by GERALD NEILY

Along with drafting ambitious, unconventional yet realistic plans for a better-functioning Baltimore, my so-called “Blue Sky Blueprints,” I like to encourage bold urban design initiatives wherever I see them. So now, for embracing just such a blue-sky idea, I’m awarding the first “Bluey” to the Southeast Community Development Corporation and the Greektown Community Development Corporation.

Instead of tinkering at the margins of change, defined and constrained by the bureaucratic establishment, the Southeast and Greektown CDCs have mobilized Highlandtown to prepare for a totally new Highlandtown Loft District – a new kind of community of over 3,500 residences in a formerly industrial area that now has practically nothing. The anchor would be the hulking Crown Cork and Seal Building, which would be transformed into a great loft complex. A stop on the proposed Red Line would connect the new neighborhood to the rest of town.

Where the City and the MTA have gotten mired in a long and tedious process of hammering the “square pegs” of a 1960s-era east-west transit plans into the “round holes” of 21st century realities, these groups have taken a clean sheet of paper, blue-sky thinking and developed a new, more relevant plan where everything fits together.

The key piece of real estate is the formerly industrial area between Highlandtown and Greektown which has become a “no man’s land” sandwiched between railroad rights of way and a high-walled, trench-like section of its main street, Eastern Avenue, where it goes under a web of railroad tracks. Community advocates, guided by the TND Planning Group, have been helping the neighborhood reimagine this spot as a vibrant, attractive place with easy access to Hopkins Bayview or the waterfront shops and employers in Canton.

Their Highlandtown Loft District, an idea I sketched out in my blog a couple of years ago, is a fresh vision for the future. And to understand why, it helps to recall the meager measures offered up for the neighborhood to date.

PLANNING AHEAD, NOT BEHIND

The SCDC/GCDC plan acknowledges what the City/MTA plans do not – that a true transit-oriented development district, must be fundamentally designed around a new culture of mass transit, and not around cars and highways. The current City/MTA plans for this area are 30 years too late. They attempt to take the adjacent Canton community — rebuilt over the past three decades in the most suburban and auto-centric configuration of the entire inner city with large parking lots, strip retail and disoriented open spaces — and somehow superimpose a rapid regional rail Red Line upon it.

Up until less than two years ago, the Red Line was proposed to terminate awkwardly in Canton. Finally, the plan was extended another mile to Bayview, though not to take advantage of Highlandtown’s “lofty” potential. The MTA was simply trying to come up with a reasonably regionally-oriented terminus and not repeat the Metro mistake of ending abruptly at Hopkins Hospital, with no facilities for feeding the rest of the transit system. They added three new stops to the proposed transit line, including one in Highlandtown, near Haven Street and Eastern Avenue.

 

Until now, the City has engaged in only a half-hearted effort to make this forlorn area attractive to people who might actually use this new Highlandtown stop. They spent $4 million on a mostly superficial makeover for the canyon-like part of Eastern Avenue that bisects the proposed loft district, including new decorative lights and railings and freshly-painted retaining walls (photo above). There are already early signs that this work is being allowed to deteriorate again, since it does little to foster a sense of community and, hence, there’s no constituency to insist upon its maintenance. Instead, it remains an incongruous and unwelcoming segment of four-lane expressway between the old Highlandtown and Greektown business districts.

How about encouraging people to walk or use transit to get from the Highlandtown area to the trendy Canton waterfront? Actually, the government planners make this more difficult with another recent proposal: to realign a portion of Boston Street to bypass its railroad crossings and a low underpass where large trucks get trapped, and tie it in to the O’Donnell Viaduct, just south of the Highlandtown Loft District and east of Brewers Hill.

This project would encourage still more traffic on Boston Street at the same time that the City has insisted that the Red Line would reduce traffic. The “Bo’Donnell Connector,” as it has been dubbed because of its proximity to the Natty Boh Building, does make sense as a way to make Canton traffic patterns more efficient, but it works against their attempt to use the Red Line to transform Boston Street into a transit-oriented boulevard. The high volume Bo’Donnell Connector would also make it more difficult to provide attractive pedestrian oriented connections between the Canton waterfront and the new loft district.

RETHINK THE REDLINE – YET AGAIN

The proposed Highlandtown Loft District is a game changer. Potentially, it has the location, design and “critical mass” to serve as the kind of eastern anchor the Red Line sorely needs. Canton or Fells Point were originally thought to fulfill this need, but are now seen as mere stops along the way. These waterfront communities are among inner Baltimore’s least transit-oriented, and the Red Line as planned would do nothing to change that. Bayview, with its expansive Johns Hopkins Research Park, is currently seen as fulfilling this role, but it is too sprawled-out to do it efficiently.

The new MARC Commuter rail station proposed along the Red Line, just north of Bayview, also won’t be much of an anchor because it would be isolated amid the Norfolk Southern freight yard and would not provide intimate or efficient connections. (The City and MTA have proposed a second new MARC station in East Baltimore along a short extension of the Metro Line north of the existing Hopkins Hospital station, which would provide a much better and faster way to get from MARC to Downtown.)

The loft district development, on the other hand, if done right, would expand and enrich the Red Line’s role in the area. Instead of being a regional rail line which intercepts and diverts long-distance trips, it would foster a transit-oriented inner-city lifestyle, encouraging local folks to hop onto the transit line to shuttle from one part of East Baltimore to another, or to downtown which is only several miles away.

As long as the loft zone is shaking up conventional wisdom, it ought to shake loose an idea that has been dismissed too quickly: building the Red Line in this area for streetcars rather than light rail.

Streetcars would use the same vehicles as light rail but individually, instead of in trains of up to a block long. This would allow the transit line to better fit into the tight streets, and thus create a design that enhances the local environment rather than trying to keep up with high-speed traffic. It would eliminate the need for expensive tunneling. Streetcar stations could be much smaller and more frequent, including a station at nearby Brewers Hill, adding to convenience and enhancing the local transit orientation. The transit street now being proposed between Highlandtown and the waterfront could then be intimate and attractive, rather than a wide boulevard.

FOCUS FIRST ON THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT

The Highlandtown Loft District plan rightly places good urban design front and center. Its potential is so strong that it could serve as the “end of the line” for the Red Line. Instead of bringing the Red Line all the way into Bayview, Bayview expansion could be brought into Highlandtown, thus unleashing all its Hopkins economic development energy. Hopkins Bayview complex is already so big and sprawling that the Red Line may provide only marginal benefit. There is plenty of underutilized or abandoned industrial land surrounding Greektown between Bayview and the proposed loft district that could serve as a more urban higher density “front door” for future expansion of the Bayview Research Park. One key redevelopment parcel, for instance, is the bus yard on Oldham Street owned by the MTA itself.

The proposed MARC station could even be located in the middle of the new loft district, along the vacant railroad siding right where the Red Line ends. This would keep the station away from the high-speed Amtrak trains which are a serious source of conflict, as well as away from the freight yard which gobbles up real estate. Highlandtown and the rest of southeast Baltimore could then become a major draw for commuters to the DC area.

A BETTER RED LINE, A WIDER BLUE SKY

Back when I first wrote about the Highlandtown loft district concept in 2006, my idea was to tie it in to the Green Line. In subsequent posts on my blog, Baltimore InnerSpace, and in a long letter published in the Baltimore Guide in April 2007, I’ve proposed tying it in with the Red Line, which makes sense since it’s getting all the traction.

It’s a great idea, whichever line it’s linked to and whoever proposed it. Way to go, SCDC and GCDC, keep aiming high. And if more people do, the “blue sky” of fresh independent planning for Baltimore’s future will just keep getting bluer.