Over the years, architects and developers have made great strides in converting older industrial buildings on Baltimore's waterfront to distinctive new settings for high-tech businesses.
Tenants love the funky old spaces that once served as factories, canning plants and warehouses. Preservationists know how much the renovation of older buildings can help revitalize surrounding neighborhoods.
But what happens when developers run out of handsome old buildings to recycle? How do designers and builders replicate the memorable qualities that are unique to older buildings in all-new construction?
That's the dilemma facing leaders of the Digital Harbor movement -- the campaign to promote Baltimore as a center for information-based companies seeking unconventional work spaces. Builders have had phenomenal success in recycling old buildings, from the B&O Warehouse and the Pier 4 Power Plant to the American Can factory and the Procter & Gamble soap plant. They've been so successful, in fact, that many of the best old buildings are nearly full, while plenty of vacant land remains. The challenge for builders now is to add enough space through new construction to keep the momentum going, without falling back on the stale suburban formulas that creative tenants have come to the city to escape.
One of the most compelling solutions comes in the form of Bond Street Wharf, a $20 million, 216,000-square-foot office building for which a groundbreaking ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow on the site at 1601 Thames St., near the heart of Fells Point.
The six-level building represents a new phase for the Digital Harbor because it's one of the first all-new buildings that aims to attract the same high-tech tenants that have been gravitating toward the recycled warehouses and factories.
Employing a variety of creative approaches, from varying window patterns to using lighted and painted signs, its designers set out to prove the proposition that new construction can fit in with an established context and embody, if not exactly duplicate, the characteristics of older buildings that are in such high demand.
The result is an impressive work of architecture that sets just the right tone for a new wave of development along the water's edge -- one that builds on the best qualities of Baltimore's harborfront rather than diluting its appeal.
A recycler's design
Bond Street Wharf is the first project in Fells Point by Struever Bros. Eccles and Rouse, a firm well known for converting old buildings to new uses. Working with Constellation Real Estate, it is developing a 5.9-acre parcel on Thames Street as a mixed-used "digital village" called Fells Landing. With so much land under its control, Struever Bros. has a vested interest in finding ways to create new buildings with the same appeal as the older ones it has recycled.
The construction site is the former location of the Terminal Warehouse, a six-story brick building that was a fixture on the Fells Point waterfront from the early 1900s to 1992, when it was taken down. Its owners at Constellation determined it was not feasible to recycle, in part because it didn't have many windows. With the success of the Digital Harbor, its high-ceilinged loft spaces probably would have succeeded in luring office tenants with or without extra windows -- a sad irony that won't help bring it back today.
The architect is RTKL Associates, a 54-year-old architecture and engineering firm that is not only the largest in Maryland but one of the nation's largest. Struever Bros. asked it to design a multi-tenant building that would fit in with the Fells Point historic district and appeal to the creative young entrepreneurs that Baltimore wants to recruit and retain. RTKL has considered moving its own headquarters there, and, while no final decision has been announced, its designers clearly have given much thought to making it an attractive work setting.
Fits into area
When it opens in the fall of 2002, Bond Street Wharf may cause more than a few observers to do a double take. Is it an older building that has been rehabbed? Was it finished in several phases? Where does the past stop and the present take over?
The architects say the design was not meant to fool anyone into thinking Bond Street Wharf is an old building. But if there's a bit of ambiguity, they won't necessarily mind.
The design team is headed by Ray Peloquin, a company vice president, and Gordon Godat, lead designer. Other team members were Tim Hutcheson, Shawn Reichart and Matt Klinzing.
They approached the design by using the Terminal Warehouse as their starting point. Built to store goods shipped through Baltimore's port and visible from many locations in Fells Point, the warehouse was a long and narrow brick structure that jutted into the harbor. The 330-foot-long replacement building is slightly shorter than the warehouse was and not quite as tall.
