Baltimore Grows

Today’s Baltimore Sun featured an article about how the declining real estate market has put some of the city’s most notable potential construction projects on hold.  While it’s true that many developers are truly bleeding, in Baltimore, it may not be as bleak as the Sun article made the situation out to be.  True, the projects that the Sun mentioned are stalled, however, most of them have been stalled for years, before the economy made a turn for the worse.  While developers across the country are abandoning projects, many of the projects in Baltimore will still happen, but just in a different format.  For instance, the Marketplace at Fells Point project was to originally contain a component of condominiums.  However, the developers are in the process of revising the PUD to include apartments in lieu of the originally planned condos.  All of this switching around requires approval by the neighborhood association, the architectural committee, the city…etc., and all of this takes TIME! 

 The good news is that there are many projects to keep our attention in the meanwhile.  Projects that have the city’s backing (usually in the form of incentives) like Harbor Point, Four Seasons/Legg Mason, Westport, West Side, and projects associated with institutions like Hopkins and University of Maryland, are still underway, and will drastically change the city’s landscape.  Ironically, it’s the privately funded projects that are taking a little time.  But there’s good news here too.  Insiders say that 10 Inner Harbor, which the Sun said was stalled, is still undergoing preconstruction work.  RWN, who owns the parcels on Guilford, isn’t letting the property rot.  They’re leasing out the old Hammerjacks as a new club called Bourbon Street Live.  Eventually, real estate will bounce back, and the financial institutions will start lending again.  Baltimore is in a good position for continued growth, but we must remain patient. 

That being said, growth is not always measured in gleaming condo towers. It is measured in reborn communities with rehabbed houses, new coffee shops, restaurants and stores…things which continue to pop up in Baltimore every day.