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

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

Baltimore Vacant Houses: Finally Progress and a Viable Plan!

Mayor Brandon Scott's administration and his Housing Commissioner Alice Kennedy seem to finally have found a recipe for reducing Baltimore's persistent blight of disinvestment and vacant houses, an issue that generations of mayors tried to tackle unsuccessfully.  

Vacant houses, a drag on Baltimore's
neighborhoods (Photo: Philipsen)

At least that was the impression one got listening to Baltimore's Housing Commissioner, Director of Finance and the President of the national organization MuniCap on Wednesday. The trio presented present the details of Scott's $3bn fifteen-year housing blight elimination plan to a rapt audience assembled in UMB's biotech center per invitation of the Lamda Alpha Land Economics Society LAI. Even retired former Housing Commissioner Graziano was impressed after quizzing the team with half a dozen or so technical questions about the workability of the innovative and nationally unique "non-contiguous" tax increment financing scheme (TIF). 

On the day of the presentation the DHCD dashboard displayed on the GIS-technology based CoDeMap showed 12,685  City registered VBNs (Vacant Building Notices). Even conceding that the number of vacants isn't an exact science (for one thing there are additionally around 20,000 vacant lots), this total is more than 20% less than the 16,000 vacant buildings DHCD had reported in 2015.

Officials from the City of Baltimore relied on technology to support their place-based intervention strategy. [..] CoDeMap, a mapping application that is based on [...] GIS. CoDeMap visualizes and analyzes housing needs in the city, neighborhood by neighborhood. CoDeMap also is a central point of access for [...] numerous databases with everything from citation data to a property's permit history. Launched more than five years ago, CoDeMap has evolved from a housing code enforcement tool to a platform that provides insights into housing, community development, and property datasets at the citywide, neighborhood, block, and parcel levels. 

In December 2023 when the Baltimore Mayor first announced his $3bn plan to eliminate vacant houses over 15 years, many yawned in spite of the giant dollar figure which encompassed 85% of Baltimore's total budget annual budget. They heard those promises before and with an instrument like a "non-contiguous TIF" there seemed to be a lot of pixie dust on this plan. Who had ever heard about this financing tool being used in totally disinvested areas on a lot-by-lot bases instead of a boundary defined area? Even that the Mayor stood with GBC and BUILD on his side, many Baltimoreans, jaded by past promises, were not convinced that this plan was real.

Baltimore Housing Commissioner speaking at a
LAI luncheon (Photo: Philipsen)

But a good year later the TIF has been approved, the first tranche of TIF bonds is about to be issued, the State has allocated money, and the block by block revitalization scheme is in full swing. Kennedy says $1.2bn of the needed funds have already been "committed".  And here they were, the money people, the Director Finance and the Municap man who advises municipalities across the nation on financial matters explaining in detail that this TIF was not fairy dust and that it was embedded in a larger strategy that DHCD has embarked on. 

For starters, the estimated total of $150 million TIF is not intended to pay entire projects but to finance the so called assessment gap that yawns between what a building costs to rehabilitate and what it could be sold for as well as infrastructure costs. The analysis showed that on average the appraisal gap is about $50k per building. With a total cost of doing the rehabilitation job estimated at $200,000, plus possible cost for infrastructure, the cost beyond the gap has to be covered by conventional loans and a mix of  City and State funds that Governor Moore promised in the total amount of $900 million, combining funds previously known as "project CORE" and BRNI ("Bernie"), guaranteed with a perpetual $50m minimum per year. 

The Mayor had not pulled the $3bn figure out of thin air or from the back of a napkin. For once, DHCD and experts had actually analyzed not only the problem (how the many vacants had morphed from "symptom of decline to driver of decline" through their impact on quality of life, surrounding housing values and Baltimore's property tax revenue) but also suggested a fix. Based on an assortment of studies they had performed detailed calculations of how much money it would take to fix the problem including buildings and infrastructure, in what sequence it could be done and, most importantly, what the funding sources could be. These studies, documents and institutions laid the groundwork, according to the Mayor's press release at the time:

Population loss comparison of industrial legacy cities
(From Whole Blocks-Whole City report)

Baltimore City / DHCD' (Framework of Community Development) czbLLC’s (Whole Blocks, Whole City Report and Analysis, prepared for BUILD) , MuniCap, Inc.,  CohnReznick, (TIF analysis), Johns Hopkins 21st Century Cities Initiative, (The Costs of Baltimore’s Vacant Housing), Econsult Solutions, (The Power of Residential Growth, for the Baltimore Development Corporation). Not mentioned in the press release is Joe Meyerhoff, a Baltimore based consultant who promoted the idea of non contiguous TIF bonds as a tool to fund the appraisal gap. 

I have written on this blog about Telesis and Sean Closkey's understanding of how to attack Baltimore's vacants problem in a systematic way which creates a ladder effect of values. Closkey now is part of ReBuild Metro which was an essential partner in the Whole City Blocks report. Principles of this approach include building from strength, working with communities and creating this stepladder of increasing value that would also allow the City to pay the TIF back. Usually, developers are on the line if the payback from incremental tax revenue increase doesn't develop as expected, there is also typically a special tax district applied to the TIF area. In this case the City can secure the first tranche with already rehabbed properties from the last two years created under "Vacants to Value", HCDC's longstanding program created under housing commissioner Graziano. Under Mayor Pugh and Young, the City had also developed a strategy for developing from strength in an attempt to bundle investment in "impact Investment Zones". This Framework has since been refined over time. 

Population loss was larger than household loss
(From Whole Blocks-Whole City report)

As Commissioner Kennedy explained, the funds to renovate cannot work in a vacuum but must be in an overall strategy which includes a strategic approach that is well coordinated with overall planning (DHCD hired several strategic planners), measures to expedite getting a clean title for vacant properties, block speculators form holding swaths of vacants through proper taxing and working through community centered and led vision plans. The history of the vacant house problem from Sandtown to Johnston Square shows that in some areas (Sandtown) the appraisal gap remained the same or grew while others managed to close it in a few years eliminating the need for subsidies (Barclay). 

The estimated upfront cost and payback over time (From the 
Kennedy presentation)

The value creation creates an ambiguous problem for existing homeowners: The assessed value of their homes goes up when a block has no vacant units left, welcome generational wealth creation but also an unwelcome tax burden, in spite of homesteading credits. The proposed solution: A one or two percent city sales tax that could reduce the property tax for every homeowner by $1000 if applied as a flat credit, would lower the tax rate for the average City homeowner ($150,00 home value) to near the tax levels of Baltimore County.  The sales tax suggestion which would align Baltimore with many peer cities, has been a legislative priority by the Scott administration during the last two legislative sessions in Annapolis but is a political longshot. .

Kennedy also noted that infrastructure frequently had been an overlooked problem that sank the cost calculations of many inner city rowhouse rehab projects. She mentioned the case of necessary alley widening that requires the relocation of electric poles, hundreds of thousands of dollars that distributed on just a few houses could make a project not viable unless infrastructure funds are set aside separately.  

From the audience came the question whether stormwater could be thought on a block or area level

Illustration of tax revenue occupied homes versus vacant ones
(Source, Meyerhoff slides)

instead of house by house, alluding to the new strict stormwater management requirements that are applied when new construction occurs on vacant lots. Kennedy said, stormwater mitigation is an issue that her department will be studying together with DPW and the parks department with the goal to create those synergies between new open spaces and new development. 

The innovative "non contiguous TIF"  approach has already drawn the interest from other cities, said Kennedy. The national ULI Magazine featured an article about it. Baltimore's successful violence reduction strategies also have created national interest recently. The last time folks came to Baltimore to study innovation was when Mayor O'Malley had implemented CitiStat. It is about time, we show America that government can, indeed, be effective. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Rehabilitated alley houses in Pigtown (Photo: Philipsen)

Previous articles on this Blog addressing the vacant house problem.

Who owns Baltimore's vacant houses and how to fix them up? (2024)

"Vacants to Value" becomes "Buy Into Bmore": More than just a name change? (2022)

One way to have fewer vacant rowhouses (2019)

Barclay's secret sauce of success (2017)

The universe and Baltimore's vacants (2017)

Can demolition of vacants add value? (2016)

  

Mall Makeovers: How to Build Real Town Centers and Transit Oriented Development

 

Invited by ULI to speak about the potential of  Lutherville Station to become a successful Transit Oriented Development (TOD), and appointed to a Redevelopment Authority which includes the100 acre failing Security Square Mall, motivated me to outline what it takes to transform a mall into an attractive mixed-use, a town-center, or a TOD.

A label is no substitute for substance 

Traditional town center: Frederick Maryland
(Photo: Philipsen)

Popular labels for the efforts of transforming failing malls include "Mixed use" "town center" and "transit oriented development" (TOD). All too often these terms are simply lipstick applied to pretty much the same old pig. Some clarification is in order. 

The US is severely "over-retailed", especially in metro areas, resulting in wasting huge amounts of commercially zoned land to underperforming or defunct, auto oriented  retail, while housing is in short supply and open space is dwindling. This makes the proper redevelopment of  the vast  malls important for taxes, jobs, services, access and the quality of life in communities. 

Adding a few non-retail uses around the usual mall boxes or opening up a formerly enclosed mall by turning a few shops to face the outside, therefore doesn't address the core issues, nor does it create mixed-use, let alone a town-center. Nearby transit alone doesn't turn a refurbished mall into a TOD.

What is a mixed use center?

After decades of strict use separation, planners now love "mixed-use". The bar for becoming a mixed-use center seems low, but achieving it isn't as easy as adding a another use next to shopping, even if under zoning that may be considered mixed-use.

The traditional main street would be instructive to really understand the term: It often has offices or apartments above stores and buildings of various sizes, styles and materials. The mix of uses is part of the DNA and clearly visible from any vantage point and part of the experience at any place. There may be restaurants, movie houses, schools, churches, libraries, post offices, plazas, doctor's offices, local government services and green spaces. Traditional town centers are diverse in many respects while everything is tied together by public streets and plazas.

Refurbished Hunt Valley Mall: Adjacency of uses and transit is not
 the same as mixed use, a town center or a TOD
(Google Earth 2024)

Public uses such as schools, libraries and post offices that are not devoted to sales and profit are a key ingredient of "mixed use". A sense of artificiality remains as in National Harbor, no matter all the new urbanist design, the trees, sculptures and carefully designed streetscapes. The piped in music from speakers embedded in tree planters in National Harbor as well as at many refurbished shopping areas is a homogenizing ingredient of the old mall that adds to the sense that a place is not authentic. Not everything is a matter of physical design. 

The element that is most frequently missed in those new-towns and so called mixed-use mall replacements is mixed-income. A true mixed-use center needs to cater to people of all walks of life, not just one income strata. Retail needs to be more than fashion stores and restaurants and must include items of daily needs such as grocery stores, hardware stores fresh food markets. Housing needs to include middle and low income offerings and places for the elderly.

In other words, just like eggs sitting next to sugar and flower are not (yet) a cake, so does a mall with a couple of apartment buildings next to it not make a mixed-use center. 

What makes a town center?

Redeveloped Mall: Pike and Rose,
Rockville, MD (Photo: Philipsen)

A town center needs all of the above and more. The added ingredient is that there is a town around it with neighborhoods that are connected to the center. All it takes is a stroll through the center of historic towns like Annapolis, Easton, or Frederick in my home state of Maryland or through Boulder, Co, Berkeley, California or San Antonio, Texas to realize that a town center isn't an isolated place but that its streets continue seamlessly into surrounding neighborhoods.

Even newer town centers like Towson, Bethesda or Silver Spring  in Maryland or Cherry Creek, Co may have some big box type retailers and chain stores, not only gain an urban feel from a street network and block pattern and buildings that face streets with sidewalks instead of vast surface parking lots, they are also embedded into a larger setting. 

New towns like Reston, Va or National Harbor, Md understood this while the new town of Columbia with its still vibrant mall is still struggling to convert their mall focused central area into a real connected town center. 

Streets with wide sidewalks lined by buildings with active first floor uses create meaningful public spaces are important to give a town a public component where people can be observers and experience the classic interaction between the building and the void, the indoor and the outdoor, movement and rest which in combination are the ingredients of placemaking. A successful center is supposed to be the commons for those coming from the surrounding areas. Successful town centers cater to a shared interest by providing things one cannot find in neighborhoods from commercial spaces like restaurants  shops to services like s post office, a library, and places of worship. The inward oriented malls with their homogenizing climate control, background music and design lack the tensions of real placemaking. Food courts and fountains are poor substitutes for public spaces under the open sky.

When malls are placed in the middle of nowhere and are surrounded by service lanes and highways for easy auto access their chance of becoming a town center in the true meaning of the word is almost zero. 

Transit Oriented Development

The definition of TOD is probably the most demanding. Most development near transit can, at best, be called "transit adjacent development". 

 Comprehensive TOD corridor planning around transit nodes, Rosslyn-
Ballston, VA with WAMTA metro stations

Again, an excursion into history may be useful. Historically all development was centered around transportation, whether it was roads, rail or water. When urban public transportation became more than a horse drawn cart, transit villages along electric street car lines became popular, in Baltimore, Chicago and around all the older US cities. Their characteristic was that everything was located within a 1/4 or maximally 1/2 mile transit stop via a street grid equipped with sidewalks. Everything was TOD before the automobile. In Europe where the old development patterns have been kept to a much larger extent than in the US, the term TOD is not common, because planners continued to place all major development near transit, i.e. transit remained the building principle of placing stuff and not the exception. 

Good walk connectivity to a rail transit mode remains a key characteristic of TOD as well as a dense multitude of uses that are "transit-supportive". The large scale retail where people buy large quantities or heavy items became known as "big box" retail and is common found in malls or in mall conversions. Those are typically not transit-supportive. By contrast, the traditional office building with its 9-5 cubicles in which many people work in close proximity, coming and leaving at fixed times are very transit supportive because they fill whole trains at "rush-hour" when the transit is dispatched with high frequency. Unfortunately, this type of use is dying along with the malls and is not a good future oriented mall replacement either. This leaves residential use that produces less riders per square foot than an office but possibly more trips a day than mere rush hour traffic. As in the discussion about mixed use, diversity in building types, uses and demographics is most likely to be transit supportive. But it isn't enough. 

Transit adjacent to shopping isn't TOD: Hunt Valley LRT station 
(Photo: Philipsen)

Real TOD must make transit an integral part of the development and allow direct, safe and enjoyable walk connections to the station for arrival and departure. Whatever kiss and ride and park and ride facilities should not create a barrier around the station, whether in the shape of surface lots or parking structures. Modern electric rail transit is quiet and far less intrusive than a busy roadway, so there is little reason not to place housing, offices, shops, restaurants or terraces close to the tracks. The proper integration of transit means that the public agencies that control roads and transit and the private developers need to work hand in hand and plan together.

Finally, TOD requires not only good land use but also frequent and reliable transit. A light rail station that runs only every half hour and doesn't connect to a transit network is hardly the "value added" one excepts from transit in a TOD. 

 The example of Hunt Valley Mall in Maryland

Hunt Valley Mall with nearly around 90 acres of land area circumscribed by a circular service drive had been developed in the 1970s using a typical mall formula with a clunky non descriptor mass of structure in the center surrounded by seas of parking. Services are concentrated in the back. The mall was opposed by county planners because Hunt Valley was not located in one of three designated "town center" growth areas  and its proximity to the rural urban demarcation line put undue pressure to lands that were to be protected.   The mall opened with just two anchor stores and never fully succeeded as a traditional mall. 

Even after refurbishment, big boxes and a sea of parking remain
Hunt Valley Towne Center (Photo: Philipsen)

Predictably, the addition of a light rail station placed on the front parking lot did little to prevent the demise of the mall only 19years after the opening, a first exhibit to the dead mall syndrome.  In 2002 it was bought by the developer Greenberg Gibbons  and redeveloped as "Towne Center" using some token "New Urbanism" elements by creating a U-shaped plaza faced by smaller retail and featuring a small green space and gazebo. This nice touch left the bulk of the mall area untouched but together with a set of new tenants was enough to create the impression that something entirely new was happening here. This set the area on to a path of economic success which continued when the developer began to add apartments and elderly housing on the underutilized fringes of the mall. The Baltimore Business Journal gushed about it in a recent article:

Ninety acres in leafy, hilly Baltimore County have reset retail standards as Hunt Valley Towne Centre continues to morph into a monument to second acts.

Instead of Sears and Macy's the place is now anchored by the popular grocery chain Wegmans and includes national brands for a total of  almost 60 stores.  On the north side a new Brightview Senior Living building that will open this year sits on what used to be part of Sears flanked by an old mall structure on one side and a giant parking garage on the other. On the east side the Avalon luxury apartments connect seamlessly to the shops with their first floor dedicated to retail and amenities. 

Hunt Valley "New Towne" is neither truly mixed use, nor a town center nor TOD

As successful and popular as the new Towne Center may be, as of now it is neither a town center nor is it a model TOD development. 

Not truly mixed use because there is no integration between the various building forms, scale and uses, they all are more or less separate from each other and do not follow any recognizable urban design or "place-making" principles or create the "third places" that are so essential.

Stores opened up to a courtyard simulating a traditional main street.
A move that put Hunt Valley Towne Center on a path towards
commercial success (Photo: Philipsen) 

Not a town center because there is no town around it, let alone connected neighborhoods. Every use, the rail station and the parking are removed from the adjacent arteries of Shawan Road and York Road by the remaining circular mall road that acts like a moat. The distance to the arteries is further increased by occasional additional service drives inside the moat road and McCormick road that creates a third ring on the entire west and north side. It's hard to imagine a more auto oriented arrangement and one that is more separated from whatever is surrounding it, namely office parks and other commercial uses.

Lastly, in spite of the rail service, the redeveloped mall isn't true transit oriented development: The new elderly housing complex is indicative: It faces the loading backside of the mall complex and is the located as far as possible from the light rail station which is really ironic since the elderly there are the most likely transit users in the entire complex. The station is burdened by the legacy of the old mall where it was pushed off to the side. It has no meaningful walk connections in any direction not has it seen any upgrades to make it a more central feature. Instead, the station has its own P&R lot as if there wasn't enough parking already. Unfortunately it remains typical that transit is rather tolerated than integrated even though in a true TOD transit would be creating massive additional value and save developers a lot of money by reducing the demand for expensive parking spaces. To add insult to injury, transit service on the existing light rail line is spotty.

Lutherville, MD: A failed mall adjacent to transit. Waiting for 
redevelopment since 1990 (Photo: Philipsen)

The schedule promises 20 minutes intervals for trains starting their southbound journey here on a ride that takes nearly 53 minutes to get the approximately 19 miles to Camden Yards and another 30 minutes to get to the airport. However, problems with the fleet cars lead currently to headways that are about twice the scheduled time.

Government the rescue?

Transit and land use respond to market forces. In areas of high demand and high investment, transit adds value to land and highly developed land adds value to transit, a win-win condition, at least in theory. In practice zoning can prevent development. 

Examples of successful TOD  include mall re-developments around the country. However, if zoning prevents development or the market is weak, government has to intervene. In Maryland and in other legacy cities, rail transit stations are often located in disinvested areas. As a result they are not surrounded by dense development but form the center of a hole in the donut instead. In those situations a market has to be created through a comprehensive approach with incentives for both, transit and intense land use. 

To counter weak markets and NIMBYism against the development as well as inaction by local governments, the State of Maryland has sprung into action with bills that override local zoning by automatically providing mixed-use entitlements and incentives for land near rail stations.  A split tax that enable jurisdictions to create a tax structure that would punish low density land use around rail stations is in the legislature for discussion right now. 

As this article tried to show, development is not just a matter of quantity but foremost of quality.  Designed properly redeveloped malls can create the kind of places that are sustainable, attractive and functional enough that they deserve to be called mixed use, town center or TOD. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

 

Resources:

WMATA Station Area Planning Guidelines

WMATA Date Driven TOD, BBJ Hunt Valley revival

Also on this blog:

How the failed Security Square Mall could become a thriving town center

Owings Mills Mall: Doubling down on mono-culture

Towards a New American Downtown (2024)

It Takes an Entire Village to Create True Transit Oriented Development

The Transit and Development Tango - The Next Level (2014)

Baltimore Life Sciences and the new 4MLK

 The year was 2003, Martin O'Malley had been Mayor for four years seeing Bio-Tech as chance for Baltimore, with Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical System as two world renowned engines to power it. So, in 2003 the cornerstone was laid for not just one but two bio-parks in Baltimore, one on the east side in what would be known by the acronym of the quasi governmental development group East Baltimore Development Inc , i.e. EBDI. The other simply as the UM Bio-Park. It wasn't entirely clear if this was supposed to be a synergistic or a competitive approach and this question remains open to this day.

4MLK a new life science landmark in Baltimore
(Photo: Philipsen)

In 2010 as Governor, O'Malley reminisced about the site then slated for the $200 million proton therapy center for the UM Bio-Park which is since long complete.

"..these blocks were pretty desolate, vacant, hopeless looking places with tumbleweeds virtually going through them and now we see building after building," (Martin O'Malley)

Today the Bio-Park consists of seven buildings, encompasses over 1 million square feet of labs, offices, healthcare and community spaces. The latest building, 4MLK just opened. Several lots remain undeveloped. Over 36 companies provide work for over a 1000 people, not counting the latest building which so far is only partially occupied.

On the east side EBDI has a mixed reputation as an anchor driven community redevelopment for its initial displacement of residents. Most new medically oriented buildings are actually Hopkins facilities and more an expansion of the campus than an incubator of new business. 

In spite of the gradual success in the last 22 years, politicians rarely mention Bio-Tech any longer as an engine for Baltimore's revival, as a driver of economic development or as a magnet that bring new talent to the city. 

Ribbon Cutting: Bringing the politicians back
to Biotech (Photo: Philipsen)

This changed with the ribbon cutting on Wednesday January 15 when Mayor Brandon Scott and Lt. Governor Aruna Miller were there to praise the progress of the UM Bio Park in front of the many guests that packed the spacious two-story lobby overlooking Martin Luther King Boulevard. 

Right at the corner of MLK Boulevard and Baltimore Street the 4MLK building is a new Baltimore landmark, with its 250,000 sf of floorspace and eight story height clad in a mostly glass aluminum curtain wall. The building is the only larger structure on the west side of Martin Luther King Boulevard that engages this arterial road and as such forming a counterbalance to the bulky structures of the UM medical campus on the east side. The building stands right in the center of the sightline of anyone coming from the south on MLK into the city.  The engagement with the street level is a drastic departure from the many buildings on the UMMS campus that look like fortresses when seen from the pedestrian perspective.

In spite of all the glass, the building is sustainable with a LEED Gold rating and is designed by the architecture firm ZGF, headquartered in Portland, OR with a branch in DC. The two-story lobby is conceived as a public space with open access from an attractive little plaza between the historic firehouse and the new building. Wexford hopes to find a coffee shop or restaurant both for the lobby of the main building and for the firehouse to enliven the courtyard. An adjacent vacant lot allows expansion should the 4MLK facility take off as a successful model. 

The old firehouse and 4MLK form an intimate
courtyard for future use as an outdoor
hangout (Photo Philipsen)

The new building is mostly geared to those start-up businesses spinning off from Baltimore's world renowned University of Maryland Medical Systems (UMMS). Only one floor is occupied by the university, another, developed in collaboration with UMMS is entirely conceived as a co-working space for bio science firms.The fifth floor houses Wexford's national headquarter. Wexford developed and owns the building just like the two earlier bio-park buildings facing each other on Baltimore Street which it developed together with Ventas, a publicly traded REIT.

Connect Labs by Wexford is intentionally designed for innovative companies, entrepreneurs, and researchers, who are looking for a ’ready-now’ environment that can help advance their discoveries along the commercialization and capitalization pathway. (Wexford Brochure)

Wexford Science & Technology is a developer of science and innovation centers in 17 cities around the country.  UM partners with Wexford to support private developers who are building a business in the life sciences.

"This is going to represent a bold vision for breaking down silos between traditional engineering, bioengineering, and medicine," (Mark Gladwin, Dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine).

As Caroline Moore, the Baltimore based Senior Vice President and Southeast Regional Executive of Wexford explained to me, UM and Hopkins have quite a different approach in cultivating biomedical spin-offs. Hopkins as a partner usually stays involved with the start ups via an equity position and maintains some control, while UM supports the companies with providing an eco-system but leaving the private companies entirely independent and without holding equity. 

The UM Bio-Park (UM website)

Asked if the Northeastern US can support so many life science facilities and if Baltimore has a chance next to Boston, Philadelphia, Northern Virginia, to name just the larger clusters, Moore pointed to the extremely many subspecialties under the rubric of life-science. Baltimore appears to vie for a niche at the intersection of medicine, technology and engineering. 

Wexford's Moore pointed out that quite a few local firms already operate in the field, one of them, Catalant was recently acquired by Novo Nordisk and makes syringes for Ozempic.  Life sciences have long been talked about as the next big thing and universities as the drivers of urban revitalization. Moore pointed to Philadelphia's University City as a trailblazer for both, not only for science in medicine but also as exceptional community development and engine of urban reinvestment.

4MLK lobby (Photo: Philipsen)

Much points to the possibility that life sciences are really at a break through during the next decade, especially in the US. The successful COVID vaccine developments are only one indicator. It is good to know that Baltimore has its hat in the ring. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

The article has been updated

The BBJ reported on 1/19/25 that “Edward St. John, founder and chairman of St. John Properties Inc., just gifted  the University of Maryland another $10 million.
St. John and his wife, Jennifer, presented the gift to top university officials this month to help establish the Edward & Jennifer St. John Center for Translational Engineering and Medicine in the newly opened 4MLK tower at the University of Maryland BioPark campus in West Baltimore, where researchers will study "medical innovations" for an array of illnesses”

More information about the UM BioPark and 4MLK:

https://www.wbal.com/4mlk-biotech-complex-launches-in-baltimore/

https://wexfordscitech.com/property/4mlk/

https://technical.ly/civic-news/tech-hubs-eda-visit-baltimore/

https://technical.ly/civic-news/4mlk-connect-labs-baltimore-money-moves/

https://www.umaryland.edu/news/archived-news/december-2023/4mlk-paving-the-way-to-biotech-excellence-.php

https://technical.ly/civic-news/um-biopark-4mlk-baltimore-life-sciences-photos/

https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/4mlk-life-science-hub-opens-at-the-university-of-maryland-biopark/

4MLK on the left, the UMMS campus on the right: Departure from the fortresses (Photo: Philipsen)

View from the conference space on the second level (Photo: Philipsen)

Conference area on the second floor (Photo: Philipsen)

Artwork on the wall along the grand stair (Photo: Philipsen)