East dominates West Baltimore: Fixing the disparity

There's a very revealing contrast these days between how planning is being done in East Baltimore versus West Baltimore. East is the booming side of town, while west gets the crumbs. The Southwest Partnership plan reveals how the west needs to step up its game in order to get into the action.

La Cite - West Baltimore's flagship development. Phase One in the foreground is almost completed,
 with proposed future phases shown looking north along Schroeder Street toward the "Highway to Nowhere".

East Baltimore's planning process has been much more comprehensive and much more attuned to eliminating the divisions between various areas. The biggest developments - Harbor East, Harbor Point and Hopkins Hospital - are already almost completed at the periphery and are driving the areas in between.

In contrast, Southwest Partnership's plan has ignored the huge Metro West project and the adjacent "Highway to Nowhere" which are by far the most crucial development issues which must be resolved. The big project nearing completion is the first phase of La Cite (shown above) which is on what is now the periphery of the redeveloped area. Its future expansions would be even farther out on the periphery.

But on the plus side, the planning process in West Baltimore seems to be much more open and grassroots. Of course, what we hear includes a lot of spin and perceptions.

Important things are happening in East Baltimore

The big recent news for East Baltimore is that the Perkins Point project has just been awarded a $30 million HUD grant to get things moving, one of only five cities nationwide.  That's from the "evil" Trump Administration which can do nothing right according to its many vocal critics. But c'mon, our president is a real estate developer, and his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is Doctor Ben Carson from Johns Hopkins Hospital, which neighbors the project.

The details of the project are still extremely sketchy, considering its official price tag of $889 million (call it a billion) including redevelopment of Somerset Homes and Old Town, and the many years it has already been gestating. Geez again, I've said almost as much on this little blog, without even trying, as the city has said on its official website -  http://www.baltimorehousing.org/perkinsproject

What it looks like is that they just grabbed some impressionistic renderings of any of the zillions of new boxy generic three or four-story postmodern residential buildings that are going up in almost any growing city.

After decades of failures, this project just has to succeed eventually. The planners know what they're doing. The disastrous mid-century model for low income urban housing "projects", inspired by both Le Corbusier and Le Soviet Union, typified here by Perkins Homes to the south and Somerset Homes (already demolished) to the north on the Central Avenue corridor, is finally coming to an end.

Old Town is where the project history goes back the farthest, starting with the 1968 riots, followed by a dead-end shopping mall project. This was followed by years of crazy plans proposed by very important city people like Walter Sondheim, who wanted to knock down the Jones Falls Expressway to link Old Town (and the prison district) directly to downtown and Mount Vernon. There were big ideas to reconvert the big storm drains under the Fallsway and Central Avenue into actual rivers, with the heavy traffic zipping along on either side of them.

But the inevitability of the whole Perkins-Somerset-Oldtown plan is assured by the way the deck was stacked for the Harbor Point project at the south end of the Central Avenue corridor. That project was given a massive jolt by massive subsidies to the Exelon office building for its flagship, despite the fact that Exelon was legally obligated to locate in Baltimore anyway.

Can you imagine what kind of massive jumpstart could have been provided to West Baltimore if the Exelon building had been built somewhere on the west side of downtown? Alas, it's like another recent story - the hapless Orioles were practically forced to trade Manny Machado, by far their best player, to a rich pennant contender (LA Dodgers) for some future "maybes".

The planning concepts for the Perkins Point project are the kind that are gradually seeming simply like basic common sense as they are being brought out, but were certainly not that way beforehand.

Take the name: Perkins Point. You heard it here first. The Beatty Development Group (same developer as Harbor Point) has named his project subsidiary Perkins Point Partners. There's Fells Point and Harbor Point, so there has to be Perkins Point. The die is cast.

Then there's the concept of linking Old Town to the Hopkins Hospital campus and the Central Avenue corridor. After decades of conventional wisdom that said that what Old Town needed was a better linkage westward to downtown, what has actually happened is that downtown moved eastward instead.

Beatty plan for Old Town, showing the extension of McElderry Street toward the Hopkins Hospital Dome Building
 at the top of the graphic. Orleans Street goes from the lower left to upper right.

The Beatty/Perkins Point team still hasn't trumpeted this concept, but you can see it if you look closely at their meager graphics that have slipped out. In their sketch above, the densest development complex of the entire project (shown in blue) is at the fulcrum between Old Town and the Central Avenue corridor, with a street view corridor at McElderry Street through to the Hopkins Hospital campus which is not shown just beyond the background. I showed this idea first on this blog. As crummy as my graphics are, the Beatty version for the billion dollar project isn't a whole lot better.

Baltimore Innerspace graphic proposing an Old Town plan that does the same thing as the subsequent Beatty plan
 - creating a spine to Hopkins Hospital along McElderry Street, but extending west it to the Jones Falls Expressway,
 Sun Calvert complex and Mount Vernon in the foreground. Orleans Street is on the right (south).

Ironically, the Beatty plan now opens up to Johns Hopkins, but turns its back on Downtown, which has previously been considered the necessary anchor. Their plan ought to have strong connections to both, but downtown is now considered so minor and secondary that it's not considered worth dealing with. The planned redevelopment of the Sun Calvert Street complex ought to help change that.

Then there's transit. The conventional wisdom was that the Red Line light rail project was crucial to the city's future development, especially southeast. Then just when the Red Line seemed to be at its peak project momentum, Harbor East developer John Paterakis (who had worked closely with Beatty) forced the planned station serving his area to be moved out of the key Central Avenue corridor to a hidden spot near Little Italy. So obviously, it wasn't crucial at all. All the development already had all the momentum it needed.

But the greatest irony was that once Governor Hogan killed the Red Line, practically no one did anything to try to revive it. Sure, they all bellyached, but that's all.

So leave it to me, of all people... The far more expensive east leg of the Red Line is dead but the far better and more cost effective west leg can and should still be built. An east streetcar spur from a west side Red Line should be built through the Inner Harbor to Bank Street and Broadway, at the south end of this project where Perkins Point will abut Harbor East and Fells Point.

What's really happening is that all the essential stuff is being hammered out quietly behind closed doors, and the public stuff will be revealed only as needed according to some deliberate strategy. The big anchors are Harbor Point to the south and Hopkins Hospital to the northeast, and they're totally wired in to what's happening, of course. That's almost always how development really gets done.

Southwest Partnership Plan ignores what's most important

Now look at the west side of town, where the Southwest Partnership has conducted a commendably open planning process and has released lengthy reports chocked full of lovely graphics illustrating a glorious future for their heretofore neglected and under-performing area -  http://southwestpartnershipbaltimore.org/about-us/the-plan

The quality of the Southwest Partnership reports' graphics put the Beatty graphics to shame. But all this raises suspicions. Some of it just elicits an "oh, c'mon" kind of reaction. One graphic of West Baltimore Street, the old traditional commercial spine, shows that someone has decided to get rid of all the on-street parking and replace it with bike lanes. Presumably, the bus stops would be gone too. Did anyone actually think about this? Who drew this up and why?

Southwest Partnership's "illustrative" plan for West Baltimore Street,
 eliminating all parking and replacing it with bike lanes. 

This graphic includes an odd disclaimer: "Renderings are illustrative, meant to capture Baltimore Street’s potential." Yeah, it's illustrative of how to make West Baltimore Street into a ghost town. But this is so silly and incidental that it can probably be safely ignored.

More importantly, it seems that the bigger and more crucial the issue, the more gingerly they tiptoe around or avoid it. This does play into a political strategy. The issues people care most about are the ones near where they live, even if they're not crucial. This then allows the biggest issues to be addressed behind the scenes.

The biggest issue in West Baltimore right now is what to do with the giant hulking million-plus square foot Metro West complex formerly occupied by the Social Security Administration. Time is ticking away as it deteriorates. This will affect all of West Baltimore, with potential for thousands of jobs at stake, but it is on the geographic periphery of the Southwest Partnership area so it is totally ignored in their plan.

But you can be sure it is being analyzed and negotiated in detail behind the scenes, between the city and the high-powered developer, Caves Valley Partners.

One of its main questions is what to do with the "Highway to Nowhere", which bisects the site and runs right through the main building. This aborted Interstate highway is the single thing which is most often cited as having caused the downfall of West Baltimore.

The Red Line was then planned for fifteen years until 2015 without seriously considering what to do with this highway which surrounded the proposed transit line. The city even totally closed the highway for months so that the state could do some Red Line "site prep" at its west end between Payson and Pulaski Streets. But now, having an actual developer involved makes it real in a way that the Red Line never was.

Again, the Southwest Partnership plans are mum about all of this. It's on the periphery of their area so they feel it can conveniently be ignored. This is a mistake. The law of "border vacuums" demonstrates how things on the periphery can have the most dramatic effect on the surrounding areas.

In contrast, the East Baltimore plans have confronted the border vacuums. For many years, the clamor was to get rid of the Jones Falls Expressway because of its effect as a border vacuum on Old Town. And now, the peripheral Hopkins Hospital and Harbor Point sites, which were border vacuums for many years, are seen as the crucial anchors for the new development between them.

Southwest Partnership overview plan. "Highway to Nowhere" is in the upper left,
 culminating at the Metro West development at the "MLK BLVD" label.

The Southwest Partnership plan overview graphic (above) puts this in perspective. The "Highway to Nowhere" is depicted by barely visible drab gray streaks along the upper left border of the plan. This is the very essence of a border vacuum. At the top of this, the same kind of shadowy representation is used for the Metro West complex (right where the word "MLK BLVD" is displayed). The plan thus ignores Metro West.

But the plan essentially acknowledges the highway's border vacuum by putting a new very high density housing complex right along the highway (Mulberry Street). Such intense high value developments are a good way to deal with border vacuums. The only problem is that this is normally done along waterfronts or other high value borders, not along a horrible highway which has been depressing property values since even before it was built.

The plan doesn't even recognize the Red Line plan, even though their process started before that project was precipitously killed. The local Red Line Station had been planned and engineered between Carey and Calhoun Streets, just off the left side of the graphic, and nowhere near the high intensity development. There was a total lack of coordination between Southwest Partnership, the city and the Red Line planning team.

Now after well over a decade of planning, the first phase prototype of this high density housing is nearing completion with the new La Cite residential building at Schroeder Street between Fayette and Saratoga (see top graphic). This is being built in what seems like a peripheral low value area now, but is supposed to be a central high value area eventually. Some of us are skeptical.

Problems with "Border Vacuums" - racial and otherwise

In East Baltimore, the Perkins Point project eliminates border vacuums, while the Southwest Partnership plan would just ultimately make it worse.

The primary means that the southwest plan offers to enhance property values is through mass housing demolition to create new development sites and parks. This is painful and expensive, and even inhumane. Blocks slated for demolition usually have some crumbling houses, but also houses that are being steadfastly and bravely maintained by residents who have invested their lives in their neighborhoods. This plan has far too much of that. Hundreds of houses would be knocked down, including many with good residents that are in good condition, but just happen to be in the path of the plan. This kind of plan is what has given "gentrification" a bad name.

Instead of mass demolition and displacement, the more proven way to enhance property values and get development going is to build the major projects on the periphery first, with strong linkages to spur the rest of the development after that. Property values can then often rise sufficiently to spur rehabilitation of existing houses rather than demolition. This is what has happened in much of Baltimore, but much more on the east than on the west side of the city, and is virtually absent in the Southwest Partnership plan.

To do that in West Baltimore, dealing with the "Highway to Nowhere" and Metro West must be of the utmost priority, to create momentum to stimulate the rest of the revitalization in between. Here's how I outlined a blueprint several years ago.

This is even more crucial in the neighborhoods north of the "Highway to Nowhere", most notably Harlem Park, Lafayette Square and Sandtown, which don't have downtown and the University of Maryland Biopark as anchors.

One could even cynically argue that the Southwest Plan serves to retain the "Highway to Nowhere" as a racial barrier - black to the north and white to the south. The plan does work hard to eliminate such a racial barrier four blocks south at Baltimore Street, which was getting increasingly solid before the Biopark development. But will the racial barrier simply move northward?

Unfortunately, this is another instance where East Baltimore is serving as a model for West Baltimore. In East Baltimore, Fayette Street has been a traditional racial dividing line, but the Hopkins EBDI Plan is now essentially moving this racial border northward about seven blocks to the Amtrak tracks. Railroad tracks and major highways are much more solid barriers than are mere streets.

Another major border vacuum is the north edge of Carroll Park at the historic B&O Railroad "First Mile" right of way. This has gotten more attention in the southwest plan than has the "Highway to Nowhere", but  it still dances around the issues.

The earlier draft of the plan was worse, promoting a physical barrier around this rail right of way, with only a very unwieldy pedestrian bridge connecting the north neighborhoods to the park, or some new lights inside the Carey Street underpass that doesn't connect to the park anyway. These tenuous connections ignore the very concept that the plan promotes to build parks in the first place, to provide the most convenient possible proximity to residents.

Virtually all great urban parks from New York's Central Park to Boston Common have strong continuous access to their neighbors so that the park can serve as their extended living room. In Baltimore, Patterson Park is the prime example.

The southwest planners gave various rationales for their barriers, such as security or railroad regulations or to accommodate the freight train switching for an intermodal truck terminal that had previously been planned for Morrell Park. None of these rationalizations were or are in any way defensible or insurmountable.

The more vague language in the current version is a sign of hope. In addition, support has been building for a hike/bike trail in this right of way to connect to the Gwynns Falls trail. This could be part of a truly transformative six mile greenway loop that could go all the way to the "Highway to Nowhere" corridor and the lush green edge of MLK Boulevard adjacent to downtown and the University of Maryland campus.

On the other hand, the plan still shows far more mass demolition of housing in the Mount Clare neighborhood just north of the park than is necessary or justifiable.

In sum, the rules of planning should be relatively simple: Minimize demolition, save the subsidies for where they're really needed, increase property values, deal with border vacuums, and above all - think comprehensively.

East Baltimore has been much more successful at following these rules than West Baltimore. And unfortunately, secret sneaky behind-the-scenes negotiations have probably helped too.