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Business & Developmentby Fern Shen4:28 pmOct 17, 20250

Some Council members push back as Mayor Scott’s zoning bills move steadily forward

A measure ending the requirement for apartment projects to include parking and another allowing rowhouses to be built closer to the property line are coming before the Council for a vote Monday

Above: Mark Washington stands with Coldstream Homestead Montebello resident Betty Lee as she speaks against a bill to permit property owners to extend structures closer to the property line. (Charm TV)

Longtime residents made their way to City Hall once again to decry the Scott administration’s zoning deregulation bills, with speakers saying a North Baltimore neighborhood is already reeling from predatory development.

“They’re taking the single-family homes, and they’re breaking them down to like 10 and 11 people living in them now,” Betty Lee testified yesterday, explaining that she has lived in Coldstream Homestead Montebello (CHuM) since 1957. “It’s more trash. It’s more noise. It’s just a nuisance to the neighborhood.”

Another CHuM homeowner also addressed a City Council hearing on two of the six bills in Mayor Brandon Scott’s housing package – one allowing rowhouse parcels to have structures built closer to the property line, and the other allowing developers to build apartments without providing off-street parking.

“I have an investor who has a property next to me,” Ted Comas began. “So you’re going to allow him to come in and add more more apartments to his investment? Which is going to create more trash?”

“Right now there are vacant houses on my block,” Comas continued. “You can’t even get the landlord to come in and clean it up. I have to call for someone to come in to get this cleaned up. Or I have to do it myself.”

“You have investors that have people who are renting, and the renters don’t even care about the neighborhood,” he said, declaring he was “totally against” Bill 25-0064. “Are they going to chop houses up into rooms where they’re able to get more money? What are you all doing here?”

Unlike previous hearings on the bill, there was also pushback from committee members.

Council Vice President Sharon Green Middleton, a co-sponsor of Bill 25-0064, announced she was removing her name from the legislation “after hearing testimony at the last hearing.”

Councilman Mark Parker also signaled that he thought the same bill (permitting greater lot coverage in residential districts) went too far.

Representing southeast’s densely populated First District, Parker proposed three amendments to the bill “not out of disagreement with the general thrust or desired impacts of the bill, but just to modulate them a little bit.”

Councilman Mark Parker proposes modifying a bill aimed at allowing buildings to come closer to the property line in rowhouse neighborhoods. (Charm TV)

Councilman Mark Parker proposed modifying a bill that would allow buildings to come closer to the property line in rowhouse neighborhoods. (Charm TV)

Density Boosting

Parker didn’t get far. Following the cue of Committee Chair Ryan Dorsey (D, 3rd), the panel swiftly rejected two of Parker’s three amendments and approved bill 25-0064 as well as bill 25-0065, the parking minimums measure.

Middleton was the lone “no” vote on both.

Also voted favorably was 25-0040, a bill aimed at controlling the spread and impact of dollar stores. All three bills are now on the agenda for preliminary approval by the full council on Monday night.

The same three bills had been approved by Dorsey’s committee last month, but were sent back for a new hearing and re-vote.

Explaining the unusual move, Dorsey said the purpose was to consider agency reports. But yesterday’s actions by Middleton and Parker suggest another reason may have been to accommodate lawmakers having second thoughts.

When Parker explained the rationale behind his amendments, it was the first time the density-boosting impacts of the bill were explicitly acknowledged and critiqued.

One of Parker’s amendments, for instance, targeted a provision that increases the maximum allowable building coverage for a small lot in the R-8 residential zones from 80% to 100%.

It would mean a building could extend right out to the property line.

“100%, by right, on a small lot shouldn’t ever be a thing,” Parker said. “To me, it’s inappropriate in our R-8 areas absent some special condition. So I’m proposing 90% for those smaller lots.”

The committee voted it down.

 One provision of the approved bill “will increase multi-unit properties far beyond what a community could possibly sustain” – Councilman Mark Parker.

Another amendment targeted the provision dropping the minimum lot area per dwelling unit from 750 square feet to 500 square feet.

That change, Parker said, “results in a potential increase in multi-unit properties far beyond what a community could possibly sustain, especially communities which are already the most dense in the entire city.”

The freshman councilman had come to the hearing with some calculations. Out of the city’s 72,000 R-8 properties, he said, “61,000 by lot area are limited to one unit. And the remainder, 11,000, are multi-unit.”

The bill, he said, would drop the number of single-unit properties to 33,000 and increase the multi-unit properties to 38,000, “a huge increase,” he said.

His proposal was to drop the dwelling unit lot area to 575 square feet, which he said would roughly double rather than triple or quadruple multi-family units. The amendment was also shot down.

A third amendment, which was approved by the committee, would change the rear-yard setback for large lots to 16 feet instead of 12 feet.

Historic Sharp Leadenhall president Betty Bland-Thomas testifies against Scott's zoning bills. (Charm TV)

Historic Sharp Leadenhall President Betty Bland-Thomas testifies against Scott’s zoning bills. (Charm TV)

Reducing the Workload

Members of the public who spoke at the hearing had no patience for such tweaks, saying this and other bills in the mayor’s Housing Options and Opportunities package are drastic, ill-considered, need to be tabled.

“What you’re doing is changing the whole structure of zoning in Baltimore City – this is a crazy way to go about it,” said longtime zoning attorney John C. Murphy, advising the council to instead do a comprehensive zoning review, noting the scope of the last such review that took place.

“Transform Baltimore took four years to get through,” he reminded them. “These bills are going through in months.”

Remington zoning activist Joan Floyd specifically faulted a report on the bill submitted by the Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals (BMZA).

“It fails to acknowledge that the side yard requirement is eliminated, not just reduced for multi-family attached,” Floyd said. “It fails to acknowledge that the rear yard requirement is eliminated, not just reduced on many R-8 blocks.”

That document and a Department of Transportation report had gone out to committee members, but was posted to the public only one day before the hearing.

At the hearing, Dorsey told members of the public that their testimony could only address the agency reports.

That didn’t set well with former city councilman Jody Landers, who told Dorsey, “I think the report should be read in full in the public session so that we can then tailor our comments to it.”

Dorsey proceeded to read only the summary saying, “Based on the BMZA’s caseload data, staff anticipates these amendments would result in a meaningful reduction in variance applications related to lot coverage, side yard and corner side yard requirements in residential districts.”

After Landers said he wanted more, Dorsey asked Ty’lor Schnella, representing the Scott administration, if he had anything to add.

“The report really hinges upon the BMZA workload and how, you know, this bill with changing the bulk and yard requirements will ease some of that burden on the BMZA, removing the need to seek zoning relief,” Schnella said.

The explanation had several people in the audience seething with frustration.

“I worked for the federal government for 35 years, and I frankly have never heard that as an excuse for why we should basically not pay attention to our mission – because it reduces our workload,” fumed Deb O’Neill, who said she and 20 of her Ridgley’s Delight neighbors wrote letters of opposition to the bills.

“We have had an extreme amount of development in our small historic neighborhood,” O’Neill continued. “The last 10 years, what has happened is that we have had flooding because the storm drains cannot keep up with it . . . I cannot even imagine what’s going to happen when there are no controls.”

Gorsuch Avenue resident Ted Comas testifies against a zoning bill to allow greater lot coverage in Baltimore rowhouse neighborhoods. (CharmTV)

Gorsuch Avenue resident Ted Comas testifies against a zoning bill to allow greater lot coverage in rowhouse neighborhoods. (CharmTV)

Betty Bland-Thomas, president of Historic Sharp Leadenhall, concurred.

“If you were to take out the ability for individuals to object to a permit that means you could not have a discussion with that neighbor or that next-door neighbor property owner,” she said. “I mean, some of these variances warrant discussion – that’s what the zoning department is all about.”

Like several other witnesses, Bland-Thomas spoke in opposition to the lot coverage measure and the bill removing the requirement for multi-family buildings to have parking.

She complained there had not been sufficient community engagement by the administration or by council members.

“I waited half my life for you people to grow up, to protect us,” she said, specifically calling out Councilman Zac Blanchard, her South Baltimore representative, as well as Mayor Scott. “You’re disappointing me.”

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