Clean Streets, Empty Blocks: Is the "Rising" Downtown an Illusion?

The State of Downtown, according to its boosters, the Downtown Partnership, is always good or rising. To many Baltimoreans it is a rather sad affair, at least since the pandemic. The Downtown Partnership continues to clean and sweep with the uniformed ambassadors which are now a familiar site in many US cities, but for fewer and fewer people. Retail sales are down, hotel and office occupancy occupancy are scary, and whole office towers can be bought for less than a nice condo in New York costs.

The SUN titled their article about the Partnership's Annual Meeting this way: “Failure to adapt prompts shift in properties: $1B commercial crash, residential spike reshape Baltimore tax burden”. 

More than $1 billion in commercial property value has been erased from Baltimore since 2020 (Baltimore SUN, 4/19/26)

Baltimore SUN: Failure to adapt

Truth be told, though, many cities  all around the US are undergoing similar office tower real estate crashes in their downtown, sinking occupancy rates for offices, hotels and due to less foot traffic, for retail as well. Fewer people out and about also means fewer tourist exploring the area, a typical death spiral. “Failure to adapt” is the title line of  the SUN true?

Baltimore has many plans and ideas but no or sluggish implementation. The Urban Land Institute sent an "Advisory Panel" here that included former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and provided a report and a set of strategies.  Still key parcels remain a problem. The Superblock has not moved forward in early 20 years and is half way burnt down by now. The former Mechanic Theatre property and another site owned by Howard Brown sit fallow for 12 years. State Center has continued to empty out without any new investment there and it took a decade or so to begin refilling the former Social Security complex at Greene Street. The Galleria indoor Mall remains mothballed. Famously, the Baltimore Red Line which should be in service by now, was scrapped and transit continues to ail. 

Meanwhile other cities in the US are tremendously active in steering the ship in new directions.  

Denver has a downtown development authority and a 2025 downtown area plan. The authority just finished an idea competition and its third ULI Advisory Panel about downtown. Its once famed Pavilions downtown mall a three-level, open-air shopping center with a movie theater, a bowling alley, 1,000 total parking spaces and a connection to the 16th Street shuttle and RTD. Only 28 years old, the complex is now considered "failing". Before it had to be fully shuttered, the City bought it and is now in the driver's seat. Instead of giving it to developer without any restrictions (like Baltimore did with HarborPlace), Denver's idea competition and ULI Advisory panel brainstormed a framework that will steer the redevelopment. Maybe to the surprise of the Mayor, the proposed use includes a large open space, i.e. something that doesn't create income in itself. The ideas presented last Friday centered around the creation of a "social district". Mayor Johnston found the proposals "incredibly compelling".

Denver Pavilions (Photo: Philipsen)

As the global urban population skyrockets, with estimates suggesting 70% of the world’s people will live in cities by 2050, the traditional Central Business District (CBD) faces an existential crisis. Once seen as the epicenter of economic and professional life, CBDs—characterized by office towers and commercial real estate—are grappling with diminished relevance, a crisis accelerated by the pandemic. With the advent of remote and hybrid work, fluctuating office occupancy rates, and competition from emerging mixed-use districts, urban cores must evolve or risk becoming relics of a bygone era.

In their place, a new model is gaining traction: the Central Social District (CSD). Unlike CBDs, which primarily focus on commercial real estate, CSDs are designed as vibrant, multi-use hubs that blend work, leisure, culture, and social interaction. These districts cater not only to office workers but also to residents, tourists, and visitors, creating spaces that reflect the modern urban lifestyle’s demands(The Rise of the Social District, Urban Design Lab)

Denver also just completed a complete rebuild of the 16th Street main shopping axis originally designed by Ian Pei. The pedestrian mall is a connection between the government district and the tremendously successful Union Station TOD.

Denver refurbished 16th Street Mall

Atlanta, also a city with an ailing downtown, is well underway with investments that aim to reconnect the isolated CBD.  By covering a small portion of a sunken highway with a park on top and hopes for a surge of affordable housing along both sides the hope is to stitch downtown to the disinvested neighborhood to the northeast. This project has not yet started.

 The construction of a 6 million squarefoot mixed use development over 50 acres of deck over railroad tracks (the Gulch) to revive its ailing southern part of downtown is well underway. This new downtown adjacent area will create a connection to the State Farm Arena and Mercedes Benz stadium. An innovation district next door revives the oldest historic core (SoDo) with 25 projects going on all at once right now. Especially the South Downtown project, funded by a local individual who wants to spur start-ups is based on the ide of a "social district". 

Downtown Baltimore: No enough feet on the ground
(Photo: Philipsen)

Both, Denver and Atlanta are cities with a high growth rates in the core city and the region, both have huge land areas that they gained through annexation. So yes, the comparison is not fair.

Still, there are lessons. Even though Baltimore didn’t build as many freeways as Atlanta, our downtown is also choked by multi-lane high capacity streets that act as freeway substitutes: MLK on the Westside, Pratt and Lombard on the south side and I-83 with President Street on the east. We too, have no lack of ideas, plans and dreams about reconnecting downtown back to the neighborhoods at MLK, at State Center, at Penn Station and the East side. Of all the plans only the connection to the west at the bio park is actually progressing. Improvements to Pratt Street are part of MCB’s lofty HarborPlace plans, but only small amounts of funds are available and it is likely that they will be mostly used to fix the promenade, not to make Pratt Street less of a barrier.

To change the DNA of the old financial district from 9-5 office towers to a 24/7 "social district" neighborhood takes more than stitching across barriers to the surrounding areas and even more than adaptive re-use, more than plans, more than adaptive reuse that has brought several thousand  residents in what used to be just offices, there are still too few feet on the ground. It will even take more than bringing visitors to conventions or events or tourists to see our architectural attractions.

Shelonda Stokes speaking to reporters at the 
State of Downtown Breakfast last week at the 
Convention Center

More than anything, it takes that these various elements of revival work in synergy, that there are clear priorities set and investments are made in a strategic and systematic manner that results in key downtown routes be free of large vacant dilapidated buildings or vacant lots that are dreadful or even scary to pass. Baltimore's new Planning Director and now Housing Commissioner Tim Keane likes to stress design as a driver for planning. He says, a whole bunch of plans don't make a city unless the all aim for the same well defined objective.

Downtown Rise is Baltimore’s plan is a case in point of a well intentioned plan that lacks focus or clear priorities or a well defined outcome. The plan is mostly focused on better streetscapes and more what planners came to call “walkability”. This laudable, but the document treats all streets the same, shows trees everywhere and does not delineate the most important pedestrian routes that should be given priority. It also doesn't list which strategic properties are must-do fixes to make downtown look less deserted. The former Mechanic Theater lot right at the heart of downtown and adjacent to a subway stop should be a high priority. 

New financial incentives are available now with the close of the legislative session which gave downtown a tax credit option that is supposed to make investment more lucrative. So, no, the City and the Downtown Partnership are adapting. However, in a City that sees no population growth, all efforts need to be even more targeted and linked. To this end the Partnership is now engaging on a 2026-2031 Strategic Plan.

Not much left of the Superblock
(Photo Philipsen)

Nothing will bring the vitality back that downtowns used to have when the offices were filled and shopping happened here and not in malls or online. The idea of a "Social District" may provide an answer, serving new residents and visitors alike. Entertainment, events and tourists must come to the rescue. The Everyman, the Hippodrome and the Shakespeare Theater are already there, so is the very successful Arena. So far , though, people come for the shows and events and leave right afterwards. Same for the sport stadia. For them to stay downtown needs more than electronic billboards. It needs viable, lively and attractive "third places". The privatization of the HarborPlace "third space" could become exactly the opposite of what is needed.

All improvements have to work seamlessly together. Otis Rolley, the new BDC CEO, is revamping the agency to one that leads instead of reacts. He wants to directly develop the long stalled Superblock. It needs a new identity and focus. Over the Rhine in Cincinnati is a good model.

As Shelonda Stokes of  the Downtown Partnership says in the 2025 report:

Change doesn’t happen all at once. It’s built block by block, partnership by partnership, piece by piece. This belief shapes the theme of this year's annual report — Downtown by Design (Shelonda Stokes)

So here we are, waiting for yet another renaissance, hopefully really driven by design.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA