Zoning - You snooze, you lose

For most people zoning is a big snoozer. Until they want to do something with their piece of property and zoning stands in the way. Or somebody wants to rezone something nearby and the change seems undesirable. Zoning is the place where private property rights and public interest intersect and clash.

Stuck in Council since 2013: Transform Baltimore

2016 is a big year in the City because after some 10 years of work "Transform Baltimore", a completely new zoning code is still in the womb waiting to be born. The ones to make this happen are the current Mayor and City Council who have been at this for years and are intimately familiar with the affair. 2017 will see a new Mayor and a largely new City Council and the thought that the debate would begin again from scratch is deeply unsettling. Most prefer, that the current council would get off its tush and finally pass the "transform" bill in front of them. This may still happen, but it needs still a big push. However, there is no push in site. On the Rewrite website specifically created for the zoning effort the most recent news are from 2014 and lead to a broken link. The timeline for hearings ends in 2013 when the bill was introduced to the city council.

Public interest in Transform Baltimore at CPHa in 2011

But developers and citizens still hope for the new zoning code. It is desired for its better reflection of public interest and for being more predictable. But the devil is in the details and the Council seem to have gotten stuck i just too much detail and in hundreds of amendments.

The Baltimore City Zoning Code was last comprehensively updated in 1971. At that time, the focus was on auto-oriented development, separation of uses, and preserving the City’s heavy manufacturing base. Over the past 40 years, the economic realities and design goals of the City have evolved, and the 1971 Code is no longer able to move Baltimore forward. (from the City Zoning bill)

In the County 2016 is the year of the quadrennial Comprehensive Zoning Map Process (CZMP), a procedure as cumbersome as its name. Every four year all of  Baltimore County's zoning is up for grabs in a procedure going over two years from initial suggestions to the council or Planning department to deliberations by staff, public hearings, Planning Board, more public hearings and the Council.

Fancy graphics hardly make the topic less dreary: County zoning

The idea behind doing re-zoning only every four years is to get a better bigger picture of all the changes than a piecemeal approach would allow. It also is supposed to make the process more transparent for all. While these arguments seem plausible in theory, the reality is that the big comprehensive push seems to be an invitation to re-zone that in other jurisdictions with re-zoning case by case never seems to be so pronounced. Anybody can propose zoning changes, whether they own a piece of land or even want to do anything with it. The result is that there always are massive amounts of rezoning to digest all at once. The County has eschewed the radical reformation of its code that the city is still trying to digest and essentially works with a aged, unwieldy and outdated code that does not represent modern thinking about a suburban landscape that would be less use segregated and sprawly.

One of the reforms the County Council allowed was the 2012 introduction of an overlay zone called Neighborhood Commons, another word for open space. County Council members have freely applied that new zoning category in their respective districts to protect owned open spaces and amended the bill to also include County owned spaces that were not formally declared parks, such as the spaces around schools or other County property. The occasion for this came when the County Executive embarked on selling the Dundalk North Point Government Center to private developers to improve the County's budget, a project still stuck in a quagmire.

Hearings like this 2012 CZMP hearing make public participation an
endurance test

The new proposed City zoning  code finally would also include a zoning category for open space. It is an interesting fact, that in all the years since zoning was first enacted, parks and green spaces never had their own use category or protection, in spite of the beautiful parks that are common in the City, from urban squares such as Lafayette or Franklin Square to the big natural parks like Leakin Park with large more urban parks like Druid Park or Patterson Park in between.

Zoning strives to make land use predictable, something that residents and developers like. At the same time, zoning should be flexible enough in a rapidly changing world to accommodate change and new uses that often were not even known when a code was written, just think maker spaces, tool libraries, incubator hubs, artist live work spaces or food trucks.

December 2015: CPHA and Bikemore have not yet given up

Zoning, invented for the industrial city with the goal of separating poisonous industries from residential quarters for public health, safety and welfare was eventually refined and abused to become a tool of minute separation, segregation and homogenization that ultimately led to the separated suburb and city that we see today.

To this day, the two entities are going about their future in very different ways even though they both have increasingly similar problems.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Related articles here:
Transform Baltimore bogged down with no end in sight (8/2015)
Should the Zoning Code include design guidelines (1/2012)

Links:
The draft City bill can be found here
Rewrite Summary Powerpoint
How Zoning made segregation worse. CityLab 2016

By skipping the visioning step and a blueprint of a future Baltimore, the re-zoning here fell into the near vacuum of the business plan like comp plan that revealed almost nothing in terms of a physical vision of Baltimore's future.Soon the new zoning code effort degenerated into  what one could describe as a modern translation of the old code and its zones. (From my January 2012 article)

Philadelphia, Dreyfus, Oxman, Koolhaas and the AIA

Philadelphia, more than twice Baltimore's size, keeps getting the bigger conventions and gatherings in its downtown Convention Center atop the Reading Market, an adaptive re-use of the old Reading Terminal Station. Of course, the real convention center is in adjacent structures, nevertheless, the historic station provides character that Baltimore's center sorely lacks.

This year's trophy is, of course, the  Convention of the Democratic Party. Less spectacularly, urban planners, developers and architects flock twice to Philly in 2016 as well. In April it was the spring gathering of the Urban Land Institute that attracted professionals to the city of brotherly love, this week it will be the AIA Convention, a massive three plus day affair of the kind Baltimore would love to attract. (The Republican Convention, of course will be in Cleveland. Cleveland!). 

At the annual gathering of architects from across the country keynote addresses will be held daily in a gigantic ballroom with two video screens and annually increasing pomp and circumstance, lately with speakers from outside the profession. These speakers are to get the conventioneers out of bed early and supposedly have some relation to design, cities or innovation. Then the thousands of working and educational sessions follow.  This year I will be a presenter in two sessions, one about smart cities and one about how small firms can get involved in their communities.

Philadelphia skyline

This year's first keynote attraction is Julia Dreyfus. She will be interviewed by Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air. Of course, Dreyfus is an actor and no architect. But, as the AIA website proclaims:

Julia is a social activist who is passionate about climate change, water conservation, children’s education, and the power of design. Important topics that we connect with, too. (AIA website)

On day 2, Neri Oxman of MIT will speak, she is, indeed, an architect and really very interesting. I attended a presentation she gave to the Green Building Council conference in Toronto about bio-mimicry, building design that responds to changing external conditions similar to living things and was very impressed about her work and engaging presentation.

At the MIT Media Lab, Oxman directs the Mediated Matter research group. Through projects such as the bio-crafted Silk Pavilion—where 6,500 silkworms wove a cocoon over digitally placed threads—the group radically rethinks everyday designs and systems and explores the relationship between nature and the built environment.

Finally, on Saturday Rem Koolhaas will address the convention, clearly scheduled to prevent conventioneers from going home early when he will be on stage with the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School for Design.

Rethinking, reimagining, revising your plans for the world’s future—it’s all on the agenda on Day 3 in Philly, beginning with a kick in the pants from Koolhaas, the Pritzker Prize winner. Joining Koolhaas is Mohsen Mostafavi, architect, educator, and Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

I wrote a somewhat critical blog article about the big production of the annual AIA convention and have drawn some flak for it.  However one sees that, the convention is great for continued education and for a re-charge on the bigger questions of design, environment and what architecture is all about.

MICA graduate Demi Lashawn about AIA: Old white men

A graduate student at MICA's new School of Social design did his thesis work on AIA and presented last week his very critical conclusion in which he particularly stressed that AIA has a very poor representation of minority architects. (Only one tenth of the representation of African Americans in the general population). He made it sound as if the oldest American Professional organization was still an elitist "old boys club" that hadn't changed since 1857 when it was founded.

That isn't entirely fair, even though minority participation is truly poor. But as I can see in AIA Baltimore which as a very active membership, is socially engaged, and collaborates across various organizations involved with design and construction, there is progress. Of course, Baltimore's only architecture school (until MICA started a program) is a historically black university (HBCU). AIA Baltimore board has as one of its current board members Kathleen Sherrill, firm owner and professor at Morgan who recently told an audience at a Freddie Gray remembrance day that she is one of only 387 licensed female black architects. Baltimore AIA also has an active committee called Women in Architecture.

The gender discrepancy among architects seems to abide, though. Half of those enrolling in architecture schools are women women. But only 20% are registered architects. One could suspect that Dreyfus isn't invited to speak at the convention to balance male preponderance. But if anyone thought of her as eye candy for the "good old boys", she may just surprise them with her talk.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

AIA Convention website
Smart Digital Eco-Cities in the 21st Century: Resilient, Sustainable, Livable session
Influencing Decision Making in Local Communities session

Food Trucks vs. City of Baltimore

Along with bikeways, Uber service and local brews, the food truck has become a key metric for urbanity and what makes a city cool. So when a city messes with the food truck, one can expect a backlash from the large cohort of those who frequent them.

Plaintiff Madame BBQ: "Roaming Hunger" (website)

In the recent food fight in Baltimore, though, nobody messed with food trucks, it's them taking the City on. After having enjoyed several years of popularity and the fact that cities across the US have adjusted their local rules about mobile food preparation, parking and licenses to accommodate them, two mobile vendors feel emboldened to take one of the remaining restrictive rules on. Joey Venoni of Joey's pizza truck that hauls a 4000 pound brick pizza oven around and Nikki McGovan of the Madame BBQ truck (web-name "rovinghunger.com") filed suit against the City of Baltimore regarding the 2004 city code that requires them to not have vending zones within 300' of a retail business selling similar food. Food trucks have gradually moved from the derogatory term roach coach to the luxury shores of gourmet, ethnic, local and healthy foods and don't want any longer be seen as inferior food vendors that have to play second fiddle to the brick and mortar places which often remain the greasy spoons of old.

"The 300-foot rule has only one, illegitimate purpose: to protect existing brick-and-mortar businesses from competition" (food truck law suit against Baltimore City)

From the foodies perspective, the Baltimore regulation is discriminatory because no such rule applies to bricks and mortar places which can sit cheek to jowl in whatever number they feel comfortable or the market allows. Baltimore's Mayor takes a rather snotty attitude manifest in this statement:

"The food truck issue is much ado about nothing, the mayor and City Council have the authority to regulate public rights of way and the city frequently places limitations on what is and is not permitted in various locations." Anthony McCarthy, a spokesman for Rawlings-Blake

So who is right? How important are food trucks to a functioning city, and how far should cities go to accommodate them? A tax-paying brick and mortar store with several employees traditionally scores well on the urban asset scale (both, from the fiscal perspective as well as a service angle) and deserves a certain amount of predictability and security. The food truck coming in provides no predictability at all. One day the local brick and mortar business is without competition or within a well orchestrated ensemble of similar businesses, the next day the food truck shows up and may snatch cherished customers. If successful in that, the truck just may come back every day.

Food truck rally in Baltimore in 2012
(photo: ArchPlan Inc.)

There seems to be little data as to how much business is at stake for traditional food establishments. Common sense would agree that a food truck client is lost for the brick an mortar food sale since usually one doesn't buy one meal in two places. On the other hand, retail business isn't a zero sum game, that food truck customer may have otherwise not eaten at all, brought her own food or deferred eating until she gets home.

“[a] mobile vendor may not park a vendor truck within 300 feet of any retail business establishment that is primarily engaged in selling the same type of food product, other merchandise, or service.” (City Code)

The idea to sue the City about the 300' foot rule on the ground of equal regulations for all stands on shaky ground when it comes to comparing the business models of food trucks with those of brick and mortar eateries. On the other hand, the traditional eateries have little data as evidence for their fear that food trucks siphon off their business if they are allowed to park close by. The case is supported by the Institute of Justice, a public interest 501c3 law firm. The libertarian firm is based in Arlington, Va. with many cases brought against government in the name of "economic liberty".

Washington DC vendors lining up at Farragut Square
(Photo: ArchPlan Inc.)

Government regulation is about public protection and market fairness. The public has a legitimate interest that health, environment and aesthetics are regulated. They are all valid concerns when it comes to street vendors when they pull up alone or in droves, whether in simmering summer heat or in the depth of winter. No matter how cool, safe food preparation in a truck is a challenge, their engines and generators frequently spew fumes and noise that can spoil the pedestrian experiences that urbanists talk about so much and their presence isn't always an improvement of the streetscape. Whether the 300' rule is a proper regulation ensuring economic fairness is less obvious.

The food truck community seems to thrive from competition, at times by force (if a city relegates them all into a few allowable spots) many times voluntarily, when they flock to the same places for food truck rallies, competitions or events. Together they provide the desirable diversity and array of food choices.

Arraber: Selling food in the 'hood

Thus those trucks are the incubator spaces for the start-ups of the food industry. Certainly a good thing, for quality of life and for the competitiveness of cities. Food trucks combine the characteristics of pop-up businesses and of tactical urbanism, both tactics that are successfully deployed in other fields as well.

“In a city hungry for opportunity and more dining options, Baltimore’s city council has no business turning away food truck entrepreneurs and the jobs they bring,”  (Plaintiff attorney Rob Frommer). 

This argument would be more convincing if the roving vendors would actively seek to mitigate food deserts and the lack of restaurant diversity in impoverished communities. But it is hard to spot a food truck there.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

BBJ article 
Pizza Joey press release

Traditional street vendor: Hot dogs and drinks (Photo: ArchPlan Inc.)

Joey's Pizza truck: 4000 pounds of brick (website)

When School ACs Trump Education

Even education isn't above the fray when it comes to testosterone laden fights between powerful men; so it is that air conditioning (or its absence) has turned into a big and protracted school yard brawl between County Executive Kamenetz and State Comptroller Franchot which threatens to get entirely out of hand with yesterday's announcement that the State would withhold funds from the County and the City schools to force action. How politically silly this is has been adequately commented by the Baltimore SUN in yesterday's editorial.

this can't be the solution

As an architect and building designer, one has to add, that from a design and technical perspective, the issue is no less silly. Lining parents up around the issue of sweating kids in classrooms has been TV effective, but asking for quick fixes like window AC is neither environmental nor economically efficient.

It is way more practical to let kids go home early when room temps become unbearable, than to disrupt a long-range school construction plan that would equip all County schools with central AC within the next three years by stuffing some window AC's under a window sash as Franchot may imagine it.

"I believe it's also probably illegal for the Board of Public Works to decide to cram down its priority on the local planning system." (State Treasurer Nancy Kopp)

The problem, of course is, the schools don't have operable sashes anymore that can simply be lifted for an AC unit to be shoved in. And the fact that they don't have those, is one of the reasons it is so damn hot in the first place. Some of my kids went to a highschool that is one of those flat roof toaster boxes with yellowed plastic fixed windows and a tiny slot at the bottom that was operable, flipping out in "awning" fashion, ensuring that hot air remained trapped inside. Yes, it got hot in there, and yes, this isn't good for education and thinking in general. Some City schools are similar, many others are more traditional multi-story buildings designed to stay cool in the traditional passive way. Thanks to the urban heat island effect and ever hotter summers, they will need AC as well.

So the County's and City's plans to overhaul the schools, give them decent operable windows and a central AC system, is a good one and the administrations should stick with it until the last County school of the remaining 48 schools is done in three years. (Baltimore City has still 76 schools without AC).

Dallas Danz, County School Superintendent

Diverting funds to buy window AC units, upgrade the electric circuits to support the extra load, cut out openings in facades to fit the portables in, install support brackets, do lousy seals around the units and thus compromise insulation and security is just not an environmentally friendly approach or smart use of funds. Those portable cause condensate to drool over the facades and create disturbing noise inside the class-room. In short, all that would be sheer folly.

 "it would have been a more productive use of the board's energy to spend time identifying ways to increase funding for our public schools and to support student achievement" (Anthony McCarthy on behalf of Rawlings Blake)

The brawl has already one prominent victim: Following the contentious meeting of the Board of Public Works, Dr. David Lever resigned from the Interagency Committee on School Construction (IAC). 

Lever described in his resignation letter how deferral to local boards of education in formulating capital programs had been a core tenet of the school construction program — and one that he now sees as threatened, he wrote in a poignant letter. 

Richard Hall, Secretary of Planning under Governor O'Malley commented:

[I have] "known David Lever for years, this is pitiful and an example of folks trying to run state government Trump-style. Lever is a true professional and it is very clear how bad things are if he had to resign and write a letter like that."

If adults want to debate the proper way of spending school funds, they should debate the wisdom of buying a laptop for each kid for a total of $300 million as County Superintendent Dallas Danz is set to. The computers will likely enrich the computer industry much more than the students, knowing that they are obsolete the day they are distributed. In City and County better inclusion of communities in the school rehabilitation and construction plans would also be desirable, so they don't have to go into combative mode as in the case of Mays Chapel where the County denuded a lovely open space for a new school.

Rally for Community Schools

City and County have each about a billion bucks in their 10 year school construction plans. Those expenditures work best if the rehabbed or new schools are properly embedded into their community. School funds must be used to leverage improvements in surrounding areas for safe access to the schools, rehabilitation of boarded up buildings and the creation of well designed shared open spaces that can be used by the school and the community. The goal should be that every school becomes truly a community school.

Those topics would be worthwhile discussing. Kids, education and communities would benefit.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Related: Schools as Place-makers

Older buildings like City Public School #25 were never designed to have AC and work better in heat
than  those flat roof  one story County Schools from the sixties and seventies without proper ventilation

DC Metro: From jewel to hazard

When Baltimore's light rail trains had wheel cracking problems in 2008, the then MTA Administrator didn't take any chances and took trains out of service for emergency repairs, no matter that service was disrupted and the lack of trains led to crowded trains and doubled head-ways.

WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld explains Alice Rule on Tuesday

The same guy is now the head of Washington's Metro, and once again, Paul Wiedefeld is not joking. He created national headlines when he shut down Metro for a couple of days to inspect electrical jumper cables that had created a deadly track-fire at one instance and seemed to be a re-occurring problem.

But the mishaps continued. Like much of the country's infrastructure, Washington's Metro, once the pride of the nation, is aging, overburdened, insufficiently maintained and stressed beyond capacity.

This month Wiedefeld's WMATA presented a Safe Track Plan to get ahead of the accumulating problems that his predecessor couldn't or wouldn't address. Once again riders will have to deal with service shortages, missing trains and shortened hours of operation while maintenance crews are trying to get the track network into shape.

The plan includes:

• 3 years worth of work accelerated into approx. 1 year 
• Includes expansion of track-work hours on weeknights, weekends and during certain rush hours — both above ground and in tunnels 
• Achieves safety and state of good repair of basic track structure and advances critical NTSB/FTA work 
• Includes line segment shutdowns of less than one month 
• Uses contractors to augment existing workforce

The work scope is listed with impressive detail:

• Installation of NTSB-recommended boots and seals on all 3rd rail cables 
 by end of summer* 
• All underground boots will be retrofitted by end of this month 
• Replacement of 12,000 insulators Remove 3rd rail expansion joints in underground system, reducing risk 
• Eliminate ALL temporary gauge bars that prevent spread of tracks 
• Replacement of approx. 48,000 wooden ties (achieves state of good repair) 
• Will need to replace 11,000 ties/year to maintain steady state Replacement of approx 36,000 direct fixation fasteners (achieves state of good repair) 
• Will need to replace 18,000 fasteners/year to maintain steady state 
• Clearing of 87,000 linear feet of drains Extensive tunnel leak mitigation

Some of the more dramatic services impacts are 

• Total shutdown between National Airport and Braddock Road July 5-12
• Total shutdown between Pentagon City and National Airport July 12-19
• Total shutdown from Eastern Market to Minnesota Ave and Benning Road Aug. 20 to Sept. 6
• Total shutdown between NoMa and Fort Totten Oct. 9 to Nov. 12

Even President Obama himself commented on the DC Metro, placing it into the broader context of the national infrastructure:

US Secretary Foxx threatening Metro "shutdown"

"[W]e got bridges, we got roads, we have ports, we have airports, we have water mains and pipes as we saw in Flint, that suffer from neglect," Obama said at the White House after he was asked about the Metro repairs. "And the reason we've been neglecting them is not because we don't know how to fix it, it's not because people haven't been aware of the need."
"The problem we have is that the Republican Congress has been resistant to really taking on this problem in a serious way," he added. "And the reason is because of an ideology that says, government spending is necessarily bad."
He said the GOP's ideology "has led us to not investing in those things that we have to do together." (Obama)

US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, one of the more vocal department heads stepped the rhetoric up yesterday and even threatened that he would shut down the DC Metro system if safety issue wouldn't be taken care of.

"I would have no hesitation to shut down the system" (DOT Secretary Foxx)

Paul Wiedefeld called over 600 Metro Managers to a meeting on Tuesday to communicate urgency and explain his safety principle with what he called "Alice rule", named after his own daughter.  

“I asked the people who were running the light rail — I said ‘would you put your daughter on this?’ And they said ‘no’. “You don’t put anyone on service that you wouldn’t put my daughter on — that you wouldn’t put your daughter on,” (Paul Wiedefeld).

Like global warming, the US infrastructure crisis has been long in the making; everybody could see it coming but instead of devising solutions the matter continues to get cloaked in ideological smoke screens.

DC Metro station

So far, we are seeing just the tip of an iceberg. Yet, certain politicians still talk about cutting taxes even further, impoverishing the public sector even more and making upkeep and investment into infrastructure upgrades even harder. There is no free lunch!

In spite of its skimpy rail network Baltimore is also affected by maintenance issues pertaining to aging rails and trains. Our Light Rail trains are in the midst of their mid-life overhaul, tracks on Howard Street are in a deplorable condition. Our Metro is nearly the same age as DC's. New carriages are on order. Weekend service and longer hours of operation have shortened the hours available for maintenance here as well. MTA Administrator Paul Comfort will address whatever maintenance deficit aggressively as well.

Partial shut-downs and service cut-backs were announced by MTA for this summer.

The Maryland Department of Transportation’s Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) will shut down Baltimore Metro Subway service from the Milford Mill to Mondawmin stations for 21 days – July 23 to August 12 – for replacement of major components of Metro rail.

The Maryland Department of Transportation’s Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) will shut down Baltimore Metro Subway service from the Milford Mill to Mondawmin stations for 21 days – July 23 to August 12 – for replacement of major components of Metro rail.

To keep things in perspective: With over 700,000 riders a day, the DC Metro is still a very safe and effective means of transportation, sparks, fires and occasional crashes not withstanding. Especially if compared with the hazards of, say, the DC Beltway. Riders on Baltimore's rail transportation travel safely as well, even if their number is only 10% of Washington's ridership.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

First residential tower going up on Harborpoint peninsula

While the papers have been full about the lack of progress in Sandtown, Upton, Harlem Park or Rosemont, the HarborPoint peninsula which was once home of the Allied Signal chromium plant is barely recognizable.

While this dichotomy is telling, Beatty Development which manages HarborPoint, can barely be blamed for it. The industrial brownfield was certainly not a low hanging waterfront fruit just waiting to be picked, even though it also received a large chunk of tax increment financing (TIF) to create a brand-new infrastructure.

Harbor Point apartments

The old industrial site required huge clean-up investments (mostly paid by Honeywell, the legal successor of Allied Signal) including a perimeter slurry wall drilled down to bedrock and a sealed cap. In combination those two measures prevent stormwater from infiltrating the ground and then leach chromium into the harbor. Having those EPA approved measures in place has helped the harbor to become less polluted, even though to this day it still scores a grade F for water quality as reported just yesterday. The failure is now mostly a matter of raw sewage flowing in when the system is overflowing.

Back to HarborPoint: The demolition of Allied Signal occurred in the early 1990s, the debate about redevelopment ran concurrent and resulted in a first Planned Unit Development (PUD) in August 1993 which was the result of extensive negotiations with the communities of Fells Point who went into the discussion with the request of making all of the peninsula into a park. To this date the first PUD shapes the rough layout of the new development including the location and size of a roughly 6 acre waterfront park on the southwest corner of the peninsula.

The peninsula when it was occupied by Allied Signal

A subsequent PUD approved in May of 2004 replaced the original plan and modified parcels. On June 13, 2013 the PUD was once again replaced to include the Exelon site, a vehicular bridge extending Central Avenue on to the site. The new PUD increased the density from the original 1.7 m square feet gross building area to about 3.0m.

The first building to go up directly on the cap that marked a new beginning for the Allied Site 30 years after Allied closed down is the Exelon Tower now almost complete.

The PUD adjusted for the utility headquarter was amended again in March 2015 to allow Point Street Apartments, the 17 floor residential building with slightly under 300 units, about 280,000 sf total area with under 20,000 square feet of retail and a podium that allows for parking. The project is developed by Beatty Development Group and partners Armada Hoffler Properties Inc. and the Henson Development Co., owned by Daniel P. Henson, predecessor of Housing Commissioner Paul Graziano.

Bird's eye view of the envisioned build out of the peninsula

The first residential tower to be constructed on the brownfield site will break ground today.

The staff report to the Planning Commission described the proposed building in these terms:

The building mass is stepped and sculpted along the south façade to take maximum advantage of the view to the east. It is narrower and steps down to create views toward Fells Point. The overall design proposes a vertical tripartite division that places a tower-like gesture toward the urban park and the residential entrance centered on the midblock mass. The interior units and amenity spaces are organized to maximize views to the east, south, and west. The elevations contain vertical masonry piers, structural concrete frame, curtain wall systems, and metal panels which provide for a visual layering of articulation within the elevations.

The building, located on what is dubbed Point Street, is located "off the cap", i.e. it will technically not sit on the part of the site that had been capped as part of the EPA agreement. That part of the site had been cleaned up with surface decontamination in a agreement with MDE. The developers hope to complete the project some time next year. Design Architects ASG, other team members are Younts Design Inc. and Mahan Rykiel Associates, all Baltimore.

The matter of the $107 million TIF has landed back at Baltimore's Board of Finance. Even though the overall maximum amount has not been changed, the developer is asking for a much larger early tranche. As the Baltimore SUN reported late yesterday:

In Harbor Point, it is clear already that the project's needs are different from what had been anticipated.
Beatty Development is seeking about $39 million in bonds to help pay for infrastructure in the second phase of the project. That's about $20 million more than had been planned, said Steve Kraus, deputy director of the city finance department. The additional costs include about $3.4 million for the Central Avenue bridge, according to a presentation by the Baltimore Development Corp.
The added costs do not change the total amount authorized for the project — $107 million in TIF financing. Kraus said the developer has not requested more financing.
Board members declined to authorize the sale of those bonds, pressing city officials and consultants for more information about what profit the developer received and how it compares to other projects, as well as other assumptions related to the projections.

The bridge is artfully concealed on most renderings

The Central Avenue bridge plays a major role in the TIF with a cost that is variably given as between $10-15 million. It will have four vehicle lanes and also carry the pedestrian connection of the promenade from Harbor East to Harbor Point. As I have expressed many times on this blog, I consider the bridge a major mistake.

• Urban design : It will hook the peninsula much more to the shore by covering over the small body of water (City Dock) that separates it today from the main shore destroying in part what makes this land so precious
• Transportation: Luring many cars onto this clearly circulation challenged point makes no sense when the entire street network in southeast is clogged and beyond capacity. HarborPoint should be a model for a less car dependent development  
• Design: The bridge, designed and constructed by the City DOT in its current configuration is a clunky utilitarian bridge hovering low over the water and choking off City Dock. Instead, it should be a lightweight iconic landmark that elegantly swings over the water and should be limited to pedestrians and bicycles. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

2015 amendment PUD staff report

BBJ article about the project
UDARP minutes 8/28/14
SUN about the Board of Finance session Monday 5-9-16

Related articles on this blog:

Allied Signal, Honeywell, Exelon

Why that 4-lane bridge to Harbor Point is a costly mistake

The water body of City Dock that would be entirely cut off by a more than 60' wide bridge

  

NEA announces grant for North Ave Knowledge Exchange

Through the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Baltimore received another grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Our Town grant. The grant is given in the category of Knowledge Building.

Nanook's mural for Open Walls, a previously NEA grant funded project.

The organization announced today that $75,000 will go to Baltimore to support
the North Avenue Knowledge Exchange (NAKE). This is the project description from the NEA announcement:

This community-based education platform will provide free access to high quality classes for neighborhood stakeholders to learn from each other and engage in projects that improve the Station North community. In addition to those courses taught by local residents, partner institutions may offer arts-based instruction in design, drawing, video production, and literature, as well as classes on livability for residents on topics such as financial literacy. NAKE is a partnership between Maryland Institute College of Art, Station North Art & Entertainment District, Baltimore Office of Promotion and The Arts, Inc., and Red Emma, a local coffeehouse and bookstore that has pioneered this program through the Baltimore Free School.

The project addresses Baltimore's endemic inequitable access to quality education and supports approximately 2,400 local residents, 70% of whom are African American and where 17% are households living in poverty.

The Exchange is an operating program 

The project was announced as part of a total of 64 grants worth $4.3 million awarded by NEA. The highest award is $100,000.

“For six years, Our Town has made a difference for people and the places where they live, work, and play. The broad-based partnerships and the focus on leveraging local cultural assets have helped residents engage the arts to spark vitality in their communities.” (NEA Chairman Jane Chu)

Station North had been previously been the recipient of a NEA grant through which, among other things, Open Walls had been funded to bring international mural artists to Baltimore.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

NEA list of grants

O'Malley's next gig

Martin O'Malley who who wanted to be the start-up candidate among the presidential hopefuls floundered early as it is common among start-ups. Failure is a badge of honor among the techies following the mantra that you have to risk failure to grow. 

O'Malley declares his candidacy for President in
Baltimore's Federal Hill Park on May 30, 2015
(Photo: K Philipsen)

Almost a year after announcing his presidential run, O'Malley's new start-up launch is with the MetroLab Network, an initiative that originated with the White House in late 2015 and is fledging under the tutelage of Carnegie Mellon. MetroLab Network is a partnership between cities and universities based on the notion of smart cities and universities as anchor institutions. 

The Network, launched as part of the White House’s Smart Cities Initiative in September 2015 and addresses projects in Economic development & human capital, governance & civic engagement, health & public safety, transportation & infrastructure, water, energy & sustainability.

O'Malley as a former mayor and inventor of CitiStat, the idea of data based governance with strong reliance on performance metrics, is a good choice for the task of supporting MetroLab by convening an Advisory Committee of “leaders in government, industry, academia, and philanthropy.” (Press release).

The gig may not exactly measure up to the same status as being the President of the United States, but it positions O'Malley where currently real progress is made: the metropolises of the world. So far 33 US cities, 44 universities (including Johns Hopkins, UB and the City of Baltimore, both joined this month) and 3 counties are members of the rapidly growing network. 

In  a statement O'Malley says: 

“Cities have always been one of my passions, and I am excited for the opportunity to work with cities and universities across the country. Advances in technology, data science, and computing provide new opportunities to deal with our cities’ greatest challenges, aging infrastructure, the delivery of effective public services, the need to help our most vulnerable neighbors, and the imperative to address climate change. By pairing cities with universities, MetroLab Network creates a collaborative platform that is a critical to deploying solutions.”

“Governor O’Malley’s insights and experience will be of enormous benefit to the cities and universities in MetroLab Network,” said Ronald Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins University. In 2015, Governor O’Malley was a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School, where he focused on government, business, and urban issues.

O'Malley will get his first opportunity to shine next Wednesday in San Diego when he will provide the keynote address opening the two day spring workshop of the MetroLab Network. 

MetroLab Network is supported by a $1 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. 

The exchange between cities isn't a novel idea. It occurred for years as part of the Mayor's Institute on City Design, The US Conference of Mayors and international collaboration in sustainability organizations such as this. The new element of MetroLab is the pairing with universities. Following the advice of Antoine van Agtmael on how cities can become innovation centers and globally competitive, laid out in his new book From Rustbelts to Brainbelts, private innovation industry should be included as well. 


The University of Baltimore President Kurt Schmoke had this to say about the partnership with MetroLab:

"As Baltimore continues to grow, change and improve to become a truly great 21st century American city, our colleges and universities must reflect and, indeed, drive that evolution, UB's joining of the MetroLab Network is powerful evidence that this is happening, and we're proud to join with the city in leading the way."

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA 

Press release

Port Covington - proposal and review

Having sat through a series of design reviews for the proposed Port Covington project, conducted on the highest level of professionalism, I have come to wish that not only more design reviews should go like this project but also that the economic review be held to similar standards.

The Founders Park, suggested as the heart of the development
 (source: Sagamore)

As an urban designer (and not an economist) I can only judge the design of the proposed Port Covington masterplan and the quality of the discourse between the Planning Department's Urban Design and Architectural Review Panel (UDARP) and Sagamore's consultants. Having read a good part of  the conclusions of Municap, the City's consultant on economic impacts, TIFs, the fiscal balance and profits in general, I can't help thinking, that UDARP could be a good precedent for how to critically review other aspects of this huge and complex project.

Confidence and competence being the first ingredients. The team of design reviewers are by no means intimidated by a renowned Boston architect whose office prepared the design and whose principal came to every single session to present in person and in great detail nor do the cow-tow to Under Armour's Sagamore just because the company has become such a big player in town. The design review wasn't just waved through like a car through the car wash. Instead it was taken piece by piece through a series of sessions that began in March 2015 with the review of the whiskey distillery and in January 2016 with the full masterplan. Since then there were at least four additional sessions. The final verdict is still out.

Massing sketch with 400' towers (screenshot at UDARP)

The players are Sagamore's Vice President Caroline Paff who each time provides a brief intro and then hands it to her design team, headed by Elkus Manfredi Architects in Boston supported by STV for civil and transportation, Landworks Studio for landcsape architecture, BioHabitats for habitat design and Toole Design for bike and ped consulting. On the side of UDARP are the panelists Pavlina Ilieva, Gary Bowden and Richard Burns as architects and  David Haresign and David Rubin for landscape architecture as well as Planning Director Tom Stosur and UDARP staffer Anthony Cataldo.

The presentations went from guiding principles and project goals to an overview of everything to discussions of  subareas, just as any planning process should be presented.

UDARP took issue with assumptions and concepts from the first session on. They vehemently disliked  a pedestrian bridge that lifted pedestrians across Hanover Street, they considered the building massing blocks as too crude, demanded income diversity and civic uses and even suggested independent energy production.

Never once took Elkus Manfredi's principal and partner David Manfredi a reviewer's suggestion as anything but as a valid idea of a peer which he would integrate into the next presentation. Never did the owner's representative, Carolina Paff deviate from her upbeat cheerfulness, or reject an idea as too expensive and dismiss it as "over the top". At all times only high caliber precedents were used as models and only cutting edge best practices were deemed acceptable, whether it was for streetscape design, promenades, waterfront parks, place-making, parks, multimodal mobility, building massing, habitat protection, storm water management or even "dark sky" compliant lighting. Thus the plan includes rail transit, bikeways, promenades, look-out piers, water taxi landings, bird nesting places and bio-habitats, a restored railroad bridge connection, "complete streets", parks and public plazas and just about anything else that planners and urban designers consider state of the art.

skyline (source: Sagamore)

In spite of this array of "nice things to have", the design reviewers were never awestruck. They never just took what was shown on face-value to simply waved it through. Instead, panelists used  their professional expertise to make counter suggestions or, at times, rejected certain aspects flat-out.

Early on, the perimeter development parcels and blocks were rejected as too large. A pedestrian plaza was considered as too complicated in terms of circulation and how vehicles and pedestrians would traverse it. Hanover Street's suggested turn lanes were derided as too suburban for a presumably urban boulevard. In the next review the perimeter blocks were smaller and more "permeable", the turn lanes had disappeared and "Urban Plaza" had been simplified.

The professionals engaged in meaningful discussions about the future of mobility and what it could mean to parking. They debated the best way to connect the fairly isolated Port Covington development area to the South Baltimore community to the north. Reviewers suggested to move bike lanes, requested narrower streets and relocation of service entrances. Nate Evans who was once Baltimore's bike coordinator and foremost bike advocate is now a consultant advising the team on cutting edge methods to accommodate bike riders who commute and those who pedal along the waterfront for recreation in different ways. Bicycle pathways are still considered unresolved by panelists in some areas.

At each new review David Manfredi returned with a modified design, presenting an improved scheme and the admission that the plan had been made better through the dialogue. Reviewers sometimes minced no words: "I abhor and detest that you have underground parking under Urban Plaza" David Haresign said yesterday. "You are not a traffic guy" he advised Manfredi, "you are an architect. Make architecture out of this and let those traffic engineers take it on later," he requested pointing to the roads around the so called Urban Plaza. During that most recent review Planning Director Stosur practically burst out stating "what is completely missing is something that is a little neighborhood like other successful neighborhoods. Why are you rejecting it? Everything seems to be Superblock". Such a fundamental criticism in the eighth inning would typically bring about a defensive response by the owner or the architect even in the civilized UDARP setting. But Manfredi conceded that Stosur had a "good point" and Paff promised to address housing typologies, civic service accommodations (Ilieva: "Civic buildings have an urban organizational role.") in the next presentation. The panel had, indeed, asked about family housing, civic buildings and schools in the very first presentation. In spite of the general responsiveness, these items seemed to have not been well addressed yet.

I have been around the block often enough to know that big projects often start with a honeymoon phase, that design is one thing and reality can be another, once hard economic realities set in. We saw that in Westport, where Pat Turner's beautiful design, prepared in part by famous firms like Field Operations, went up in smoke when he, the sole engine for the project, ran out of steam. Under Armour is a stronger entity but an enduring long future over decades is no certainty. The crux of this project, too, is its dependency on one star. As I have written before, the history of urban development knows "sugar daddies" and company towns for a long time, and it shows successes (Florence under the Medici) and failures such as Pullman, Illinois). So in reviewing the economic model, there should be the same give-and-take as in the discussions about design.  TIF, tax credits, public and private funds, side agreements for affordable housing, community benefits and public benefits, should not only be checked for their equity content but also for their resilience in bad times. Resiliency means redundancy, a host of funding sources and revenues that feed the project until it can eventually stand on its own.

the so called eco zones. (Source: Sagamore)

The folks from Hafen-City Hamburg presented such a model when they came to Baltimore and it, too started with public investment and gradual pay-back. For the project to fund its later phases with proceeds from its early ones, a careful strategy is needed. Phasing of the 25 year project has not been discussed much yet, except that there was talk about dividing the TIF into "tranches". 

Even though the project slogan "we build it together" is a bit cheesy and raises suspicions about how much public and private interests are really aligned,  from the design approach to date it seems that there is sufficient overlap between public and private interest for the famous "win-win". To attract qualified employees in a world where cities compete in quality of life, Under Armour needs to offer more than a standard corporate campus built in isolation. For Baltimore to thrive, it needs to have growth, a more diverse tax base and it can certainly use a big growing and flourishing corporation. That potential overlap in interest was sufficient for a very civilized and constructive debate about design. From an urban designer's perspective, the negotiations about the Port Covington masterplan are like a first rate very instructive continued education class. That in itself is novel in a city where a lot of mediocre design has been accepted under the false premise that anything would be better than nothing.

Turning a former railyard into a testing ground for best practices in environmental design, transportation, mobility, housing, offices, retail and recreation and even (in small parts) historic preservation, seeing those best practices aspired to, envisioned, discussed and put into shape feels like a miracle in a city far too short of miracles.

The task is now to use the upcoming TIF debate in the city council for  turning the project into an equally progressive and creative model for equity and economic development. While the size of the TIF is clearly driven by the high quality design, a bare minimum design should not be posed as a viable alternative. Doing a bare bones (or no) Port Covington won't make more money available for investments in Sandtown and East Baltimore. What will be developed along the Middle Branch can shape Baltimore's future. To set a new benchmark for urban redevelopment, Baltimore better pull out all the stops and let only the best be good enough; not only with design as the metric as Denver did it with their Union Station TOD, Boston with their Innovation District or DC with the Naval Yard redevelopment, but also in workforce development, local job creation, affordable housing, neighborhood development and social capital. Baltimore's chance of becoming a model.

Just like the masterplan was discussed at UDARP, the fiscal debate should be fair, open, have give and take and become a competition for the best ideas.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA