceptable to code officials. Buildings are tightly regulated from minimum room sizes to ceiling heights and insulation. A possible way to avoid building codes is to declare the village a campground. Another is to define the structures as vehicles, the same approach that paved the path for mobile homes to become a success for affordable housing. For this the wheels would have to stay on and the cars would have to set up so they could be moved, at least theoretically. Should the residents be required to move after a certain time or become long-term tenants? In Portland the villages consisting of stick-built pods are considered transitions from living in the street to a more permanent solution in a home or apartment. Ferry told me that people that had this transition had a much higher success rate in staying in permanent housing compared to those moving from the street.

Building Community: Agape Village, Portland

One of the positive effects of a homeless village is the aspect of community among people that share certain experiences. The sense of community is also often cited as the reason why certain "tent cities" keep popping up. To support the aspect of community a village for the homeless should apply placemaking elements that consider and prioritize the spaces between structures as much as the structures themselves. Instead of the military order proposed in the Cotton Moore arrangement, a village would have gardens, gathering places, fire pits and allow nature to filter in. Should subway cars be used in a greater number, it would be important to break the uniformity of their appearance through add-ons and modifications such as porches, stairs, decks and the like that allow individualization and do everything to avoid the refugee camp impression in favor of a more the spatial arrangement of a traditional village. Given their size, cutting them in half could be considered, allowing, for example, putting the two half in a right angle to each other with a wooden deck, breezeway or porch as the connecting link.

For the idea of adaptive reuse of subway cars for housing to gain traction in Baltimore, an entire eco-system of supporters is needed to sort through site selection, availability of utilities, zoning, code issues, transport and delivery of the cars and community participation. Most importantly, such a project would need funding, possibly from the resources set aside to combat homelessness. If done right, a proposed solution would be a win-win for the City, the MTA, the community and of course for the unhoused.

Hope Village Tiny Homes in East Baltimore

Baltimore City has supported unconventional solutions before from the Red Village in Station North to the tiny homes in East Baltimore.  Open Works has expressed interest in the concept and could provide the necessary fit-out work and accessories. Mayor Scott has continually shown an interest in solving the homeless problem and has even bought entire hotels to this end. Would an experiment with subway cars of interest? it is worth finding out fast, some old subway car  are already available.

 Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Related on this Blog:

These tiny homes are supposed to do a big lift (2024)

Housing the Homeless (2017)

Does the Tiny House solve a real problem? (2017)

What "Community First" could mean for affordable housing and homeless policies (2018)
What it takes to transport one Metro car

Inside of the DC Metrobar car

Montreal MR-63 project vision

Montreal cafe car MR-63 initial installation




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Wednesday, June 4, 2025

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


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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

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 

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