Baltimore was a conservative Southern city in many respects. Few national corporations had headquarters in town. There was no guarantee that businesses would spring for expensive works of architecture when a cheaper, plainer product might do. Clients needed assurance that their investment would pay off.
The Charles Center plan provided that. Wallace surveyed other cities' renewal efforts as he formulated his recommendations, but he also respected Baltimore's character. Unlike other large-scale projects, the Charles Center plan did not call for total demolition of the area. It recommended the preservation of several older structures from before World War II, including the B&O Building, the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. Building, the Fidelity and Deposit Building and the Lord Baltimore Hotel.
Yet Charles Center also offered a bold vision for the heart of Baltimore, radically different from what was there before. It proposed that individual buildings be mounted on a continuous urban base, with piazzas, overhead walkways and underground garages that could accommodate the movement of people and vehicles on separate levels.
One of the more unusual aspects of Charles Center, according to architect Charles Lamb, a former principal of RTKL Associates, one of the design consultants for the project, was the high percentage of private developers envisioned. "We had private parking garages under public streets and private buildings over public plazas. It is very complicated to build that way. In its time, the plan was unheard of - eons ahead of what other cities were doing."
D'Alesandro hailed it as "a magnificent concept for a new downtown for Baltimore." That November, city voters approved $25 million in bonds to begin acquiring properties, clearing sites and relocating utilities.
Private developers expressed strong interest from the start. For the first major office building, One Charles Center, the city received submissions from groups that offered to hire such world-famous architects as Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The city selected the Mies design, largely because of the luster and recognition that the architect's involvement was expected to bring. One of the losing bidders, Jacob Blaustein, was so miffed that he began building a competing office tower one block away, just outside Charles Center's boundaries. The rivalry showed that the private sector had confidence in the redevelopment plan, and both towers filled up quickly.
