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