Tide Point - From Beacon of Hope to Near Empty Shell

It was on the 15th day of December in the last year of the last century when many of the 2,000 guests approaching via Fort Avenue struggled to find their shoreline destination in Locust Point, and once there, had a hard time finding parking. Once that was achieved, an expectant line of people streamed into the giant hulk of the old Procter & Gamble soap factory's industrial complex, guided more by the person in front of them than by any reliable lighting. Anyone who was anybody was here to attend the Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse (SBE&R) annual holiday party. Even inside, darkness prevailed. The only illumination was a long, double line of sparkling Christmas trees leading through the cold and damp construction site, which was completely bare of services.

Bill Struever giving a talk at Innovation
Week in 2013 (Philipsen) 

Bill Struever's party had historically been held at the Cross Street Market, where not only business people but also the homeless happily partook in the free food and drink. To keep the market merchants whole, they were now lined up in a large space converted to a banquet hall for one night to serve the customary beer, shrimp, and oysters. The homeless didn't make it to Locust Point—possibly one of the reasons why this working-class neighborhood on a peninsula would soon take off as a desirable destination for young urbanists of all stripes.

Struever, looking as always as if he had just climbed out of bed, was nevertheless radiant. Fitting his image as an ever-energetic and optimistic dealmaker, he bobbed happily through the crowd. He had ramped up the festivities since Tide Point was his largest project to date and the flagship of his vision for a "Digital Harbor" that would make Baltimore the Silicon Valley of the East Coast. His brother Eccles, his partner Ted Rouse, Bob Tucker, and the then-Housing Commissioner Dan Henson (a former SBE&R Vice President) worked the crowd with equal enthusiasm. They were buoyed by SBE&R's 25th anniversary and the cosmic rise of an outfit that had started from the back of a pickup truck.

Tide Point was officially completed in 2001, just as the dot-com bubble burst reached its final crescendo, taking down the dream of a Digital Harbor with Tide Point as the startup and innovation hub of the digital age. Still, Struever managed to fill the 400,000 square feet of the Ivory, Dawn, and Cascade buildings, including with his own headquarters, making the repurposed factory designed by Design Collective a magnet for the gentrification of Locust Point.

Tide Point and waterfront promenade (Design Collective)

This momentum later included the development of Silo Point and developer Mark Sapperstein's McHenry Row. Tide Point shone like a beacon across the harbor, highly visible from Fells Point and any ship entering the Inner Harbor. It boasted its own deep-water shipping berth and a water taxi landing. Struever, always open to fun, even installed the largest water mister outside Disneyland along the waterfront promenade, which sparkled in many colors at night.

Exactly ten years after that extravagant party in 1999, Struever's company collapsed under a heavy mountain of debt, unpaid contractors, investor lawsuits, and abandoned projects in the wake of the 2007–2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession. In late 2009, Struever's operations shut down entirely—construction, development, all of it. The ripples were felt far and wide, from Rochester to Durham and, of course, especially in Baltimore. Struever, who prides himself on having avoided bankruptcy by personally negotiating his debts, lost many friends in the process who were either not paid in full or not paid at all. Struever also lost Tide Point to Kevin Plank and Under Armour, the new rising star in Baltimore to whom he sold the campus to raise cash.

Soon enough, the sign on the roof no longer read "Tide Point" but "Under Armour." The company grew by leaps and bounds and eventually filled the entire complex, save for the offices of Ayers Saint Gross (ASG) architects, who remained there enjoying direct views of the water and the daily proceedings of the Domino Sugar refinery next door. However, this is not the end of the story. In true Baltimore fashion, history rarely follows a straight upward trajectory.

Tide Point becomes Under Armour
(Philipsen)

Struever reemerged in 2010 with Cross Street Partners, once again pursuing urban development and the reuse of abandoned industrial complexes. Among these was the Hoen Lithograph building in East Baltimore, which reopened as the Center for Neighborhood Innovation (CNI)—a mixed-use tech and workforce hub anchored by Morgan State University, the ABC Greater Baltimore Construction Academy, and Cross Street Partners’ own offices. Meanwhile, Tide Point sits mostly vacant, with ASG as the lone remaining tenant slated to leave soon. What on earth had happened?

Plank, far from crashing, outgrew Tide Point—or so he thought—and set his eyes on Port Covington. He bought some 400 acres of land and had gigantic dreams sketched up by architects that made Baltimoreans rub their eyes. Digital Harbor was just a faint old dream; now there was "Plank-Town." It was to be nothing less than a brand-new city within a city, featuring high-rises towering over I-95, all anchored by Under Armour's own global headquarters campus to rival Nike or Adidas. Even a light rail extension was supposed to go there.

Yet, we all know what happened next in typical Baltimore fashion: another crisis clipped the wings of another high-flying star—COVID-19 and its aftermath. And as so often, Baltimore often a bit late to the party gets hit extra hard. The grand dream of a new city corporate empire fizzled as Under Armour's sales and revenues stagnated amid a steady stream of corporate reorganizations and rebranding efforts. 

Too late to withdraw entirely, Plank handed the broader Port Covington development over to his development partner Marc Weller and concentrated on a much-slimmed-down headquarters campus. A million square feet of the envisioned mixed-use development outside the corporate campus was built on spec and remains only partially filled. ASG will soon move into one of these so-far mostly empty offices at the renamed Baltimore Peninsula.

Mc Henry Row, Locust Point (Philipsen)

This being "Smalltimore," Mark Sapperstein soon swooped in, benefiting from Plank's massive infrastructure plans just as he had from Struever's groundwork in Locust Point. He bought and developed what used to be the Locke Insulator factory next to Nick's Fish House. Skipping any fantastical or innovative concepts, he delivered practical, lucrative developments of apartments and townhomes that sell like hotcakes. 

Sapperstein also toyed with the idea of buying the remaining Tide Point complex, but the deal collapsed in 2025. Instead, he walked away with a smaller, off-campus parcel—the Cheer Building at 1450 Beason Street—which he plans to raze for 122 townhomes, a fail-safe investment in the historic rowhouse city of Baltimore. Would Struever come back to seize this opportunity? I know it had been on his mind once. Sapperstein, meanwhile is also feeding from the fizzled Port Covington. More townhomes will go up there as well.

The rise and fall of Tide Point reveals many aspects of Baltimore's journey through history. Exuberance, failure, innovation, inequity and redirection. Through it all, a city like no other emerges, more battle proven, more cynical but also always hopeful that its day will come. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Struever in front of Tide Point, not afraid of turbulent waters 
(Photo: AP)