Community Opinions

Dan Rodricks has provided the most accurate, fair (non-biased) and complete report I have read regarding the Harborplace dilemma facing Baltimore voters in this election (“Dan Rodricks: Harborplace does not need 900 apartments to be a ‘great good place’ again,” Oct. 1).

As Dan said, the issue is not race. In fact, Baltimore could use more people like P. David Bramble — homegrown, dedicated, smart and a successful developer.

What seems to be forgotten, but should be shouted loudly to our city officials, is that Harborplace is public space. Building behemoth buildings for the well-off on private land is one thing. Development of public space should be planned at human scale for everyone to access and enjoy. Instead of building for rich people and tourists, improvements should be made for the everyday working people who call Baltimore — with its blend of diversity, charm and a little funk — home.

On Thursday, I attended a public hearing of Baltimore’s Planning Commission on three bills connected to the proposed overhaul of the city’s Inner Harbor and Harborplace. I fully expected to be testifying with some design comments on the current proposal by developer P. David Bramble’s MCB Real Estate. To my surprise Sean Davis, chair of the commission, announced at the start of the hearing that no comments on the design would be allowed, as this was a hearing on land use issues only.

As a developer of waterfront residential projects, including Tindeco and Canton Cove (a total of 340 units), I am used to presenting plans to the planning commission that need land use changes. Always the design plans were a big part of the conversation between me and the commissioners. So, let me get this straight: The developer’s “public engagement process” included no opportunity for the public to look at design options considered by the developer.

The very best, most valuable and desirable addresses in all of Manhattan are those that encircle the outer boundaries of historic manmade Central Park. Over the history of New York City’s mayors — whether corrupt, decent, inept or quite capable — not one conspired with a private developer to permit residential development in the park itself. Not one would dare.

As a multi-year, or even multi-decade, effort transforming Baltimore’s downtown would transcend political terms and cycles of leadership. Yet, it will require strong, visionary leadership to foster true collaboration, characterized by commitment, cooperation, careful coordination, community participation and of course, intense public and private investment.  To overcome these hurdles, the best tool available is a master plan.  But it can’t be an ordinary master plan that sits on a shelf. It has to be a visionary, public, inclusively conceived, community-endorsed, fully embraced downtown master plan.  By memorializing the vision, community consensus and overall strategy, the plan would be a common reference and motivation for decisions going forward.

Harborplace’s two pavilions, which were designed decades ago as mini waterfront malls, did not keep pace with shifting consumer demands and demographics. They became decaying, vacant buildings sitting on prime real estate.

It is appropriate that they be demolished.

However, their demise will do nothing to energize the Inner Harbor unless they are replaced by visionary architecture and landscaping that support diverse, multi-generational entertainment, nonprofit, recreational and dining venues.

The Inner Harbor has a chance of once again being the proud jewel of Baltimore. The time for it to happen is now.

Let’s preserve this precious last spot of open space in the Inner Harbor for those purposes. Let’s provide venues for shopping and dining, let’s provide better, faster water taxis to get to other great neighborhoods on our waterfront. Let’s get ready for the time when we can paddle and swim in our own Inner Harbor.

According to a May 26, 2022, article in the Chicago Sun Times, “the four underground city-owned parking garages took in $22 million last year, up 35.8% from the $16.2 million made in 2020.”

David Bramble, look down, not up.

One consideration for “redevelopment” of the Inner Harbor would be no large-scale development at all.  After all, the Inner Harbor was already redeveloped in the 1980s. Now, 40-plus years later, it is being redeveloped again, and very well may have to be done over again in another 40 years. Each time some buildings have to be demolished, while others at the very least undergo a major costly renovation, only to have to go through the same gut-wrenching process a few decades later.

Why not put an end to “redevelopment” and go to a simple and more sustaining process? Turn the Inner Harbor into an open-air park, with lawns and trees and children’s playgrounds. The city has many such open-air parks, most notably Druid Hill Park and Patterson Park, among many others. None of these parks have to undergo a major and costly “redevelopment” periodically, and they all are well utilized and serve the public.

Reasonable people can differ about the architectural aspects of the plan. But it’s important also to understand how it will affect the rest of downtown. Advocates promise it will kick-start a revival. They’re wrong.

As developer David Tufaro, one of the plan’s opponents, noted in that article, “Harborplace’s decline came about in part because of the city’s backing of waterfront redevelopment in Harbor East, Harbor Point and Baltimore Peninsula, formerly known as Port Covington, which shifted offices, apartments and shops outside the central business district.”

Jay Brodie, former president of the Baltimore Development Corporation, had this to say to the Baltimore City Council about the Harborplace redevelopment plan: “We are fortunate to have MCB [Real Estate], under the leadership of David Bramble, making major development investments in our city. I have visited their projects and respect the attention to scale and detail and how well they fit into the neighborhoods. But the Inner Harbor designs show no such sensitivity to Baltimore’s scale or other qualities. Rather, the designs suggest high-rise aspects of Houston, Dallas or Atlanta injected into our most sensitive [Inner] Harbor sites.”

As an architect and urban planner, I know well that disagreement and dialogue often make for a better end product. It is in debating what matters, what we love, and what we hate, that we learn what we collectively value. Frustrations with developers MCB Real Estate, however, are misplaced. P. David Bramble and his team are doing what any for-profit developer would do: ensuring a comfortable pro forma for lenders, proposing a design that maximizes financial returns, and asking for the largest possible amount of public subsidy.

But should developer motivations drive the design of the most prized real estate in our entire city? Our civic heart?

Guess what? The Capital Wheel, National Harbor’s family friendly, year-round, giant Ferris wheel with its spectacular LED changing light show, cost only $1 million! It succeeds in attracting hundreds of thousands of happy visitors of all ages, each and every year.

Contrast that investment outcome with the current MCB Real Estate projected demand for at least $300 million to upwards of $600 million or more in public monies for the infrastructure to enable their plan for construction of tall commercial and residential towers under their exclusive control along the Inner Harbor.

I was optimistic when David Bramble said in 2022 that, according to The Baltimore Sun, he wanted an Inner Harbor redevelopment to be “local” and “authentic.” Further, he said he wanted it “to represent the best of Baltimore, and we really want it to be a reflection of the whole city.” I hoped it would not echo other profit-driven developments, but the development plans are disappointing for several reasons.

It’s short-sighted to spend $400 million in public money to enable developers who lack the vision to celebrate the charms of Charm City.

I want to add my objection to the proposed redevelopment of Harborplace and agree with others that there should be more options.

The construction of high- and mid-rise buildings south of Pratt Street and east of Light Street will effectively cut the rest of the city off from the Inner Harbor just as the six-lane interstate would have done. Go to Harbor East and stand in the circle to get a sense of this.

Next, sea level is rising, as recently pointed out in a letter to the editor. The buildings would be in the flood plain. Remember what happened in New York City when Super Storm Sandy hit the coast?

And where in the design did they plan to put all the vehicles that the high-rises would generate? Parking and traffic are bad enough now.

Baltimore recently let the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre and the McKeldin Fountain be demolished with little to show from it’s replacement. It looks like Harborplace is next. The developers’ replacement for the pavilions is street level retail, 900 apartments, an office-hotel building and a signature building all of which turn their back on downtown much worse than the pavilions do.

As a fan of James Rouse’s plans and projects, I am appalled at this sudden dramatic plan. Harborplace was created to fit into this waterfront site as a low-rise complement to the towers on Pratt and Light streets and not to block them. The pavilions frame a wonderful cityscape view from the harbor and Federal Hill Park, all connected by a public promenade. It’s simply urban planning at it’s finest.

What’s the draw for tourists?

A ‘bad deal for Baltimore’

Do not subsidize the conversion of public land to private housing

‘This plan is greedy and hideous’

High-rise residential towers are exactly what I want

Do data support the design?

Way to remove the charm from Charm City

Harborplace access goes from public to privileged

What would James Rouse do?

If you need an apartment, go to Harbor East

How does this design relate to Baltimore?

Letter writer Harvey Schwartz has some good ideas about Harborplace. But rather than make the pavilions only a holiday market or a themed market, we should make Harborplace a permanent year-round food market just like all of the food markets around the city. All food, no retail. It’s well-proven that folks don’t go to Harborplace to shop. They go to enjoy their 30-acre park where they can walk, eat and take in the attractions.

All the state has to do is provide a food market where the current pavilions stand. Both locals from the nearby offices and tourists just want a place to grab a bite on their stroll around the harbor.

Harborplace, for a wide variety of reasons, is today a shadow of its former vitality. From the perspective of many, including myself, it is time for a “re-imagining” of what is best for Baltimore, 43 years later.

Unfortunately, the “re-thinking” is constrained by a lack of public input, the absence of a cohesive strategy, and waterfront development driven by large developers without a master plan. In short, there is no vessel within which development is occurring.

The plans for an alternative Harborplace redevelopment recently presented on these pages by Baltimore architect Steve Ziger are interesting, but has anyone given any thought about the impact of climate change and the inevitable rise in sea level?

The Inner Harbor is already a flood prone area. I believe the only rational option is to turn the entire area into public parkland. If you have ever visited Chicago you can readily see the benefits that creating a waterfront park brings to a city. Damage from flooding is mitigated while a beautiful space is provided for the citizens of Baltimore and tourists to enjoy.

A recent Banner story mentioned that when T. Rowe Price moves its headquarters to Harbor Point, the downtown office vacancy rate will reach a historic high. The expected vacancy rate — 30% — was first reported by the Baltimore Business Journal and is one that city officials prefer to ignore.

If developed, at least 175,000 square feet of Class A office space in the plan proposed by MCB Real Estate to redevelop Baltimore’s Harborplace would compete directly with downtown. MCB’s planned construction of up to 900 apartment units would reduce demand for commercial to residential conversions essential to reviving downtown.

I appreciate The Banner taking a deep dive at Harborplace, although I wish it would have happened earlier and before the votes in City Council.

I also wish the articles would be more investigative and less conversational. In your article about reaction to plans for the original Harborplace, you accurately describe what happened with the Rouse Pavilions back then and the debate leading up to it. Permeating through the article though, is a false equivalency between the pavilions and the Bramble project.

While it is correct that the pavilions set a precedent for commercial development in a public park space, they were fully synergistic with public use in the sense that they were fully accessible to the public and housed functions that supported visiting the harbor to the point that they actually became the attraction for a while. They were also only 50 feet high and conformed to the Wallace Roberts Todd urban design master plan that created a tall “outer frame” and lower objects inside the frame.

Although our other readers’ views varied, one common theme came out: It wasn’t nostalgia driving their concern about the redevelopment. We’ve included their responses below:

Reader 1: Colin Tarbert’s letter to the editor contends that opposition of the proposed residential development of Inner Harbor Park is based on nostalgia. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe that Harborplace needs to change, but not at the expense of Baltimoreans’ use of a public park. It should not be a park for only those who can afford to live there. There should not be a structure that blocks the view of the harbor to the citizens of Baltimore. Would the city’s citizens like to have a high-rise built next to the pagoda in Patterson Park or in Druid Hill Park? I think not. Let Harborplace continue to be a park with new amenities that all of us can enjoy, rather than a skyscraper for the affluent few. That will be true progress. I hope the citizens of Baltimore will reject Question F on this year’s election ballot.

Reader 2: As a lifelong Baltimorean and someone who lives near the harbor, I have a love of Baltimore and a desire to see our city grow and shine.

However, I don’t understand why this can’t be done while including the taxpayers’ and residents’ ideas and desires. The cynical side of me does understand — because it’s all about the money. But the way this P. David Bramble project was rushed through without real input is what is really irritating to me. Not only is it reminiscent of Baltimore’s many shady political development deals of the past, but it also screams the idea that Baltimoreans are too dumb to have any good ideas to offer. We’re not dumb, Mr. Tarbert. And we see through this scheme.

Trust me. I am not stuck in nostalgia. I’m just not money hungry and greedy. I’d like to see Harborplace totally reimagined. A place truly for everyone — not just for affluent people from the suburbs. When was the last time you strolled along the promenade, Mr. Tarbert? That ghost town you speak of is full of people walking, riding bikes and sitting to enjoy the view.

I read The Baltimore Banner article about the proposed $500 million Harborplace redevelopment project. The headline rightly stated that “City residents have plenty of questions about proposed Harborplace overhaul.” But after reading the article, I came away feeling that no one is asking city officials and those touting the project the right questions.

I would like to know why such a huge investment should be devoted to luxury housing and to restaurants and other attractions aimed at tourists. I would also like to know about any strategy being put into place to ensure these potential downtown visitors are protected from being harmed or having their vehicles stolen while they seek to enjoy these amenities. Drawing people back to Harborplace will require more than expensive redevelopment. Visitors will want to know that they can spend their evenings or any other times there without fear of being terrorized.

I can think of ways for such a large investment to be beneficial to all of Baltimore and not just to the affluent. More funds need to be allocated to the schools, where children are failing proficiency tests. More recreational facilities are needed across the city. Baltimore needs to establish more outlets and opportunities for developing the talents and skills of our young people.

I realize I’m just a grieving mom trying to navigate life four months after my daughter, Aaliyah Gonzalez, was shot and killed at a block party. My daughter was a visitor, and she lost her life. And I have real concerns and a vested interest.

Too bad the Banner reporter who wrote about community reaction to Harborplace wasn’t around when James Rouse proposed the original Inner Harbor plan and that his research for the article was inadequate. I was there. I worked for an economics/market analysis firm that conducted the evaluations for the Inner Harbor West Urban Renewal Project.

The original plan was part of a comprehensive, federally funded project overseen by a public-private partnership — Charles Center/Inner Harbor Management. The internationally recognized urban design firm of Wallace Roberts & Todd performed detailed engineering and market evaluations.

Rouse had a successful track record in national mall development — including Baltimore’s Mondawmin Mall, the new city of Columbia and the mixed-use Baltimore development of Cross Keys. The Rouse Faneuil Hall festival marketplace in Boston was an international market and a successful tourist attraction in a former wholesale market area, not unlike what had existed at that time in Inner Harbor West. The proposed Rouse project consisted of a couple of relatively modest, two-story, retail/restaurant buildings along a waterfront promenade.

The Rouse proposal did not include millions of square feet of redevelopment or high-rise luxury, residential development, blocking the harbor views. Rouse had a successful track record of building and operating the type of development he proposed. He was not a bottom-fishing purchaser seeking hundreds of millions in public assistance.

There was opposition from existing retailers, some of whom were struggling in the Howard/Lexington Street area, in the beginning. Some opposition also came from highly successful restaurateurs in Little Italy.

When downtown stadiums were being built, and Baltimore was deciding what to do with Memorial Stadium property, I remember attending presentations by three groups — each with very different visions and plans for the future use of this space. One was for an industrial park that would be gated and without open green space, another was for a shopping center, and a third was to provide affordable senior housing, open green space and a YMCA.

I am glad we had choices available then and grateful we selected the one now known as Stadium Place. Why weren’t we offered choices to consider for our Harborplace?

I find it disturbing a single developer was given the chance to promote his plan there. I am angered this plan is based on the premise that we have to exceed height limits, squeeze public park space, build high-rent housing to make it profitable and shrink traffic lanes to make it work. And then the public has to find the funds for the public open space left over after four huge buildings crowd our Harborplace.

I feel compelled to comment about the proposed plan for Baltimore’s most important site. The re-imagined Harborplace offers the citizens of Baltimore an unparalleled opportunity to translate our shared values and aspirations into a public place that inspires and engages us all for generations to come. There is no more important design opportunity in the city, and it is critical that we get it right.

David Bramble and his team care deeply about this opportunity. They are committed to creating a public place worthy of our highest aspirations. And I commend them for thinking beyond the limits of their property to recognize the potential of the entire area. Their bold thinking seizes this unique opportunity to make Baltimore a better place. Their design fully re-imagines the entire zone to include both Light and Pratt streets. The plan reduces the width of Light Street from a 10-lane highway, eliminates the diagonal road that separates McKeldin Plaza from the harbor and significantly expands the harbor front’s contiguous land to the west and northwest. This audacious and necessary move creates space for both private development and significantly expanded public space.

I have a question for David Bramble, the Baltimore-based developer who wants to transform Harborplace with a plan that includes two apartment towers on the space now occupied by the mall’s Light Street pavilion.

Bramble’s company has a partnership agreement to redevelop the parking lot at 300 East Pratt Street, directly across from the eastern edge of Harborplace. Baltimore long-timers remember the parking lot as the site of the News-American, a Hearst daily that folded in 1986.

The newspaper building was demolished a few years later, and that primo property has been awaiting redevelopment for more than three decades. Some guy from New York said he wanted to build a skyscraper there, but it didn’t happen. Bramble’s company, MCB Real Estate, got involved, and the partnership rolled out a plan for a 40-story, mixed-use tower on the site in the year before the pandemic.

So here’s my question: Why propose 32- and 25-story buildings on Harborplace (with 900 apartments) and suffer criticism from numerous Baltimoreans, including this columnist, when you could build a very high, very spectacular building with hundreds of apartments at 300 East Pratt?

Real estate developer David Bramble was in a challenging but enviable position when he took on the task of conceiving a new vision for Harborplace. It was a tough assignment, but Baltimore officials and business leaders were so eager to do something about the neglected, depressing 40-year-old waterfront mall that Bramble could pretty much expect official support for whatever he came up with. And he got it: near complete buy-in from the city’s mayor and state’s governor.

Beggars can’t be choosers, right?

Well, pardon me if I speak up for the beggars who chose to be a little more skeptical — and choosy — about what happens at Light and Pratt, or what Bramble calls “the beating heart of Baltimore.”

The high-rises in the proposed plans are a bad idea, a developer’s dream and a public nightmare. There’s nothing, as the developer claims, “authentically Baltimore” about building residential towers on public lands along the city’s beloved waterfront.

The new Harborplace design is an unmitigated disaster.

There is no way that the community meetings and public surveys conducted by the developer elicited a plan for high-rise apartment and commercial towers along the waterfront. I would urge the developer to share the results of their interactions with the public that produced this nightmare design proposal.

Gov. Wes Moore, Mayor Brandon Scott and members of the Baltimore City Council should direct the developer to go back to the drawing board. To add insult to injury, the developer now wants $400 million from the taxpayers to convert Harborplace public spaces to Horror Place.

I bet William Donald Schaefer is spinning in his grave.

I applaud Baltimore-born P. David Bramble, managing partner of MCB Real Estate, for undertaking the challenge of redeveloping the Inner Harbor. But hometown roots are not enough to overlook a plan as flawed as his is, especially the two towers of offices and living space to be built on public land. On my land. On your land. The towers’ footprints leave scant room for the rest of us to enjoy the Inner Harbor, and their forbidding glass and steel facades broadcast a clear message: “You down there are not rich enough to live here. Not sophisticated enough. Not worthy enough. Stay away.” And, given that Mr. Bramble’s plan offers few incentives for ordinary Baltimoreans to visit the harbor, we probably will.

Doubtless, some will suggest I am feeling nostalgic for the Rouse-era pavilions, which will be torn down under Mr. Bramble’s plan.  Not true. I moved to Baltimore well before those pavilions were constructed, and once the rotting wharves and warehouses were demolished, I witnessed how much Baltimoreans enjoyed the new greenspace before the pavilions were built.  So, I objected to the pavilions, and time has proved me right. Only 44 years old, they already are out of date. Not so, Central Park nor the Place de Voges. Those public spaces remain timeless icons.

Nobody asked me, but the vice chair of the Baltimore Planning Commission should probably refrain from the specious argument that the debate over proposed apartment towers on Harborplace represents some sort of generational divide.

“It seems like a lot of older folks remember the old Harborplace and are resistant to new ideas,” said Eric Stephenson. “At the same time, a lot of younger folks have only seen Harborplace in its current state of disrepair and are really anxious for something new that we all deserve.”

What baloney — as if “older folks” object to MCB Real Estate’s plan because it’s “new” and not because it represents dense private development on a waterfront public park.

How bizarre. The CEO of Parks & People supports building high-rise apartments and offices, 350 feet tall, in our Inner Harbor park, Baltimore’s version of New York City’s Central Park.

How dare you!  The stated mission of Parks & People is “to unite Baltimore through parks.”  In reality, the MCB plans would destroy any notion of the Inner Harbor park and they would not bring people back to the Inner Harbor. Sally J. Michel, the beloved founder of Parks & People, must be turning over in her grave.

As momentous as Monday evening’s 14-1 vote by the Baltimore City Council to approve a trio of bills authorizing the redevelopment of Harborplace was, the most important vote is still yet to come. Too often lost in the weeks of debate over the redevelopment plan proposed by P. David Bramble and his MCB Real Estate company is that the project requires a charter amendment, which will be put before city voters on the Nov. 5 general election ballot. In other words, the last word remains with the residents of Baltimore. This was true when Bramble presented design plans in October, and it remained true as the details were poked and prodded, and reviewed by the council, the city’s planning commission and by the public.

The dichotomy of opinion and the strong feelings that have emerged over the project are both challenging and heartening. They’re challenging because many are skeptical that Bramble’s project, which features mixed-use urban high-rises, public park space, an amphitheater, and commercial and office space, is right for the area. And they’re heartening because it’s clear that Baltimoreans still perceive the Inner Harbor as this city’s most cherished shared public space and want it to remain so.

In the letter to the editor I wrote last fall when P. David Bramble first announced his intention to tear down the Harborplace pavilions, I stated that doing that would be a waste of time, money and opportunity (“Jimmy Rouse: We need a new Harborplace vision in Baltimore, not destruction of my father’s legacy,” Oct. 3). Now that he has released his plans for Harborplace and the City Council has approved them, I feel even more strongly that this is the case.

It is a waste of time because even by Bramble’s own timetable, once torn down it is going to take at least three years to procure the permitting and financing for his new assemblage of buildings to move forward and then at least another four years for them to be built and operational. So what we are going to end up with is an empty hole where Harborplace once stood at the heart of our Inner Harbor for almost a decade. Whereas we could begin immediately remerchandising the pavilions as they stand, with some changes and improvements, and have a unique and exciting marketplace within a year.

At the very least, we should not allow these buildings to be razed unless a fully financed replacement for them has been met with public approval. Otherwise, we will end up with a disaster like the Mechanic Theater demolition at the heart of our city. My father had to put his vision for Harborplace up to vote in a citywide referendum. David Bramble should be forced to do the same before he is allowed to tear down Harborplace. This is too important decision for the city to have it made by the whims of a single person.

Harborplace fell into its present sorry condition largely because it fell into the hands of two out-of-town bottom line developers who had no feel for the city. What kind of developer forces Phillips to move down the street and replaces them with Ripley’s Believe it or Not? With the new influx of downtown residents, the opportunity exists now to reinvigorate Harborplace and make it again an attraction to both residents and tourists alike. There is no need to waste this huge opportunity by demolishing what is there.

Politicians have cheered the proposal, which would dramatically reshape the Inner Harbor area and the city’s skyline. Some residents love it, and some hate it. One group of people has consistently criticized it. Architects.

A city panel of architects trashed the designs at a November hearing, with one saying it looked as though ChatGPT had been asked to design a waterfront development. Two local chapters of national architectural organizations wrote letters opposing the development plans, and several architects penned their own letters.

“We were told earlier that the vision of Harborplace would reflect Baltimore,” Bridges said Thursday. “It seems to me that vision has been lost.”

A few years ago, I walked around a dismal Harborplace with Klaus Philipsen, the Baltimore architect and blogger who offers sharply perceptive commentary on matters of public interest. We talked about what Harborplace needed. High-rise apartment buildings never came up.

Of course, two towers with 900 apartments are now in MCB Real Estate’s proposal for the redevelopment of James Rouse’s brainchild on Baltimore’s public waterfront.

Philipsen watched, with the rest of us, as MCB’s plans for Harborplace won swift official approval.

Citizens will get to vote to allow (or not) the redevelopment during November’s election, but Philipsen contacted me because, he says, some questionable narratives have arisen in the effort to convince the public of the wonders of MCB’s plans.