The new Camden Station - something the MTA got right

Baltimore's Camden Station and its adjacent B&O warehouse have a storied history. The fame of the adjacent Oriole Park, taking advantage of the history, is legendary. The construction of a new intermodal station building for the MARC commuters and the Light Rail passengers arriving here for ballgames, transferring between the two rail services,  disembarking for their daily work or boarding for the trip home is, therefore, a risky endeavor.  One can debate if  the now completed project is a "home run" as MDOT declares in its own press release, but it certainly close to it.

In 1992 when the intermodal station first opened alongside the stadium, there had been plans floated by Baltimore concrete mogul Swirnow to build medical trade mart above the tracks, back then dubbed "MedMart". Parkway/Swirnow held exclusive development rights for the interior of the historic Camden Station, the south end of the B&O; warehouse, and the air rights above a 6.5-acre tract east of the B&O warehouse. That project died after the 1992 deadline passed. MTA subsequently deferred building a permanent station structure in favor of a low cost temporary space-frame and modular building that should be kept in service for 27 years.

The new station building blends in and also holds its own. (Photo: Philipsen)

It is worth noting, that constructing a new station  for rail service right next to the historic train station  for which no sustainable permanent use  has to been found, is in itself not a very convincing idea. The need arose because of vehicle egress requirements for the new ballpark necessitated moving the MARC and Light rail boarding functions around 300' south away from the historic station. Now Conway Street could cross the tracks and serve as a vehicular entry and exit.

The duplication of a station building in a historic setting because of car egress is a typical win of cars over pedestrians and transit. Yet, nobody seems to have found a better solution in all those years, and so, in 2017 a memorandum of agreement between the Stadium Authority (MSA) and MDOT outlined a new building with MSA carrying the project management cost of the project.

A new station in front of the historic station (Photo: Philipsen)

In 2017 the Board of Public Works awarded $30,000 for "pre-construction management services" to the Barton Marlow Company and the design work and construction management to AECOM, the world's largest architecture and engineering firm with a specialty in transportation and transit. The company has a Baltimore office. In 2018 a new station design was unveiled by MTA and AECOM and ground was broken. The light rail station was closed and bypassed for the duration of construction. MSA acted as the client and MTA as the owner. It was a very fast paced, “Construction Manager at-risk” project, according to project manager Paul Diez of AECOM. The firm also performed the civil and structural design services.

The completed design mercifully deviates from the concept sketches that MTA had developed before selecting a design team. The final design is simple and creates a pleasant mix of contextual and contextual design respecting the historic environment.. The contemporary elements give the building the "confidence" presence in needs in the large scale environment of the warehouse, the beginning freeway and the trains. Additionally, the station building has to be presentable from all four sides and even from above when seen from the upper floors of the warehouse. This isn't an easy task, given that the structure has to conceal an electrical substation, bathrooms and MTA staff service areas. The finished station succeeds in meeting these demands.

The hipped roof and clear-story is limited to the waiting area
(Photo: Kevin Lynch)

One can quibble with the fact that the double hipped roof with a clear-story band of windows (which provide additional daylight for the waiting room) has not been extended across the entire building. Now the building has a flat roof portion and a sloped metal roof, as well as the canopy roofs; too much for such a small structure. However, the massing and functionality of the low clear-story roof and the cantilevering  roof canopy without the earlier row of columns and the stilted clear-story is far more convincing than the original concepts.

With $7,2 million construction cost the building is quite expensive for not being much bigger than a large single family home. The much larger Greyhound bus terminal costed only $8 million, however, it also looks cheaper. Investing in making an attractive and durable transit station is money well spent. We certainly don't see enough of it.

One can only wish that MTA's sister agency would consider turning the end of I-395 along Ca,den Yards into an urban boulevard that is an appropriate gateway into the City and pays due respect to the famous ballpark.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

MTA Press Release

Related on this blog:

Design team selected for new Camden Station

Camden Station should be a train station again!

The possibly least attractive side is facing the warehouse

Give historic Camden Station purpose again!

Pop Up Instead of Permanence (2012)

Early rendering of the station (MSA/MTA)

The temporary structure that lasted 27 years (Photo Philipsen)

MTA Administrator Kevin Quinn and MDOT Secreatry Rahn  cut the ribbon
(Photo: Kevin Lynch)

MTA to businesses: You need change how you do land use!

The "Transit Summits" of the Greater Baltimore Committee have become routine and so have GBC executive Don Fry's admonitions that transit is important to economic development.

Transit Oriented Development at Denver Union Station

GBC couldn't get MDOT Secretary Rahn to explain his transit cutting transportation budget, let alone Trump's transportation secretary Elaine Chao to explain why the Trump administration is so averse to rail.  Instead former Clinton DOT Secretary Rodney Slater talked about how many ants can move a large piece of bread, making vague allusions to Baltimore's Red Line and the possibility of moving this mountain if there would just be enough "ants".

Absent major highlights the most newsworthy item became MTA Administrator Quinn's appeal to the business community to think about transit when they do developments. "I can't serve your business when your parking lot doesn't even allow a bus to turn" or "if it sits way off an existing transit line, forcing all riders to do a lengthy sidetrip", Quinn scolded. "Its 50/50" he said, and meant land use and transportation and by extension the division of responsibilities for job access through transit and those who put the stuff where transit is impossible. He noted that half of the regionally projected additional 440,000 jobs would not be accessible to transit under the "business as usual" scenario that is expected.

Michael Kelly addressing the GBC summit 2019

The half and half assumptions is probably an understatement. Land use is the key driver for successful transportation. The last time developers thought about this connections was when they built streetcars so they could develop suburbs such as Catonsville, the so streetcar villages that came before the automobile became the mode of choice. Then the densities were tailored just right for rail transit. Ever since the development patterns have made effective transit more and more impossible, allowing auto-centric politicians to poo-poo how poorly transit works and at the same time complain about congested roadways.

Michael Kelly of the Baltimore Metro Council illuminated the point inadvertently when he spoke after Quinn. He showed graphs that showed population growth of 330,000 people for the region in the next 25 years. The jurisdiction with the greatest growth rate: Queen Anne's County! Exactly where growth shouldn't go (no transit to speak of) and where certainly no public dollars should be spent to encourage growth. (For example through another Bay Bridge).

Kelly topped his statistics off with another inadvertent headline. "We will probably never become an attainment area under the Clean Air Act" he said in passing, a statement that caught the attention of a WYPR producer who just had reported about Baltimore's transit woes. Kelly pointed to Pennsylvania and Ohio as the culprits for the bad air, but didn't say that Maryland's transportation is the largest greenhouse gas emitter and largely responsible for the many smog days Baltimore registers.

Impossible to serve with transit: The usual sprawl

Quinn also spoke about the large investment gap in keeping transit in a state of good repair, totaling over $2 billion in the next 10 years. Much of the massive needs for investment in transportation have to do with sprawl, in other words with land use.

Quinn's reminder that land use is at least half of the transit equation can't be urgent enough. Its high time to put development where transit is on the ground, along the existing metro, MARC and light rail lines, all having stations that are large holes in a development doughnut with parked cars frequently closest to the stations. If Hogan is against further expansion of the transportation network then he must also be against further enlarging the development footprint and must be for Smart Growth (which he isn't).

Instead of new highway lines we need dense development around all rail stations, capturing the bulk of the expected growth in a sustainable manner. State Center is a case in point. Instead of scuttling the development the Governor should promote it as the only logical consequence of his killing the Red Line. (The "logic" being to make best use of existing assets before building new ones). But it isn't reason that governs his transportation thinking. Nor is reason governing land use. And that is why Quinn is facing the impossible task of chasing ever more sprawl with transit and a ever shrinking transit budget.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

One way to have fewer vacant rowhouses

It is a heavy lift to fill the 24,000 or so vacant Baltimore rowhouses. At $200,000 a piece this would cost $4.8 billion, a figure that exceeds the entire Baltimore City capital and operating budget. In spite of all efforts of turning vacants to value and in spite of tearing thousands of those buildings down, the number of vacants has remained stubbornly stagnant. The reason is simple: For every demolition and for every rehab a new property became vacant.

Vacant homes: Demolition can't be the answers (SUN photo)

Staving off the pipeline of those buildings that were occupied one day and vacant the next seems to be an important and strategic measure. Like turning the gas off after a leaky gas line fuels a raging fire. For the strategy to work, one has to understand how buildings become vacant. Unlike for the status of structures, there isn't an abundance of data about the process that leads to vacancy. Studying how buildings become abandoned and vacant brings the entire complicated history of Baltimore into focus. Heer a few ways how it could happen:

• The part about the decline of industry and the shrinking population is most frequently told. Once your city shrinks by a third of the population it makes sense that buildings would stand unused, even though Baltimore didn't lose nearly as many households as residents thanks to ever fewer people making up a household in modern times. 
• The story gets more complicated when one considers the infamous "redlining". What do lending practices that date 60-80 years back have to do with today's vacants? It turns out: a lot. Take Eutaw Place where the same large opulent rowhouses on one side are worth half a million or more and on the other only $160,000, at times as little as $28,000? Bolton Hill wasn't redlined, but Marble Hill was, Bolton Hill is a largely white neighborhood, Marble Hill is majority black. The stark difference in home values is directly related to the risk of a house becoming vacant.  
• Low cost run-down large rowhouses are sometimes run by "slumlords" who rent them out to several parties until the building falls apart and becomes uninhabitable. At that point a unscrupulous landlord may walk away with the profit and leave the building to rot. 
• But there are much less nefarious ways how a low value building could end up vacant, no matter how beautiful its bones are. The landlord him or herself could be a low income homeowner who tried to supplement his own meager income with the rents of a cheaply acquired second home. 
• Or a an elderly low income homeowner could have  fallen into ill health and moved to  a retirement home without anybody to take care of the home with the assessed value too low to attract much attention. Often the poor conditions of the homes the,selves are the cause of the poor health of owners and their children thanks to mold from leaky roofs or wet basements. Leaky windows, poorly insulated walls rack up high utility costs that the owner may not be able to pay until BGE turns off the power and the house becomes entirely uninhabitable. Lead paint poising young children may lead owners to leave unable to pay the cost of ridding the house of lead. 
• Or a low income resident would have fallen prey to mortgage gauging and his home goes into foreclosure. Often the banks then rather let it sit than fix it up for sale. 
• Or a resident without means to do the necessary repairs gets written up for a code violation and has no money to pay the fine, let alone rectify the violation. Either the fines add up to a lien and eventually taking or the building may be condemned for being unsafe. Once again, it would wind up standing empty.

New construction or rehab at $200,000 a piece can't be the answer

Someone may object that the homeownership rates in Baltimore's disinvested neighborhoods (which is often only half or less than the national average) are too low to really fuel a pipeline of vacants. It is hard to say, exactly how many vacants go on account of owners leaving or being pushed out due to one of the described causes, but it is certain that of the remaining homeowners quite a few live on the brink of disaster. Nor is there any question that a higher homeownership rate is a good way to stabilize a neighborhood.

There are a few programs out there to assist low income homeowners to keep their house in shape, but they are far too small to cover the huge needs. This is why the City of Baltimore is on the right track with the HUBS program to help to keep their house in shape. Problem is only, that HUBS is so popular that it ran out of funds very quickly.

The Housing Upgrades to Benefit Seniors (HUBS) program serves residents of Baltimore. Social Workers based at six HUBS sites will provide application assistance to older adults to determine home improvements that will make their houses healthier and more secure.(HUBS website)

The Upton Community Planning Committee ("Upton Power") is HUBS with their new homeowner support program announced this Friday which is not age restricted. The program will support owners with between $5,000 to $15,000 for the most urgent repairs. The program just received its initial $100,000 seed money from Wells Fargo which is investing in Upton as part of the federal Community Reinvestment Act and possibly in a kind of  "reparations" mode to make up for the bank's role in the foreclosure crisis.

The Housing Committee of the Social Determinants of Health Task Force created by the MD legislature with a focus on health wants to tie the issue of vulnerable homeowners to health. Similar to the Healthy Rowhouse program in Philadelphia, the group imagines that relatively small incentive payments assisting needy homeowners to fix their homes will markedly help improve their health and safety.

Substandard housing conditions due to deferred maintenance are literally making the people who live in these rowhouses sick. Substandard conditions like mold, mildew, lead paint, and pests create and perpetuate health conditions like asthma and lead poisoning in our most vulnerable populations.
40% of asthma episodes are due to asthma triggers in the home, representing $5 billion lost annually in preventable medical costs. (Healthy Rowhouse, Philadelphia)

The group now discusses to link a house repair program not only to health but also to workforce development. The attempt of linking health, housing and job skills into one virtuous cycle is also an attempt to avoid the pitfall of scattered interventions that never add up to anything. The more comprehensive concept is still in its infancy and in search of legislative support. Funding is key, of course. The Healthy Rowhouse non-profit in Philadelphia is currently trying to build such a larger fund with the help of private investment funds.

Trying to stave off the steady flow of vacant houses is an strategic move, even if it is addressing only a small segment of the Baltimore housing problem: According to data from Baltimore's Neighborhood Indicators Alliance the biggest single predictor for the rise or fall of a neighborhood is to have more than 4% vacant homes. Especially in neighborhoods on the edge, a few houses not becoming vacant can make all the difference.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Another Bay bridge is insanity

It so happened that the shortlist of options for another Bay crossing along with Governor Hogan's stated preference were announced on the same day Greta Thunberg arrived in the US sailing from Europe. She is the 16 year old climate activist who founded the international high school student movement Friday's for Future.

Greta Thunberg, climate activivist arrives in NYC (NYT)

This coincidence highlights better than anything how stuck in an almost forgotten past our Governor and his transportation Secretary are; how entirely unencumbered by any insight or thought the idea is to build another bridge crossing.

A new bridge isn't just a wasteful boondoggle, it would create irreparable damage to all the systems that are already teetering at the brink. It is irresponsible of  Maryland's transportation officials to have even kicked off a planning process for this ill fated idea and wasting valuable planning dollars on it, even though the realization of such a project would be far beyond the the point this government is in office.

More roadways to the shore? Full steam into the 1950s (SUN photo)

The additional Bay bridge idea is nothing than an extrapolation of the policies of the 1950's, the time when the first span was built in 1952. Eeven the second span, opening in 1973, seemed awkwardly out of its time when it fell into the same year as the OPEC oil embargo that became since known as America's first oil shock.  (Two more followed but had no impact on many decision makers, a fact Ms Thunberg never tires to point out. Especially Maryland's transportation officials have not learned these lessons since then:

• The bridge and the added span have opened the Eastern shore to unprecedented sprawl and destruction of valuable farmlands. By now it takes a full 10 miles to get out of the jumble of gas stations, fast food places and shopping centers lining a bloated US50 before one can even get a sense of the Eastern Shore landscapes. Vulnerable coastal wetlands near Stevensville and Chestertown have been paved over, sprawl mansions sit were framers once tended to fields.
• All the new capacity and development has added congestion not relieved it. Now many people think nothing of it to live on the Eastern Shore and work in Annapolis, Baltimore or DC, a completely unsustainable commute.
• Sprawl, development and endless promotion of a quick journey to the beach brought about more driving, more gasoline consumption and more air pollution, all premier contributors to climate change, the very issue threatening the Eastern Shore more than most other landscapes in the United States
• Added capacity can come in other ways than building more road lanes: New technologies will bring to better manage existing road-space with less congestion. It is estimated that autonomous connected vehicles of all types will increase existing roadway capacity in freeway conditions by at least 30%, just about what a new bridge span would provide. This in itself could spell calamity if not properly managed. But this and a third span is  lunacy. No matter who does the forecasting, those autonomous vehicles will be certainly everyday occurrence by the time a new bridge would be complete.
• More access points to the Eastern Shore can dilute the negative impacts if they are done by lower capacity solutions such as hybrid ferries.
  

  

  Gas shortages in 1973: Even two oil shocks are not  enough

No matter where the location [of a bridge], make no mistake, it will have an impact on the entire Eastern Shore. What is at stake is the Eastern Shore’s quality of life, heritage, and highly productive farmland. Should Kent County be the selected location, our small agrarian rural county with the smallest population and landmass in Maryland would be swamped with traffic and our open space littered with fast food chains. Our unique identity would be ended. (Op-Ed, Chestertown)

Defying all those reasons, the juggernaut of a transportation study will run its course, once it is kicked loose. It will be the duty of any responsible citizen who cares about the environment, about climate change, or about fiscal responsibility to come out (see meeting info here) and tell this administration that the study has to be stopped. The old mantra of unfettered growth, no matter what kind, and no matter how damaging, has to come to an end.

Reach the beach come hell or highwater: MDOT corridor alternatives

Funded by toll dollars, the Bay Crossing Study Tier 1 began in 2016 and is expected to be complete in 2021. The next steps are to publish a Draft Environmental Impact Statement and hold public hearings in fall 2020. The final steps are to identify the preferred corridor alternative and publish the Final Environmental Impact Statement/Record of Decision in collaboration with FHWA in summer 2021. (MDOT website)

Greta Thunberg, still essentially a child,  sailed over the ocean to tell the adults to finally grow up and plan for her generation and those following her. There is hardly anybody who needs to hear her message more than Larry Hogan and his MDOT Secretary Rahn. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Related posts on this blog:

How the State gets to spend $1.1 billion on I-95 toll lanes

The biggest threat to the Eastern Shore isn't water

Heavy timber office building comes to Baltimore

The Collective at Canton: Site plan (Moseley Architects)

Washington DC has one, so does Minneapolis, Denver, Portland and a growing number of other places. If everything goes as planned, Baltimore will be next with a 5 story office building made not from concrete or steel but wood, cross laminated timer (CLT) to be technical. The new technique is the result of laminating timber strands until one gets hefty solid beams and columns that combine the best properties of concrete (compression strength) and of steel (tensile strength), an ideal condition especially where good seismic performance is needed. Plus, like heavy timber, CLT beams and columns don’t easily burn while not requiring the logging of substantial trees as traditional heavy timber. However, Currently, the International Building Code (IBC) only permits at most a six-story building using Type IV construction, a limit that may soften according to new code comments earlier this year. A especially permitted exception is a 12 story CLT in Portland, the tallest in the US.

The industrial past with tank farms and the signature curve at the
top of the image

Baltimore’s first engineered lumber building will be part of what Pavlina Ilyeva called "a whole new neighborhood" rising on what used to be an old Exxon tank farm across from what is now known as Canton Crossing.  The new development goes by the name the Collective at Canton and entails 12 acres total, bifurcated by a curved rails to trails greenway that roughly follows what would have been the Red Line alignment. The developer, Sapperstein is looking to bring a mix of retail, residential and office projects to the former industrial land. 

The architect for the timber office building is the Richmond based firm of Moseley Architects which has a large Baltimore presence after merging with  Marks Thomas Architects. Moeseley's design tries to make the

The proposed 5 story office building in its revised version (Moseley)

unusual construction method not only an interior feature of their exterior design but let it come through on the outside. To this end one corner has open decks with exposing the floor above on each level and timber supported protrusions on the facade which the Urban Design Advisory Panel (UDAAP) reviewed Thursday for the second time. 

For the longest time, Clinton Street was the eastern edge of what had already been dubbed the "gold coast" after the Anchorage, American Can Company, Tindeco and Canton Crossing had opened up the formerly industrial waterfront. Too unlikely the chance that the polluted old tank farms should ever join the golden parcels to the west. Ed Hale, who bought land east of Clinton for his trucking business might have

Sapperstein's Wheelhouse in Federal Hill (Philipsen)

had other thoughts. He certainly jumped the old barrier when he built the First Mariner tower, essentially one of his branch buildings on steroids.  Today, the odd tower is surrounded by new development which year after year becomes more urban and better architecturally, a trend heavily pushed by UDAAP member Pavlina Ilieva who demanded that the new Collective complex become far more walkable and pedestrian friendly than the Canton Crossing shopping center also developed by Mark Sapperstein. He understands the new market. His Walker development is just about to open the WHeelhouse in federal Hill, a building without any parking. Residents attracted to the co-housing offerings (up to three bedrooms per unit with bath around a kitchen and living room) will get a free bicycle instead. 


Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Heavy timber in Portland's Clay Creative  building (Columbres photography)

Connecting the dots: Working from strength in West Baltimore

The West Baltimore MARC station area is not included in the four Impact Investment Areas of Upton/ Druid Heights, Park Heights, East Baltimore and Southwest as noted  in the City's brochure "A new era of neighborhood investment". Impact Investment Areas work from anchors of strength. This article shows how the MARC station, the Ice House next to it, the Highway to Nowhere and Metro West can be knitted together as anchors.

One of many visions for the Highway to Nowhere
(Peter Tocco, Plainview Graphics)

The West Baltimore MARC station sits on the edge of several surrounding communities (Rosemont, Midtown/ Edmondson, Penrose) but it should be a focal point because it is a popular commuter rail station and Baltimore's transit gateway to DC. Because of that it has been the locus of redevelopment ideas for decades. The Red Line Planning would have turned the station into a rail hub, the planning effort yielded e a City approved masterplan. A more ADA compliant rebuilding of the commuter station itself is on the books of MTA and delayed  because Amtrak investigated various B&P tunnel replacement alternatives which would affect how the tracks would run through this station area.

Not all is just on paper. Real investment came  with federal TIGER grants which transformed the end of the highway with its abandoned ramps and retaining walls into an MTA parking lot extension.  Then, with the new Link bus system, the MTA built a bus transit center next to the commuter rail train station. $3.75 million in federal funds through the Ladder STEP program allowed upgrades to several streets surrounding the transit hub including landscaping, ADA compliant sidewalks and crosswalks, lighting, and bike/walking pathways. Rehabilitation is taking place in nearby Harlem Park along the freeway.

ULI TAP diagram of Metro West on the east side and the MARC station on
the west side of the "Highway to Nowhere"  (ULI)

Most recently, the BBJ reported that  the owner of the Ice House (see video) Ilya Alter had teamed up with Bill Struever of Cross Street Partners to redevelop it as a brew-pub. A construction dumpster is already positioned on the site.

Finally, this week Dan Rodricks presented an idea in the SUN ("Here is a big idea") which Caves Valley, the developer who owns the complex of the former Social Security West, had revealed to him: A linear park constructed in the ditch now occupied by the highway to nowhere. Baltimore's "Low Line". (New York has the world famous "High Line" park). Arsh Mirmiran, partner at Caves Valley explained for the purpose of this article:

As we have looked from the upper floors of the Metro West building out to the west, it has become evident to our team (CVP and B&B Realty) that the Highway to Nowhere (a) has very little utility as a highway, (b) serves as an example of bad urban planning and is a major impediment to potential redevelopment efforts and community revitalization efforts in West Baltimore, and (c) provides a legitimate opportunity to create a transit link to the relatively nearby West Baltimore MARC Station, as well as recreation opportunities for existing and
future residents and office tenants in the area. As such, we have studied it and recommended to others that it be studied further and in detail. (Arsh Mirmiran)

A more fanciful vision for the Highway to Nowhere

(Peter Tocco, Plainview Graphics)

The linear park idea came out of a Technical Assistance Panel (TAP) conducted by the Baltimore chapter of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in May of this year.

The solution to the problems of the study area is to end the culture of division, and create a culture of connection. This requires us to re-engage with the public spaces that our communities now retract from, and to find new ways to activate them in the public interest. (TAP report)

The park is one of many ideas proffered for the useless freeway over the years, for example by Gerald Neily on his blog InnerSpace. The freeway and all proposed uses for it end right at the West Baltimore MARC station in the west and at the Metro West complex on the east. All other parts of Baltimore's freeway plans had been defeated. Right before the highway fragment ends it engages with Martin Luther King Boulevard with a typical freeway set of overpasses and on and off ramps, creating an inhospitable environment for Metro Center West and making MLK at US 40 even more of a barrier than it is elsewhere. The removal of the overpass and ramps has been suggested by Caves Valley before and was endorsed by the TAP. It would be part of the greenway plan along with intensified uses at the corners of a future normal intersection. Rodricks in his column gave the park idea some of his own twists:

The Highway to Nowhere as seen from Security West (Photo: Rodricks/SUN)

The Westside Greenway, a proposal to turn the whole corridor into a green, people-friendly park connecting West Baltimore and its neighborhoods with downtown. Think of New York City’s Highline, or Citygarden in St. Louis. Imagine a 1.2-mile corridor of green, with bike lanes and promenades, space for pickup basketball and soccer games, fields for youth sports, dog runs and sculpture gardens. Imagine some of the massive concrete walls set aside for mural artists and rock-climbers. Imagine a series of stairs and elevators connecting Mulberry and Franklin Street, and all the cross streets, with the new park below. (Dan Rodricks)

As for the Ice House: Ilya Alter has waited for many years that the area would turn and his purchase of the burnt out former Ice House complex would turn into an opportunity. After Alter participated in years of community based deliberations about the area, those hopes were dashed with the cancellation of the Red Line in 2015. Various attempts of finding a development team which would want to get something done at the historic site even without additional transit failed until Bill Struever and Alter finally found each other this year.

A renewal of the American Ice Building off the infamous "highway to nowhere" is in the works by Ilya Alter, a Washington, D.C. developer, and Bill Struever, whose transformations of several abandoned industrial sites in Baltimore have led to community turnarounds. "It is a diamond in the rough," said Alter, whose Dacha Beer Gardens in Washington, D.C., have become popular gathering spots in Shaw and the Navy Yard. (BBJ)

It isn't hard to connect the beer garden idea for the Ice House and Cave's Valley's linear park towards a big plan. Through the eyes of the surrounding communities, though, it could look like another big thing to be dropped onto the dis-invested communities of Baltimore's western inner city neighborhoods which are currently especially hard hit by violence.

It is necessary to remember that it was Robert Moses and various transportation planners who came up with the East West Freeway idea right after the war, and their plan had little to do with benefitting the communities. For better or worse, Baltimore has rarely been a place of fast action and so it took until the 1960s to get one portion of the East West freeway actually constructed all the other city pieces were defeated (except the JFX). I have written about the huge impact this brutal act of displacement had on the communities of the west side of downtown. To this day community leaders and residents recall all the broken promises that had been made to make the freeway somehow attractive to the affected communities. All they got  was the harsh reality of this dividing trench and the demolition of thousands of homes, a blow from which west Baltimore never recovered. Any vision for the future of the ditch and the station area must, therefore be community based. The ULI TAP panelists were very cognizant of this history. They say in their report:

Our TAP panel believes the success of this strategy depends upon a process which assures that all stakeholders are at the table and includes neighborhood residents in shared leadership. The legacy of planning the “Highway to Nowhere” and the nearly fifty-year scar it created illustrates the pitfalls of excluding residents from the planning process.

The key connections of the West Baltimore MARC station:
Downtown, 3 min., Gwynns Falls, 5 minutes, DC, 45 minutes
(graphic: ArchPlan)

On the other hand, the community has expressed their needs and demands many times since then. The residents who have stuck it out in neighborhoods with up to 30% vacant homes want to see investment, better homes, better transit and most of all, the kind of services every healthy community takes for granted, especially grocery stores, service retail and facilities that cater to the needs of

Any investor who considers to build anything needs to take a look at the documents compiled to date before making too many plans. Clearly neither a beer-garden nor Rodrick's climbing walls are likely be on community priority lists. But if seed investments change the image of the area and open up connections, trigger other investments for vital services and bring back more people to the area, then these are things that are sorely needed and would warrant starting another conversation.

East West Freeway Plan at MARC station: partially executed.
(1960 D.O.P. Plan)

The City's Impact Investment Areas are born from the concept of "building from strength", a strategy that tries to bundle and focus public money not only where its needed most but where anchors and other seeds are present to latch on to. From the Gwynns Falls to Martin Luther King and even beyond, west Baltimore is part of the giant wing of the now well-known black butterfly. Its eastern mirror image, the right wing, has seen large investments at Hopkins, Oliver, Greenmount West and EBDI. That wing may well take flight soon. On the Western side, things look much more grim. In the vast area the UM Bio Park, the housing investments of Bon Secours hospital and projects such as the current renovation of the former Hebrew Orphan Asylum are only small islands in a sea of disinvestment. In other words, concepts that build on other strengths are badly needed.

I-70 interchange at what is now MLK (not executed quite as grandiose)

The MARC station is a untapped point of strength, probably stronger than Pimlico in Park Heights. Allowing an easy 45 minute commute to DC' Union Station and a much shorter ride to the growing BWI employment area, the station creates a significant draw for folks who seek jobs outside of Baltimore but live in the metro area. With some additional MARC stations in East Baltimore, the commuter trains could also become a viable urban rail connection, tying West Baltimore with quick links to Penn Station, EBDI and Bayview. Currently commuters drive to the West Baltimore station and park there. This is a solution that does nothing for West Baltimore and which is also very ineffective in terms of bringing riders to the MARC trains. Especially in urban settings, it is up to five times more effective to intensify use around a station than waste the space on cars parked all day.

This graphic by Cross Street Partners shows the Ice House in the foreground
and the large space available behind it. (Graphic CSP)

The MARC station is only 1 mile away from downtown, 3 minutes by car, 5 minutes by bus on the Blue Line or the 150 Express, a bit longer on the #78 which doesn't use the expressway.

Imagine a taller apartment building built behind the Ice House and surrounded by renovated rowhouses on Pulaski Street and Edmondson Avenue. From an upper floor, one could see that downtown is in spitting distance. Looking the other way, the fictional future resident could see the Gwynns Falls valley, a very exciting natural urban greenway that few know about and visit.

The "Low Line" in the ditch could be an attractive greenway to bike or even walk downtown, and Caves Valley partner Arsh Mirmiran has not forgotten transit. He told Dan Rodricks that he sees a rapid bus line running in the green space with a quick connection to the Central Light Rail Line, Lexington Market and the Metro subway.

Once Amtrak has finalized its tracks and tunnels (the Environmental Impact Study is complete and a preferred alternative has been selected), another connecting greenway could be built along the tracks with a direct connection to the Gwynns Fall Greenway. An intense Ice House development built on a "plinth" that makes it level with Edmondson Avenue could also accommodate most of the parking needed for development and commuters under such a lid. That would free up the City owned, State leased parking lots up for additional development without displacing anyone. Much more development could happen west of Warwick Avenue where a former lumberyard and various extremely low level uses present a large contiguous development opportunity, once again without demolition of any residences.

From the official WB MARC masterplan. (Graphic: ArchPlan)

Some of these ideas are already included in the adopted West Baltimore MARC station masterplan that had come out of the West Baltimore Station Advisory Committee.  It makes only sense to work towards realization of those concepts even without the Red Line. So when developers float ideas in the media, they should think in this larger context.

All of a sudden,  new affordable and market rate housing, some retail and services and an uptick in filling the many vacant  buildings between the MARC station and downtown don't seem so far fetched anymore. If Caves Valley can find a large employer for the vacant Security West complex, many new jobs could be just minutes away, so would the rejuvenated Lexington Market.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Related on this blog:

How MARC commuter trains could become premier urban transit (Oct 2018)New bus hub taking shape in West Baltimore (May 2017)
Taking the "Highway to Nowhere" back, one step at a time (April 2016)

The ultimate insult: The Highway to Nowhere (April 2016)

The reverse approach to transit: TOD first (Sept 2015)

The Ice House - How Transit Could Revive a Neighborhood (Dec 2012)

The region's transit is in a hole

With a sinkhole shutting down the central section of MTA's  Light Rail Link for weeks, the Streetsblog headline that "Maryland is in a huge transit hole" gains additional meaning. The headline was originally referring to the transit agencies own backlog of deferred maintenance, not that of the City's infrastructure which caused the LRT platform to fall into a sinkhole in front of Camden Station.  Unfortunately the two deficits seem to conspire in dragging transit service in the area down. Buses navigating Baltimore's decrepit streets fall apart sooner and need repair more often, the eternally unreliable City signal system slows buses and light rail down and so does the perpetual digging for water and sewer breaks which requires detours and re-routing of bus lines.

Pratt Street sinkhole swallowing LRT platform (SUN photo)

The sinkhole road closures and ensuing traffic snarls brought MTA service nearly to its knees, far beyond the light rail shut down. Some bus lines such as the Brown dropped below 40% on-time performance according to  MTA's own Performance Dashboard. Buses were stuck in total gridlock over several days until things began to sort themselves out. Downtown light rail was closed for over a month and opened only this week again.

But MTA has its own unfulfilled maintenance, as per their own analysis the needs are huge. Baltimore area residents know: The state of poor repair has sidelined MTA's Metro system which had to be shut down for emergency track repair and also plagues MTA's bus performance due to higher than average numbers of buses being out of service on many days, even though the fleet is not particularly old. DC's nearby WMATA transit system, even more plagued by system malfunction, had prepared a detailed needs analysis which allowed them to squeeze the District and the States of Maryland and Virginia for a record $500 million contribution a year for three years dedicated to fixing the ailing Capital metro system.

Maryland's legislators learned from this and not only stipulated extra funding for MTA's transit system but also the requirement that MTA prepare a similar unassailable needs assessment. That requirement was added to the requirement of the Federal Transit Administration that transit agencies do  better in cataloging  the state of repair of their assets. MTA had never done this before.

Every agency must develop a transit asset management (TAM) plan if it owns, operates, or manages capital assets used to provide public transportation and receives federal financial assistance under 49 U.S.C. Chapter 53 as a recipient or subrecipient. (FTA)

MTA's first report results came in this July under the title 10 -Year Capital Needs Inventory with stunning numbers that were promptly in all the news:

MTA bus bridge stuck in traffic on Eutaw Street (Photo: Philipsen)

Between 2019 and 2028, MDOT MTA’s total capital needs are expected to reach more than $5.7 billion in year of expenditure dollars, including an inflation rate of three percent. The largest category of total needs over the 10-year period is vehicles (30 percent). Stations comprise the next largest category of total needs (25 percent), followed by systems (19 percent), guideway (14 percent), and facilities investment needs (12 percent).
"State of Good Repair" (SGR) needs for MDOT MTA’s current asset inventory drive 81 percent of total needs. Enhancement needs to meet system performance goals as well as current and future service demand, make up 19 percent of total needs over the 10-year period. [...] Ten-year SGR needs are estimated at $4.6 billion while SGR funding is forecasted at $3.6 billion for the same period, equating to a gap of just over $1 billion to meet SGR needs.

With 10-year total needs reaching $5.7 billion and a total funding forecast of $3.7 billion, an estimated funding gap of just over $2 billion remains to fund all SGR and identified enhancement needs. (MTA 10 year capital needs analysis  2019 - 2028)

Aside from the astonishing shortfall of $2 billion over 10 years (or a $100 million each year) the report includes an number interesting insights that didn't make the headlines:

• MTA's Metro transports only about 9% of its daily riders but with its elevated guideways, tunnels, escalators and everything else a real subway requires, the system represents with 45% the single largest asset in the MTA's inventory.  Nothing comes even close, MARC represents only less than  half of that (21%), light rail 17% and buses, the workhorse of MTA's system with 66% of all riders 15%.

MTA Asset inventory: Most of the money is in the subway

One might conclude from this inverted ratio of  replacement cost to actual ridership benefit that the Governor was right when he called the planned Red Line a "boondoggle" and that rail systems just cost too much money for what they provide.

But one could also come to the opposite conclusion, especially if one compares Baltimore's rail to that of other cities. Then the reasoning would go like this: LRT and Metro both perform far below capacity and provide only a fraction of the benefits the particular modes should provide. (Metro transport as all day fewer rides it could haul in a single hour).  The reason for those shortfalls are specific to MTA, because these rail modes stand alone and are not part of a larger system. In several cities of Baltimore's size rail is  the backbone of local transit service. In those cities buses are an adjunct that rounds the system out instead of being the main provider of transit. That is the situation in DC at WMATA and also in all cities with high transit ridership such as Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia.  By depriving Baltimore's  two local rail lines which represent valuable existing assets on the ground, the connectivity a third line would have brought, MDOT has condemned the assets to orphan status and to being only a shadow of what their actual potential. It isn't part of a capital needs analysis to compare performance of systems with each other or how to determine how much a system performs below its capacity.

• Another interesting insight is where the value in each mode resides. We learn from MTA's analysis that most of the money sits in facilities (28% in the maintenance shops, operation centers and garages) closely followed by the vehicles themselves. (26%). Guideways make up 24%, this item, again being specific to rail since buses run on public surfaces. The smallest values come from stations and systems. 

Where money is needed beyond repair (MTA)

Not noted is staff. In spite of the the saying that the employees are a company's biggest asset, operators, maintenance workers, and dispatchers are not capitalized in an asset analysis focused on capital needs, even though some might argue that MTA's workforce isn't in the best state of good repair either given high rates of absenteeism and frequently reported poor morale.

MTA's report includes a nice graphic which shows that all these components are interdependent. If one fails, the entire system fails.  State of good repair is a low bar as we have seen, it never gets to needs that would lift a system out of its current straight-jacket. While the MTA analysis accounts for "enhancements", i.e. betterments beyond just "good repair", those are quite modest and include legally required things such as accessibility (especially at MARC), station renovations, parking and sidewalks at immediate station areas or stops. More ambitious enhancements are not included, in part because they were already funded and planned during previous administrations. Maybe this explains why MTA's enhancements show 0% enhancement needs for vehicles and only 10% needs for facilities. Light rail's vehicles are currently going through a long planned "midlife overhaul" and MTA has already procured an all new fleet for Metro, even those coaches are still in the process of being manufactured. An also long in the making brandnew Kirk bus division facility is half complete with the other half funded and under construction. All those new items are not anticipated to need big capital or enhancements any time soon. Most glaringly, the total $1.1. billion enhancements over 10 years do not anticipate any system expansion, not even in the form of additional buses for added capacity.

Interdependent but not connected: Modes, vehicles, guideways, systems
(MTA)

The fact that the MTA needs $5.7 billion over 10 years but gets under current policies only $3.7 billion is alarming enough. That expanding services beyond its current reach or type of service isn't even included, makes the problem even bigger. Hence the big hole!

At the State level no help is in sight. The Secreatry of Transportation likes to complain how much of his budget goes to transit operation and his boss, the Governor constantly sounds the fiscal alarm bell, lately in light of high demands form the education sector which clamors for funding of the Kirwan Plan. 

MDOT secretary Rahn indicates regularly that he doesn't believe that transit solves mobility needs and, instead, pursues road widening projects derided by some as stone age transportation. 

The State legislature certainly is aware of that condition. So they did not only require the capital needs analysis from MTA but also demanded the preparation of a Regional Transportation Plan to be completed by the fall of next year. The hope is, that whatever system expansion the capital needs report doesn't include will be part of that plan. It is currently in the works at MTA but with oversight of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council and a regional RTP Commission. One can expect that the commissioners will explore the issue of governance. Specifically, how regional transit can be wrestled away from the State and be placed in the hands of a regional authority. This won't make the funding challenge less daunting, but it will shield transit from being willfully deprived of the investments it really needs to thrive.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Baltimore SUN: Maryland Transit Administration forecasts $2 billion shortfall over next decade
Business Journal:  State report finds Maryland transportation funding faces $2 billion shortfall
Streetsblog:  Maryland Is In A Huge Transit Hole