I came across this blog post about Upper Fells Point. It’s a pretty entertaining back and forth between the author and her readers.  Ironically it came up at the top of the list when I Googled “Baltimore’s worst neighborhood”.

The Old Town National Bank building - aka the UTZ Building - will be converted into  a 70-room hotel .  The UTZ sign will stay. Baltimore Sun article.

We all know the Baltimore Harbor is gross - littered with every type of floating trash imaginable, not to mention the occasional floating fish kill. But if you’ve ever been on or near the water just after a heavy rainfall you realize how bad the trash problem really is. I used to get an up-close look at this when I commuted from Fells Point via the Water Taxi.  Trash from every Baltimore street corner, storm drain, and alley flows into the Harbor.  And it’s not just Baltimore City’s trash.  Some trash flows down from Baltimore county via the Jones Falls.  Apparently not much stands in the way of trash as it flows into the Harbor. I always thought there has to be a way for the city to filter/strain the storm drains - and empty them out on a weekly basis. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s Baltimore Sun article discusses the surplus of condos on the market.  However, out of the 5,091 vacant condos in the Baltimore metro area, only 865 are in Baltimore City. This is surprising given the number of large-scale condo projects underway. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday’s New York Times had a feature article on Baltimore.   It’s an interesting read, but probably overplays the affect the nationwide housing downturn has had on Baltimore development and real estate.  It also probably overestimates the affect of Washington commuters on Baltimore.

For Baltimore, Housing Slump Slows a Revival

LOUIS UCHITELLE

Published: October 4, 2007
New York Times 

Colorful banners, draped across buildings like giant flags, urge people driving through Baltimore’s rebuilt downtown neighborhoods to move into the new condos and apartments inside. “Sophisticated Urban Living W/Garage and Gated Off-Street Parking” one sign declares in the long campaign to gentrify the central city.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent unscientific, unvalidated poll of 1 local Baltimore resident, Little Havana was voted Baltimore’s best bar.  Little Havana is located on the water at 1325 Key Highway in South Baltimore - nestled between Harborview and Locust Point.  The bar scored well on all key criteria. Read the rest of this entry »

After a recount… The city’s population jumped a whopping 900 people.  However, if the murder rate continues to increase, the population numbers may even out by years end.

Baltimore sun article 

Elated city leaders were fast to spread the news: For the first time in decades, Baltimore’s population has increased, reversing a half-century of decline, according to revised estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Mayor Sheila Dixon announced the revised estimate yesterday, calling the nearly 900-person gain between 2005 and 2006 a “reversal of fortune.”

The new figures come after Baltimore officials challenged the city’s 2006 estimate, released in June. The adjusted figure puts Baltimore’s population as of July 1, 2006, at 640,961, up 897 from the 2005 Charm City count of 640,064. The initial 2006 estimate had been 631,366.

There’s no doubt the Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse (SBER) have delivered great projects and helped transition Locust Point into a new era.  But did SBER save Locust Point?  I was on their website today (which is nice) and came across the following narrative about Locust Point and their work in the neighborhood.  They discuss how 2,500 jobs were lost in the 90’s but 1,800 were created via their recent projects.  However, the thing they don’t mention is that the vast majority of those jobs were filled by people outside the community.  So it’s a bit of a stretch to make the correlation between jobs lost and gained and it’s affect on the overall health of Locust Point.  But we do love that promenade…

The Locust Point community lost 2,500 jobs to plant closings in the 1990’s. This long time blue collar neighborhood was fast losing homeowners and faced increasing drug activity and crime. SBER bought the shuttered P&G factory and invested $80 million in its adaptive reuse as state of the art office campus which houses SBER’s main office and headquarters. It is home to many other businesses and commercial tenants, including Under Armour, Ayers St. Gross Architects, and the Harvest Table café. Tenants of Tide Point mingle with local residents on the public promenade.

SBER subsequently converted the vacant Coca Cola plant into the world headquarters for Phillips Seafood and the blighted White Lead Paint Factory into a health club, retail and office space. In the last five years, 1,800 of the lost jobs have been replaced.

 The Turner Development Group’s website has a nice overview of their projects with some interesting models and interior pics. Check out the Westport plans, and Federal Hill Lofts pics.

Projects Gallery