Perched on a slope just west of Baltimore, near the intersection of Interstate 70 and the Baltimore Beltway, is a sprawling office park that houses the headquarters of the Social Security Administration and its 9,800 workers. Last week, the agency's director sketched out plans for a new $750 million data center to be built within 40 miles of the Woodlawn complex. Most of its funding is from the president's economic stimulus package, and that puts the project on the fast track - a significant asset and economic opportunity for the Baltimore region.
The new state-of-the-art data center should mean much more than temporary construction jobs and increased Social Security employment. It should be a model Smart Growth effort - providing an economic anchor for a Baltimore-area neighborhood, an impetus for an improved regional mass transit linkand a magnet for high-technology business development.
Some attractive possibilities are already apparent. The Red Line, a proposed 14-mile line between Woodlawn and Hopkins Bayview, is under serious consideration. It could offer access to possible "brown field" development sites in Baltimore or connect to transit lines convenient to other potential locations for the new data center. Like many proposed mass transit projects, the Red Line is likely to face tough competition for federal dollars from other proposed transit projects in Maryland and elsewhere. But the added role of connecting the Social Security headquarters and its data center might give the Red Line an extra boost.
