A year ago, Martin O'Malley became Baltimore's 47th mayor, with a promise to move the city "forward with a new sense of urgency." In a series of articles, The Sun examines his administration's first year. Today: Spurring development.
Soon after Mayor Martin O'Malley took office, his development chief asked what he wanted to do about the half-vacant Belvedere Square shopping complex in North Baltimore, which had been slowly bleeding tenants and undermining the neighborhood's confidence.
"This has been festering too long. Condemn it," O'Malley said he told M. J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the quasi-public Baltimore Development Corp., punctuating his order with expletives. "Go after it. ... Don't negotiate, and don't listen to any promises."
O'Malley's outburst - which some say accelerated a plan to force the owner to sell to a developer for renovation - was emblematic of his aggressive efforts to kick the city's rusty economic engine into a higher gear during his first year in office.
He has launched a campaign to attract businesses by marketing the city as a "Digital Harbor," a welcome port for high-tech entrepreneurs. He has started programs to halt the slide of neighborhoods and fix up run-down retail strips.
In contrast to former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's more cautious and deliberative style, O'Malley has shown flashes of temper and impatience. He has visited more corporate suites to scold and plead with those thinking of leaving town. He has budgeted more money for the city's development agency. And he has drawn up what some say is a bold and expensive plan to improve the waterfront and other areas.
But his brash methods have not always won him praise.
Gov. Parris N. Glendening found it "foolish" for O'Malley to publicly demand the improbably large sum of $300 million over five years to fund the city's "Digital Harbor" campaign, according to a state official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The initiative seeks to attract technology firms and other businesses to Baltimore by improving the city's quality of life through the creation of parks, bicycle paths, roads and waterfront boardwalks.
At the same time O'Malley was asking for this money, he was also making headlines by criticizing the governor for not giving the city more money for drug treatment programs.
"There are some people for whom a 2-by-4 over the head works better, and others for whom a pat on the back works better," said the state official. "This is not the best way to ask for money."
O'Malley said he has no regrets about his methods. He said Glendening gave him a "great pat on the back" in October 1999, after he won the Democratic primary, all but becoming the next mayor.
But then when the state budget came out a few months later, O'Malley said, he felt that the city had been shortchanged because he hadn't spoken up about the city's needs early and aggressively enough.
"I want to make sure that I articulate the city's agenda, and I want to make sure that it is ambitious," said O'Malley. "I'm sure some people laughed at [former Mayor William Donald] Schaefer when he was trying to get funding for the Inner Harbor, which was also very expensive."
In the case of Belvedere Square, threatening to condemn the mall for renovation under new ownership (Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse recently signed a contract to buy it) was a tougher approach than the one used by Schmoke.
The Schmoke administration in 1998 forgave a $1.7 million loan to the mall's owner, James J. Ward III, hoping the goodwill gesture would encourage him to fix up the decaying center. It didn't work.
"The community appreciates that a spotlight has been thrown on the problem, and the community appreciates that the city now has a pro-active energy instead of a reactive energy," said Catherine Evans, president of the Belvedere Improvement Association.
In some ways, O'Malley's development agency is leading the city's efforts to attract business in much the same way it did under Schmoke.
O'Malley kept Schmoke's development chief, Brodie, as president of the Baltimore Development Corp.
And O'Malley's image as the leader of a city on the move, its skyline busy with construction cranes, has benefited from three huge projects that started under Schmoke: Inner Harbor East; Tide Point, in Locust Point; and HarborView, near Federal Hill.
But in other ways, O'Malley has taken a new direction:
The O'Malley administration's "Digital Harbor" strategy calls for state transportation funds to help complete most of the city's nearly eight-mile waterfront promenade, which now has several gaps in its march from Canton to Locust Point.
O'Malley's office has sketched a proposal to spend $57 million building streets and waterfront parks to encourage development on the vacant 27-acre former Allied chrome plant site in Fells Point.
After four years of stagnant or shrinking budgets under the Schmoke administration, the BDC's budget was boosted 28 percent by O'Malley this year to $2.3 million.
