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