Weak markets are really really really hard to develop: Baltimore's Poppleton (... State Center; Park Heights; etc.) neighborhood
The Washington Post has an article ("This development aimed to overhaul a West Baltimore neighborhood. 15 years later, it’s made minor progress") about how after 15 years of planning, etc., attempts to push revitalization forward in Baltimore's Poppleton neighborhood, the only project moving forward is a small apartment building of 39 units, when the plans for the Center West development there were supposed to yield "thousands of apartments plus commercial space."
1. The first lesson in urban revitalization is that strong markets are a lot easier in which to spur revitalization than weak markets.
2. It's all relative when it comes to strong and weak markets within communities.
3. Most developers only do development in weak markets once most of the development capacity in the strong markets has been absorbed.
Baltimore has lots of issues ("Social urbanism and Baltimore").
Downtown's vacancy rate is over 20% and tourism is down in response to Baltimore's spiraling crime rate post-the Freddie Gray death and subsequent riots.
From a revitalization standpoint, the biggest problem is that the city has a lot more development capacity than demand, and that even though the metropolitan area population is growing, the city continues to lose population.
(Although the neighborhoods in the Charles Street corridor are pretty successful.)
That's why development of neighborhoods and commercial districts like Port Covington originally the Westport redevelopment on the waterfront, now owned by Kevin Plank ("A victim of Port Covington: the “Other Baltimore” in Westport," Baltimore Sun); State Center, where transit oriented development proposals have been kicking around for almost 15 years, Park Heights, where the Pimlico race track remains surrounded by a poor community ("A portrait of the Pimlico neighborhood," Sun), take years and years and years and years.
The only way to spur development along there is to provide exranormal amounts of public money, and there isn't enough to do it.
It's actually just like the Skyland Center in DC ("Blaming Walmart for Skyland's failure is misdirected" and "For the first time, Skyland Town Center's revitalization might have a chance: creating a community focused retail destination").
That development is taking more than 20 years, and that's in DC, which is overall is a much stronger real estate market than Baltimore.
The four biggest things I'd do to "fix" Baltimore ("What Baltimore and D.C. can do to start working better together as a region," Baltimore Business Journal op-ed).
1. Merge Baltimore City and Baltimore County. It'd be one of the largest cities in the US, almost as large as Philadelphia.
2. Adopt a social urbanism approach to invest in Baltimore's people and civic infrastructure as a way to reverse the high crime and murder rate ("Social urbanism and Baltimore"). Medellin, Colombia is the model.
3. Create a robust rail transit network in Baltimore and Baltimore County ("From the files: transit planning in Baltimore County"). Right now they have a light rail line and a truncated subway line. A real transit network would reset development and population growth on the core (within the Baltimore Beltway).
4. Create a state-wide and regional passenger railroad system ("A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for a statewide passenger railroad program in Maryland"). While it would equally serve DC and Baltimore, it would further strengthen Maryland and Baltimore as its heart as a city with almost 1.5 million residents after combining with Baltimore County.
Now you'd probably say, what about business development, etc. It had been a major center for insurance and finance, but those industries have waned.
Besides tourism, Baltimore's major business sectors are medical (Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland Medical System/UMB campus) and related biotech, higher education, and the kinds of business still active in cities, like law firms.
In the Joe Berridge webinar last week (I've been meaning to write up my notes), I asked a question about what we might call center-periphery cities partly because I've been meaning to write about Buffalo and Toronto because of an article charlie linked to many months ago ("Toronto's astonishing growth," "Coordination could spread Toronto prosperity" and "Immigration equals growth," Buffalo News), and then thinking about DC-Baltimore, Seattle-Tacoma, Philadelphia-Camden, etc.
I asked because while prosperity in Toronto is impacting the metropolitan area, it hasn't jumped quite as far as Hamilton.
Anyway, he said that if you do the right things placemaking wise (but schools and public safety are key as well) you get new residents who are highly educated, and business development follows them even though it takes awhile.
Besides the investment in placemaking, the creation of a more robust transit network in Greater Baltimore will attract new residents. Baltimore has the universities, has great civic assets, parks, a waterfront, and proximity to Washington.
A better more robust transit network will help to strengthen Baltimore's position so that it can attract residents. Although the public safety and schools issues must be addressed.
I'm not happy about it, but on schools, Baltimore probably needs to add the charter school option as a way to build family confidence concerning schooling.
Labels: fixed rail transit service, real estate development, transportation planning, urban revitalization
posted by Richard Layman @ 5:52 AM&Permanent Link
5 Comments:
"1. Merge Baltimore City and Baltimore County."
Oh. Dear G-d no.
What would Baltimore County get out of it? There seems to be a lot of former city residents who escaped to the county who would fight that and way too much energy would be wasted on a non-starter.
I own a rental in West Baltimore and I think I know which project this is on Poppleton. I pass it on the orange bus. So 39 units in 15 years... could have rehabbed 39 townhouses in that amount of time. West of MLK it becomes a bit more... harder to develop/ harder to attract a middle class or student base. Even near the biopark, there is a large empty lot and there isn't any energy to get the kind of life you'd probably want there.
Didn't say it was practical or easy.
But it would be a change good for both.
WRT Baltimore County, what my take was in my brief period working there is that even though the county is a top 75 county in the US in terms of population, was that they needed to reset their set of reference groups.
Baltimore County is satisfied by comparing itself almost solely to Baltimore City, and therefore always being superior in the comparison.
It needs to compare itself to leading counties and judge itself accordingly.
The merger would be a challenge, in a good way, to both jurisdictions.
Let's not forget that Baltimore County is in places as divided as The city, and they share 40% of their water and sewer system, not to mention transit, and other amenities. The assumption that "Thos e people" will stop at the arbitrary border like the sheriff from some cowboy film, is just silly. Having some oversight from Towson, many city residents would welcome. Richard nails it, Rather than looking at Baltimore City, look at Howard County, which has been working at adapting to urbanization.
And left the xenophobes move to Harford and Carrol Counties.
wrt your point about "urbanization" ...
First, Baltimore County is if not the first, one of the first counties to create an urban growth boundary, which they did in the late 1960s (20+ years before MoCo created the Ag Reserve) after a planning document created by Ian McHarg. Although the line has been changed a bit over time with each master plan.
The basic point was that wherever they'd put "city water" sprawl would occur. So except for very occasional exceptions, they do not extend city water service beyond the URDL -- urban rural demarcation line.
And yep, Baltimore City developed the water system and sources starting in the 1800s and kept service to the county still after the split. (Actually Baltimore did some annexing throughout the period after the split, although now I think it's legally very difficult to do).
2. Anyway, not unlike my experience talking with people in Greater Detroit or Greater Washington, a lot of suburban families have ties to the core, even after many decades. And that is a reservoir of goodwill, at least on the part of some.
3. Related to both the city and county, the reality is that the most urbanized area is within the Beltway, although that includes a section of Anne Arundel County I think.
But the people within the beltway have more in common than those outside of it.
4. In fact, that might be a way to do this. When Louisville and Jefferson County merged, some of areas outside the city did not merge to the same level. I think that's what it's like in Indianapolis-Marion County too. I'll have to look at that more.
5. HoCo does have the advantage of Columbia and its smaller. To me Balt. County is really interesting in how it has conurbations like Towson, but they aren't incorporated. (Technically, neither is Columbia.)
All that being said, at least up til 2010 with the election change, which resulted in the director of the office of planning being canned, which is why I ended up not being able to stay there full time...
the county was progressive in a couple ways. First, it was a strong proponent of the idea of investing in existing areas. (Then again, it has Owings Mills and White Marsh and pro growth policies there which are absolutely counter to the concept of investing in existing areas).
2. The planning office was pretty progressive, oriented to Smart Growth, urban design, charrettes, etc. (Although they couldn't get a smart growth oriented code through because of opposition from the land use bar, which liked things the way they were).
3. But overall, the County was and is fervently committed to the car, even though the Dept. of Community Development had a good streetscape program (because DPW wouldn't do it) and DPW had a great neighborhood traffic calming program that was proto bike boulevards.
They have some train stations but the ones on the Camden Line mostly with no opportunities for development, except for Halethorpe and Martin Airport.
Halethorpe is highly used, but because it is easily accessible from the Beltway, so it doesn't really lend itself to TOD. The station by Martin is pretty desolate and not the area of the county that's growing.
They have some light rail and subway stations, but real issues in terms of location, as I discussed in that paper I cited.
4. My transit planning paper does outline extensions to the subway and light rail.
Because it was about Baltimore County it didn't discuss extending the light rail to Columbia, which could get Howard County's support too.
5. But the subway system needs expansion, beyond what I wrote in terms of White Marsh.
This is the original plan:
http://www.roadstothefuture.com/BRRTS.html
map: http://www.roadstothefuture.com/BRRTS_Map_XL.jpg
Basically the LR captures some of it, as did the proposed Red Line.
6. Another thing I've argued in my follow up pieces to my Purple Line series is that Baltimore should use the PL as an opportunity to upgrade the LR vehicles.
I like their big, hulking industrial charm, but they aren't sleek and sexy.
They need to be new to reposition LR as a preferred mode.
(Speaking of Greg Slater being the new MDOT director, we had a conversation once where he made the point that a half mile extension of the LR north would get the Timonium office districts, such as where McCormick was.)
There also needs to be way more catchment area development, wayfinding, access connection improvements, etc.
E.g., it's not simple, but it's not hard to walk from Woodberry to Hampden, and it took me a long time to figure out "North Avenue" was way farther from Penn Station than the stop by MICA.
There should be an underground connection between State Center and the LR probably, etc.
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