Resurfacing key roads. Giving more money to a nonprofit that markets city housing. Creating a "BRAC Stat."
These are among the steps Baltimore officials say they are taking to ensure that the city captures its share of the growth expected to come to Maryland from the military base realignment and closure process, or BRAC.
"We will make sure we capitalize on the opportunity," said Andrew B. Frank, the city's deputy mayor for economic development, who is heading up a multiagency city effort on BRAC.
Aides say Mayor Sheila Dixon will highlight a key aspect of the effort during today's State of the City address: a decision to have Live Baltimore, the highly regarded group that promotes urban living, market the city to military and defense contract workers whose jobs are being moved from Northern Virginia and New Jersey to Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County and Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County.
The nonprofit, which already receives about a fifth of its annual operating budget from the city, has presented an ambitious proposal that would cost $450,000 in the first year and would include hiring additional staff; hosting bus tours of the city, perhaps including overnight stays, for key managers; creating an enhanced Web site; and distributing thousands of promotional kits and CD-ROMs.
As of the end of last week, officials were looking to identify sources of funding and deciding how much of the proposal the city could afford to fund. But Frank said: "We are definitely going to do it."
A recent study by the Maryland Department of Planning projects that Baltimore will get about 2,500 households from BRAC relocations through 2015, or about 10 percent of the new households expected to arrive in central and northern Maryland.
Some Baltimore officials say the city would like to gain a greater share, and state planners acknowledge that its projections are not set in stone.
"Different things can happen in different areas of the state to make the numbers fluctuate," said Richard Eberhart Hall, the state's acting secretary of planning.
Unlike some of the counties, where there are fears that increased growth could exacerbate existing problems with congestion and sprawl, city planners say that Baltimore welcomes and is prepared to accommodate an influx of new residents.
They point out that the recently adopted city master plan calls for the number of households in Baltimore to increase by 10,000 within the next six years, a number that far exceeds the number of households expected to come to the city from BRAC.
