Picture floating high above Pratt Street in a ski-lift-style gondola, soaring over the Inner Harbor on a seven-minute journey from the Convention Center to Fells Point.
Trey Winstead of Winstead Brothers LLC has been studying, planning and engineering such a 1.3-mile route along overhead cables for six years. Now along with his brother Peter Winstead he's ready to pitch the plan to put Baltimore on the cutting edge of urban aerial transit to the city's design panel.
"This is going to be the best new attraction in the country," said Winstead, a civil engineer who came up with the idea with his brother after they moved to downtown Baltimore in 2002. "It will help put us on the map as an extremely innovative city."
Unusual transit ideas are nothing new for the Inner Harbor, but they've remained just that - ideas. City officials backed an elevated "people mover" in the 1970s, before Harborplace was built, but never came up with the funding. Then a similar idea arose, and fizzled, in the early 1990s when Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened.
The Winsteads have spent the past several years promoting their vision of a $40 million privately operated system called Baltimore's SkyLine as efficient and environmentally friendly and an ideal connector to light rail, shuttles and the proposed public transit Red Line. Since completing a $38,000 state-funded ridership study more than a year ago, they've lined up investors and put together a construction and design team.
Now, they need the backing of the city.
Winstead met about a month ago with Mayor Sheila Dixon, and tomorrow, will show his proposal to the city's Urban Design and Architectural Review Panel.
"It's certainly an intriguing idea," said Sterling Clifford, a Dixon spokesman. But "there are a great many unanswered questions."
The mayor's office is reviewing comments from city agencies and hopes to make a decision on whether to support the gondola proposal in the next 60 days, Deputy Mayor Andrew Frank said yesterday.
To build the system, the team would need a franchise agreement approved by the City Council allowing four terminals and 20 supporting poles to be built on the public right of way, Frank said.
Some concerns
"We're very impressed with what the team has put together," Frank said. "They have a thorough and compelling presentation about the benefits of aerial gondolas. There are some concerns - most notably surrounding the aesthetics of 20 or so (support) poles constructed from east to west."
