Shifting gears in its approach to redeveloping the Charles North area of Baltimore, the city's economic development agency has decided to hire a consultant to help shape the neighborhood's identity and analyze how a dozen vacant or deteriorating sites could be redeveloped by property owners.
The Baltimore Development Corp. said yesterday that it has issued a request for qualifications for consultants who would come up with a plan to attract new business and housing and promote the arts in a 10-block area between Mount Vernon and Charles Village. The neighborhood is home to the popular Charles Theater; the Everyman Theater, which plans to move downtown; and several restaurants and bars and art galleries.
"This is a unique kind of approach, where we are trying to show and encourage the private sector to invest in the area and do the redevelopment and avoid the cost and time involved in city acquisitions," said Paul Dombrowski, BDC director of planning and design. "We're trying to show the property owners what could be developed on their sites, and what part they could play in the redevelopment of Charles North."
The new effort comes months after the state's highest court dealt two successive blows to the BDC's longtime reliance on "quick take" seizures to get control of properties and then offer them to developers. Both cases involved properties in Charles North.
In February the Court of Appeals ruled that city had not demonstrated the urgent need required to justify a quick take of a North Charles Street bar, The Magnet, saying it had "run roughshod" over property owners. In April, the court ruled that BDC had no justification for using its quick-take powers to seize the former Chesapeake restaurant on Charles Street just north of Penn Station for a redevelopment project.
Price doubled
The city has since reached agreement with The Magnet's owner to pay more than double the price it had initially set and expects to settle on the acquisition this week.
Dombrowski said yesterday that the new approach for Charles North stemmed not from those court decisions but from a lack of a cohesive identity for the area and lack of progress in spurring new construction.
"One of the problems we're trying to address is there are a lot of property ownership exchanges going on but little physical redevelopment," Dombrowski said. "Property owners are reluctant to move ahead with development investment because they don't see anyone else doing it."
