For Amazon: The best of Westport and Port Covington

The Amazon is wide, as both its namesake waterway and cyber-marketplace. So both sides of Kevin Plank's real estate empire need to be put in play to attract Amazon to Baltimore. Both Port Covington and Westport can accommodate major developments, so there's no sense in attempting to confine Amazon to one or the other. Let Amazon have maximum flexibility to create their own ideal plan using both sites. Biggest is best.

Former developer Patrick Turner's Westport waterfront plan on the Middle Branch,
 with downtown to the upper right and the I-95/395 interchange in between.
 Port Covington is on the opposite shore of the Middle Branch, beyond to the lower right.

Turner's Westport plan as it would have been seen from Port Covington.

Unlike Under Armour, for which Plank has planned a large self-contained "company town" environment for Port Covington, Amazon's ambitions have virtually no boundaries, so none should be imposed. What other potential site in North America can devote both sides of an entire waterway to the cause?

Westport also has some obvious advantages over its sister site, Port Covington. It's more connected to the rest of the city and it already has light rail service with great access to BWI Marshall Airport and downtown with its Amtrak and MARC Stations. Westport is the best port for Amazon's east coast headquarters, especially if it also spreads north, south and eastward into Port Covington as well.

But there's no reason to commit to one over the other. Amazon's domain can and should extend all the way southward from downtown through the entire Middle Branch shoreline encompassing both Westport on the west shore and Port Covington on the east shore, both owned by Kevin Plank. And even with all this, the mouth of the Middle Branch northeast of the Hanover Street Bridge can still be devoted as planned to Kevin Plank's Under Armour campus.

But that's not all... as the infomercials say. The Amazon empire can still spread southward from the Hanover Street Bridge to the waterfronts of Cherry Hill, Brooklyn and Masonville. Amazon particularly prides itself on its spin-off benefits to other economic generators such as small businesses and their attendant employment. These working class communities, and indeed the entire city of Baltimore, would experience the benefits of Amazon's presence.

It's likely that the new development in Port Covington and Westport would include less housing than had previously been planned. The extent of inclusion of lower income housing had reached an impasse anyway. That's a major opportunity for these surrounding communities.

Evolving development climate

Baltimore, Under Armour and its Sagamore development company do need to stay flexible and adapt with needs. Last year, the city approved a plan and a $660 Million Tax Increment Financing package for Port Covington as if the plan was some kind of immutable cosmic force that would simply take over. But this year, that plan is already languishing. 

Development doesn't work that way. Development is incremental and iterative. Political, business and media leaders are now conveying the impression that Amazon can simply just come in and buy into the existing Port Covington plan. That's just deceptive hype.

Amazon has its own continually evolving needs. Amazon will want its own plan. The current Port Covington plan is mere prelude. Its certainly no coincidence that Plank's latest deal to bring in Goldman Sachs for a $233 million investment infusion was announced just after Amazon's.

The need for massive liquid capital is crucial. Just ask Patrick Turner, who assembled and prepared the adjacent Westport waterfront properties a decade ago, developed his own plan, and then proceeded to go bankrupt waiting for it to be built. 

Turner envisioned a "new downtown" in Westport, conveyed in architects' renderings which were perhaps too realistic looking for their own good. The "new downtown" paradigm is useful in conveying the magnitude of the development, but the whole existence of a "Downtown Baltimore" appears to be fading as the existing downtown is being transformed into more of a specialized neighborhood than a regional center.

At the same time, the entire Baltimore metropolitan area is repositioning itself as an integral portion of the northeast U.S. corridor from Washington to New York and Boston. It is the location of this kind of mega-region which is undoubtedly attracting Amazon in the first place. Instead of downtown being a regional center, it is simply one of many activity and development nodes.

Turner's Westport plan as seen from the Cherry Hill waterfront, with downtown in the background to the right.

This model also helps explain the phenomenon of "Two Baltimores" and how the city finds itself able to effectively attract dynamic corporations like Under Armour and Amazon at the same time that much of the city is in social and economic turmoil and neglect. These companies are being attracted to a place in the larger region, not just the city.

It is also this dynamic that is simply not available in many more prosperous, but free-standing cities like Seattle (Amazon's home base), Denver, Chicago and Atlanta. It's not a contradiction - it's simply a fact of life that the city needs to use to its advantage to help all of Baltimore.

An alternative geopolitical rationale is that Amazon wants to go to Toronto, which offers the entire country of Canada as its region, albeit politically far more than geographically. That would also explain Amazon's national publicity blitz to vet this process to prepare the country before moving north and trying to minimize the negative "economic nationalism" fallout. We shall see.

Evolving development plans

In the meantime, existing site plans for Port Covington and Westport cannot just be grabbed off the shelf for presentation to Amazon. The two sites and their surroundings must be considered and planned together.

For example, concepts for a roadway connection between the two areas across the upper Middle Branch should be drawn up. Two obvious options are extensions of Monroe or Bush Street eastward from Westport to Port Covington, or perhaps a combination of the two. Monroe has the advantage of a bridge over the north end of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, while Bush is the first intersection as the parkway turns into Russell Street, which means more access but more congestion. The Middle Branch is very shallow in this area so a low bridge should be no problem. The old freight railroad trestle bridge can also be rehabilitated for maximum use for people, bikes and/or light rail. The multi-level I-95/395 interchange hovering overhead can be lit and painted as a kind of sculptural backdrop.

Possible Connector in orange through Westport and across Middle Branch
from Monroe Street (left) to McComas Street (right) in Port Covington.

The city also needs to do a far better job of planning for the gateway casino area along the Middle Branch just to the north. It needs to confront the previous planning that led to giving the isolated Greyhound Bus Terminal and the 3500 parking space casino garage such critical waterfront sites apparently only because they were on the paths of least resistance.

Planning must be expanded to include Camden Yards and the Sharp-Leadenhall area which is currently experiencing a building boom. The environmental and regulatory issues surrounding the BRESCO waste incinerator need to be resolved. If it can only remain as an unacceptable polluter, it must be closed down.

Of course, all of this needs to be done anyway whether Amazon comes or not. "Divide and conquer" development tactics won't work in the long run. There will be other companies to lure to both Port Covington and Westport, and all the resources of both sites and their surroundings must be made available.

Turner's Westport plan and its relationship to the existing rowhouse neighborhood to the west.

But up until now, what's most glaring about Port Covington is how its inherent geographic isolation has been so cynically used. When development first took place in the 1980s, The Baltimore Sun was simply given an extra huge plot of land, a sort of modern version of "40 acres and a mule". Then any semblance of rational planning was then thrown out when Wal-Mart came along, and its buildings were turned toward its sea of asphalt parking and away from the water.

So it as disturbing when Tom Geddes, CEO of Plank Industries, explained it this way last year before Amazon came along: "Westport will come next... Today there is no plan. It's too early for us to know or to have planned it."

By "next", did he mean Westport would have to wait out the planned 25 year build-out horizon for Port Covington? How can you plan one site, oblivious to the other? That would be absurd, especially since it's already behind schedule.

The best thing about the current lure of Amazon may end up being that it wakes the entire city up to the need to focus on a continuous effort to market and promote the best aspects of all of Baltimore.