Downtown Partnership

The 2011 strategic plan for downtown Baltimore released last week by the Downtown Partnership is chock full of ideas. A few of them leave us scratching our heads, but most of the plan is solid and worthy of support. The central concept of the plan is that more old office buildings should be converted into apartments. This builds on a strength of downtown Baltimore: its residential density. The area within a 1-mile radius of Pratt and Light streets now sports the eighth-highest downtown density in the nation.

More commercial property owners should consider converting their buildings to apartments, given the high vacancy rate downtown. The city should create a Tax Increment Finance district in the oldest parts of downtown to pay for capital improvements and encourage new development. City leaders should condemn and acquire certain vacant properties when property owners let them deteriorate, and should set time limits for developers to move ahead with renovation of properties awarded to them by the city.

Warning that downtown Baltimore is at a critical juncture, a plan to be released Thursday by the Downtown Partnership recommends that some vacant office space in the city center be converted to apartments. "New uses must be found for older towers that no longer work as office space," the group says. That is just one of several suggestions from the nonprofit, which seeks to promote and revitalize Baltimore's central business district. With the commercial vacancy rate downtown about 19 percent — and with plans for office districts on its periphery raising fears that even more commerce could be siphoned off — the Downtown Partnership's new strategic plan recommends several steps to keep downtown from stagnating further.

The Downtown Partnership plans to unveil an ambitious proposal Friday to create more than $100 million worth of new parks and public plazas throughout the central business district, including major projects for the Inner Harbor, Charles Center and west side. The proposal would transform the downtown landscape, with a green oasis where the 1st Mariner Arena stands and possibly the demolition of the Lexington Market Arcade to reopen the street as a public thoroughfare. The proposed work could also involve the realignment of city streets to make way for plazas and streetscape improvements.

As the economy improved, the number of jobs in downtown Baltimore rose 6 percent last year — the first gain in three years and a much faster pace of employment growth than in the entire city, statistics to be released Tuesday by the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore show. Employment in a one-mile radius from the intersection of Pratt and Light streets grew to more than 113,400 jobs from about 106,700 in 2009, the group reported. The statistics are the first available from the Downtown Partnership's annual State of Downtown report, which it plans to unveil in April.

At a forgettable, long-shuttered building on North Liberty Street that people hurry past without a second glance, LaTrice Whitaker will be selling cupcakes, playing jazz and pouring mugs of gourmet coffee. At a similarly empty building nearby, two local men will showcase furniture they craft by hand from salvaged wood. And if Sarah Doherty has her way, after sundown every night, the blank facade of 307 W. Baltimore St. will become a virtual movie screen as she projects video artworks onto its arched front windows.

Police are calling a double shooting in downtown Baltimore that left a man in critical condition — the third violent incident in the heart of the city since Saturday — an "isolated and targeted" attack and stressed that the area remains safe. Anthony Guglielmi, the department's chief spokesman, said the shooting broke out at 2 a.m. Tuesday as officers were trying to control a crowd leaving The Block, the city's hub of strip clubs on East Baltimore Street near City Hall and police headquarters.

The Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, a 3-year-old advocacy group, has named a former head of the Downtown Partnership as its new leader and is charting an agenda with an emphasis on public transit improvements. The alliance, a privately funded organization of businesses and community groups, announced Wednesday the appointment of Michele L. Whelley, a longtime Baltimore resident who spent the past two years working in Connecticut, as president and chief executive officer.

Office vacancies worsened, condos sat empty and development hit the brakes, but the recessionary bite out of downtown Baltimore's work force was a lot smaller last year than in 2008, a new report suggests. Employers cut 790 jobs last year, compared with 14,000 jobs lost the year before, according to estimates prepared for the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore. The group, which plans to release its annual State of Downtown report Tuesday, measured economic activity in the one mile around Light and Pratt streets, which includes the west side, Inner Harbor and Harbor East as well as the central business district.

A project to clean up a homeless encampment outside a church in downtown Baltimore recently received an infusion of cash from two developers who have long complained about the area. Khaled Said and Sanket Patel, who are developing hotels along the Fallsway, have committed $30,000 to nearby St. Vincent de Paul Church. The church's park, at the Jones Falls Expressway and Fayette Street, has been a destination for the homeless for four decades. In recent years, tents, lean-tos and leftover food collected on the lot, making it particularly unsanitary and angering neighbors.