Yes, Baltimore, we can have nice things. We can have a whole stretch of waterfront restored to something like its pre-industrial best, with marshes and wildlife, but also with parks and trails, old neighborhoods improved and their residents better connected to the waters around them.

This is not some unfunded fantasy, but a growing reality in South Baltimore, around the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, the city’s “forgotten waterfront.” It’s called “Reimagine Middle Branch,” a multi-million-dollar project in phases, headed by the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership (SBGP).

Remember the promise of casino money to fund community improvements? The SBGP gets $8 million a year from Maryland slots revenue toward fulfilling its decade-old master plan for South Baltimore neighborhoods (see list below) and the Middle Branch. It gets funds from other sources, too. So far, SBGP has about $250 million in work completed or underway.

After years of planning and permitting, you can finally see results.

Along northbound Hanover Street and the rear of MedStar Harbor Hospital, crews have been rebuilding the broad marshes of native plants and grasses that disappeared during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

“The Middle Branch of the Patapsco used to have 3,000 acres of wetlands before the industrial era,” says Brad Rogers, executive director of the SBGP. “There were wetlands ringing the whole Baltimore waterfront.”

Industrialists of the early 19th Century filled in marshes and dredged the harbor for shipping, ruining the gradual and resilient shoreline. With the establishment of the B&O Railroad and the Canton Company, Baltimore’s waterfront went from naturally mucky marshland to hard-edged hub of international commerce. By the 1830s, a major transformation had taken place, and it seemed permanent.

But, the loss of industry in the second half of the 20th Century opened long stretches of the waterfront to possible new uses. Only since then — a sliver of time in the city’s 300-year history — have Baltimoreans realized the value of living on the northern edge of the nation’s largest estuary, with extravagant potential as a post-industrial waterfront city.

Marsh grasses, turtles and ducks

Since the opening of Harborplace in 1980, all focus has been on the Inner Harbor and Harbor East, the upper corner of the Patapsco River between East Pratt Street and Fort McHenry.

The shift in attention to the Middle Branch, around Locust Point and the historic fort, has taken place with the redevelopment of Port Covington as Baltimore Peninsula.

Just to the south of that massive project, across the Hanover Street Bridge, the old waterfront is being restored, part of a grand plan to make the Middle Branch more hospitable to humans, waterfowl and fish.

Wetlands are now visible along Hanover Street and behind the hospital, areas that were previously clogged with invasive plants and trash. When finished, there will be marsh grasses again, rivulets and small ponds that ebb and flow with the tide, turtles, snakes, migrating fish, heron, osprey, eagles and egrets.

In fact, marshland wildlife started to use the place soon after the first loads of dead trees – burned logs from the city’s Camp Small fire in December 2024 – were used to form the wetlands’ organic base.

The first part of the project, along Hanover Street, should soon be covered with native grasses and plants. Birders should find plenty to see there.

The same will happen behind the hospital, in a wide stretch of wetlands extending even further into the river.

More restoration projects are planned for the west side of the Hanover Street Bridge, past Middle Branch Park and the Waterview Avenue rowing center to the Westport neighborhood, along Kloman Street and the Light Rail station there.

Townhouses are being constructed on that westerly rim now; apartments with affordable rates are in the works. The centerpiece of the development, an 11-acre, $30 million public park, will include a memorial to the Baltimore Black Sox, who played spectacular baseball in Westport and were champions of the Negro American League in 1929.

The park will have easy access to the water for paddlers. It should also be a great place for viewing Middle Branch’s annual Fourth of July celebration.

Another wetlands project will soon get underway nearby, at a place called Smith Cove, where Westport meets Cherry Hill and where a large drain pipe has dumped nasty stormwater into the river for decades. The wetlands should help filter some of the drainage.

Hike and Bike Trails

While reviewing all these plans at the SBGP office, Brad Rogers speaks of making the Middle Branch “the crown jewel of Baltimore’s parks system” with an immediate benefit to the people who live near it and a destination for Baltimoreans who seldom venture south of the Inner Harbor or Federal Hill.

“Even if you don’t like fishing and you don’t go canoeing or kayaking, you don’t know how to crew, and you don’t go sailing, you should be able to just get to the water,” he says. “You should be able to feel the wind on your face and experience Baltimore, the Chesapeake city, and so that’s the future that we’re creating.”

“You should be able to feel the wind on your face and experience Baltimore, the Chesapeake city”  – Brad Rogers, South Baltimore Gateway Partnership.

Bike and hike trails are in the plans. On May 6, the Maryland congressional delegation reported the release of $3 million in federal funds to create a trail link to the Middle Branch Health and Wellness Center in Cherry Hill and MedStar Harbor Hospital.

Rogers hopes other funds, held back by the Trump administration’s assault on the federal budget, will be freed up under court order and available for another part of the Middle Branch overhaul, along the shoreline at BGE’s Spring Gardens gas operations.

He expects SBGP will spend another $250 million over the next five years in improvements to the waterfront and South Baltimore neighborhoods. That includes, among a litany of projects, a focus on vacant rowhouses in Westport, a neighborhood in long need of uplift.

Cooperating with Communities

Back before all this started, meetings were held with residents of the 19 neighborhoods within the “Reimagine Middle Branch” plan.

“We worked closely with every neighborhood, with every stakeholder group, with every major institution, with every major landowner,” says Rogers, “and by the time we were done, everybody could say, ‘I can see my goals reflected in that plan.’ So it got adopted unanimously.”

“The big question we got was, ‘Is this all talk or are you going to do something?’” he recalled.

It appears the big question has been answered with a new look and new life along the old waterfront and more nice things to come.

Neighborhoods in South Baltimore Gateway Partnership’s “Reimagine Middle Branch” project: Curtis Bay, Brooklyn, Cherry Hill, Lakeland, Westport, Mt. Winans, St. Paul, Carroll-Camden, Pigtown, Barre Circle, Ridgely’s Delight, Sharp-Leadenhall, Otterbein, Federal Hill, Riverside, Locust Point, South Baltimore and Baltimore Peninsula.