Swirled up in city-wide debate over a living wage and national angst over big-box chains, the 25th Station project reaches a big milestone with tonight’s Planning Commission hearing. Some in Baltimore are welcoming it, others are bitterly opposed and many of the project’s neighbors are resigned to cutting the best deals they can with the developer. Almost everyone agrees that whatever happens to the 11.518-acre development site will influence the character of North Baltimore for years to come.

What will happen tonight?

At 6 pm, residents, media, city council members and developer Rick Walker, among others, will congregate on the 8th floor of the Benton Building.

The Planning Department will give their formal report on the 25th Street Station Planned Unit Development (PUD) to the Planning Commission, which is expected to  vote and pass their recommendation on to the City Council.  Developer Rick Walker of WV Urban Developments will speak at the hearing, according to his lawyer, Jon Laria.

City Planning Commission Chair Bill Cunningham, who will oversee tonight’s hearing, says he expects it to be a significant meeting given the large number of issues and groups involved, and that he plans to try to limit the evening’s agenda to land use— the Planning Commission’s main responsibility—as much as possible, pointing out that “social issues like Wal-Mart and Living Wage” fall into the realm of the City Council and Mayor.

Cunningham said that council members Belinda Conaway and Mary Pat Clarke, developer Rick Walker, and the primary neighborhood groups will all have a chance to speak following the Planning Commission’s staff report, as will the public, who he says he’ll try to limit to three minutes a person.

“As we understand it, this is the last major step for the PUD legislation before it hits the full City Council,” said Bmore Local president Brendan Bakowski Coyne, one of the community groups attempting to ensure that the community benefits from the development if it is approved.

Bmore Local and Baltimore Community Action Network (Baltimore CAN) have planned a 5 p.m. rally before the hearing.

How did we get here?

News broke in November that a mixed-use development with a Lowe’s was being proposed in Remington. On February 24th, The Daily Record broke the story that Wal-Mart wanted to open a 93,000-square-foot store in the proposed 25th Street Station development.

City Council member Belinda Conaway (7th District) introduced the PUD to the City Council on April 19th..  This news triggered a tidal wave of anti-big box activism that has played out for months in the form of rallies and Facebook pages; strategizing and deal-cutting; and PUD-amending and petition-signing.

Civil War

Reactions to the project have run the gamut.

•    The development will stimulate the local economy and create jobs in an area that needs them.

•    The development will harm the local economy by pushing out mom-and-pop businesses and provide low-grade service jobs that fail to pay a living wage.

•    The PUD should only be approved if it includes a provision ensuring employees there are paid a living wage. (And the 25th Street Station development should be used as a vehicle to pass a city-wide Living Wage bill.)

•    The 25th Street Station will help institutionalize sustainable business practices.

•    The development will destroy Royer’s Hill Church

•    Royer’s Hill Church is no longer much of a church.

•    Wal-Mart will be a concrete bunker-like eyesore in Remington, increasing crime and trash.

•    A 24-hour Wal-Mart would reduce crime and eliminate the eyesores that already mar the struggling neighborhood.

Lay of the land

Exactly what are the details and location of the project?  Located in Remington, which is flanked by Hampden and Charles Village, the  site is bounded Maryland Avenue to the east, 25th Street/Huntington Avenue to the north, 24th Street to the south, and the CSX railroad tracks to the west.  Formerly the site of the Anderson Automotive complex, the land is currently used by businesses that include Honda and Anderson GM.  According to the most recent draft of the PUD, made public on August 2nd, Rick Walker’s mixed-use development would include:

•    70-80 apartments

•    approximately 337,500 square feet of retail

•    A Lowe’s Home Center: approximately 121, 900 sq. ft.

•    A Lowe’s Garden Center: approximately 17, 800 sq. ft.

•    Wal-Mart: approximately 93, 500 sq ft. (located above the Lowe’s)

•    The remaining retail space will be allotted to mid-size retailers and smaller-shop specialty retailers, according to Rick Walker’s website, 25thstreetstation.com.

•    Also according to the website, construction would break ground in the winter of 2010 and be completed in the summer of 2012.

•    Estimated on-site jobs: Walker’s website claims the development will create 400 construction jobs and 700-750 permanent positions.

Where do the different parties stand?

Council Member Belinda Conaway, whose district encompasses the 25th Street site, seems committed to seeing the development approved.   “The developers have been meeting regularly with representatives from the community,” Conaway told the Brew in an email this week.  “Hopefully, we will have a viable project that residents support.  In the end, it is my hope that we don’t have 11 acres of vacant land.”

Walker has met with community organizations including the Charles Village Civic Association and the Remington Neighborhood Alliance (RNA).

RNA President Joan Floyd said the alliance doesn’t have “an opinion” at this point and that while she guesses that some people in the community are “conditionally supportive” of the development, she doesn’t know anyone who could say that they’re completely in favor of the plan as it stands right now, in part because how quickly it is changing (A revised PUD was released just Aug 2nd).

At this point, Floyd said, the RNA’s primary concern is to address what still needs work. “We do have some agendas,” she said. “We’re trying to focus on areas of the plan that need mitigation,” she said, specifically citing the need to appeal the most recent traffic impact study—and, she added, to “identify those [areas] and put them into the public process so they can be addressed.”

Bmore Local president Brendan Bakowski Coyne thinks that process has not properly responded to the community’s concerns and specific requests.

“If the [Planning] commission does its job properly, it should give an unfavorable report” at Thursday’s meeting, said Bakowski Coyne in an email to the Brew.

Bmore Local submitted 13 proposed amendments and additions, many of which are geared towards improving the impact of the roles played by Wal-Mart and Lowe’s within the development.

The requests include:

A required 60-percent local hire rate; that national chains in the development must pay employees a state-mandated Living Wage of $12.25 an hour and provide an option for affordable health insurance; that no store be allowed to stay open 24-hours-a-day; that a minimum of 25 percent of housing units must be affordable according to State Housing Authority standards; and at least 15 percent of the total retail space be occupied by local independent businesses (Click here to view all 13 amendments).

Bakowski Coyne is disappointed in the developer’s response to the community’s requests:
“When Bmore Local met with Walker and his team we learned that they have little to no interest in affordable housing, that they will not seek Silver LEED certification, and that they refuse to accede to community demands that the Royer’s Hill Church building be preserved,” he said.

“Additionally, the developer’s attorney, Jon Laria, told us in no uncertain terms that they will not sign any agreement that binds WV Urban Developments and/or its tenants to hiring locally, paying a living wage, or even guaranteeing that the site’s security is adequate to the needs of the surrounding neighborhoods,” he said.

“Despite the appearance they’ve cultivated,” WV Urban Developments “has not addressed the needs and concerns of the communities that will be affected by the project,” he said.  “We know for a fact that the community associations that have been negotiating with the development team led by Rick Walker…have hit a wall, leaving several issues unresolved–this despite spending over a half a year trying to make the project fit the community fabric.”

Laria argues that some of the community response to the project has been positive.  He told the Brew in an email that many locals including residents near the development “are asking how soon we can get started because they want better shopping options closer to home, and for many that includes Wal-Mart,” he said.  “The development team has attended many meetings with the community since November 2009, and looks forward to the Planning Commission’s action on the PUD,” he added.

Laria is also wary of a characterization of the 25th Street Station project that only includes Wal-Mart, claiming that the national retailer makes up 25 percent or less of the total retail square footage.  “As important as Wal-Mart’s commitment to the project is, the project will include many other retailers, large and small — in fact, the Lowe’s will be almost 40% larger than the Wal-Mart,” he said.

But Bakowski argues that Bmore Local and other community concerns apply to all of the businesses – not just Wal-Mart, not just national retailers, and not just the 25th Street Station development: “Bmore Local has been quite clear that we want the principles reflected in our 13 points to be applied to any development that ends up at 25th and Howard,” said Bakowski.

“This isn’t just about Wal-Mart or Lowe’s, nor is it solely about 25th Street Station,” he continued.  “With retailers increasingly targeting urban areas, Baltimore must stand up for itself and demand that new developments give back to the city at least some of the wealth that they take from our communities.  If we fail to do so no number of stores–discount or otherwise, in gentrified areas or elsewhere–will turn this city around.”

Risks and compromises

Lower Remington resident Megan Hamilton said she is concerned with preserving the character of the area.  Hamilton, who is the Program Director of Creative Alliance, told the Brew that many people in Lower Remington, also known as Historic Fawcett, support the Wal-Mart and the 25th Street Station plan, but have “profound concerns,” many of which are tied to the increase in traffic that two entrances for Lowe’s and Wal-Mart and a three-story parking garage on 24th Street would inevitably produce.

Hamilton said that the Historic Fawcett Community Association, a new group of which she is the co-founder, have asked for a cul-de-sac to keep traffic under control as well as a wall or buffer on 24th Street to block local residents from noise and pollution.  They’ve also asked that the wall consist of granite from the 120-year-old Royer’s Hill Church, which Hamilton said the developer plans to demolish.

Hamilton feels that the trade-off between how the development will impact the community and what the community is getting in return is not an equal one.  “To us the lack of support is appalling really.  We could be impacted so, so highly and we are asking really for very little.  Our scrappy little community has endured for over a hundred years.  It would be a tragedy if it weren’t properly respected now so it can endure.”

Hamilton is specifically indignant about the church granite.  “Each successive design has less stone,” she said in regard to plans to incorporate the granite into a protective wall.  “I guess they are planning on selling it or something?  It was mined in our community!  By folks who used to live in our houses!”

Hamilton said that if their requests aren’t accepted, the Community Association won’t support the project.  “If we aren’t given these basic mitigations it will not be possible for us to…”

Benn Ray, President of the Hampden Village Merchants Association and owner of Atomic Books in Hampden is also ready to move forward with a PUD if it includes Bmore Local’s 13 points and does so in “enforceable language.”  If that happens, says Ray, it “goes a long way in making sure the developers will actually be held accountable to live up to the promises they have made time and time again at community meetings.”

Ray says if the PUD passes without the 13 points properly represented, “it will illustrate a catastrophic flaw in the Baltimore development process and the PUD process,” particularly, says Ray, because Walker is asking to develop a project that goes against the property’s current zoning.

“It’s really this simple: the developers can’t do whatever they want on this property due to zoning,” said Ray.  “The community has to agree to the project.  And we, as a community, have a real opportunity to help the developers create the idyllic project they described to us over and over.”

If the city approves the project without community approval, said Ray, “then we have a problem with how we are represented.  And I think we’ll see people eager to correct that representation in the next election cycle.”

As for 14th district Council Member Mary Pat Clarke , she also endorses Bmore Local’s 13 points, but particularly from a Living Wage standpoint. She said she is hoping that the 25th Street Station development could serve as a precedent for implementing Living Wage across the city. She is hoping to bind the developer to the wage and other restrictions as part of   a community benefits agreement, or CBA. (If approved, it would be the first CBA in the city).

“Living Wage Bill 10-0505 is not dead,” said Clarke. “It is resting quietly in the Labor Subcommittee, waiting for reconsideration,” she said.

When asked to respond to community’s concerns about the 13 points and Living Wage, Laria says that Bmore Local’s requests are impossible and impractical.  “Bmore Local’s requests are unprecedented even for projects which enjoy major public subsidies,” he told the Brew.

“The requirements they are proposing would make the project unworkable and unfinanceable.  Rick and his team are investing over $70 million private dollars to create 400+ construction jobs and 700+ permanent jobs, and the project will have millions of dollars in economic impact on the neighborhoods and the City.  We have been working since November 2009 in an extremely open and transparent process with five community associations and other stakeholders, and are confident 25th Street Station will have a positive and lasting impact on employment and shopping opportunities in the community and the City.”

After tomorrow night’s hearing the city will be one significant step closer to what the nature of that “impact” will be.