The development team working to revitalize the area around Penn Station in Baltimore is aiming to start construction late this spring on the first phase of the project, improvements to the 1911 train station itself.
Tim Pula of Beatty Development Group said in an online presentation yesterday that he anticipates work will begin with a series of exterior upgrades to the historic “headhouse” at 1500 North Charles Street. Work will include cleaning and repointing masonry, putting on a new roof, replacing or repairing windows and installing exterior lighting so the station stands out more at night.
The work is part of a $90 million commitment from Amtrak to upgrade Baltimore’s train station, the eighth busiest in the country. The exterior work will be followed in late 2021 by improvements to the station interior, including mechanical upgrades and tenant improvements, to get it ready to have more retail space on the first level and offices on three floors above, for a total investment by Amtrak of $50 million.
Other Amtrak-related improvements will include construction of a three-level, $40 million “north concourse” for passengers on the north side of the train tracks and a new, separately-funded rail platform for passengers riding on high-speed Acela trains that Amtrak will introduce soon, as well as a pedestrian bridge across the tracks from the 1911 terminal to get to it.
Work on the north concourse expansion project is expected to get underway by mid-2022, Pula said. Completion dates for the initial projects are still being worked out, team members say.
The Amtrak improvements, in turn, are part of a larger, nearly $500 million effort to revitalize the area around the train station, including eventual development of up to seven parcels owned by Amtrak. The properties stretch from Preston Street near Johnson Square in East Baltimore to land west of Penn Station along Falls Road.
Pula, vice president of community development for Beatty, shared the latest schedule during a Newsmaker Speakers Series program entitled “The Transformation of Penn Station,” organized by the Greater Baltimore Committee. Other speakers included Bill Struever, CEO and managing partner of Cross Street Partners; Brian Traylor, planning manager for Amtrak, and Peter Stubb, an architect with Gensler, the lead designer for the north concourse and other components of the project.
Affiliated as Penn Station Partners, Beatty Development and Cross Street Partners are leading the Baltimore project with Amtrak, with which they have a master development agreement. Quinn Evans is the architect for the renovations of Penn Station.
Redevelopment of the station and surrounding area is long overdue, Greater Baltimore Committee president and CEO Donald Fry Jr. said in introducing the panel.
“The plans for the Penn Station expansion and improvements are impressive and will transform an iconic Baltimore landmark into a modern-day regional transportation hub and gateway to the city,” Fry said. “Penn Station Partners and Amtrak are to be commended for their vision…This is something Baltimore’s been waiting for for a number of years, and I think they finally have the correct team to put this together.”
Amtrak is investing $2.5 billion in a new fleet of Acela trains and related station improvements for stops between Washington and New York, with 28 trains that can travel up to 160 miles per hour.
The fleet is currently undergoing testing and expected to go into service within a year, Traylor said during the GBC presentation.
“This is really looking to reimagine the future of rail in the United States, not just sort of the latest deployment of a train set,” he said. “It’s really reimagining how the United States looks at high speed rail, not just in the northeast corridor.”
Pula stressed that even though the first signs of work will be at the existing station, most of the activity eventually will be on the blocks around it.
He said the team has preliminary plans to build two towers on the “Lanvale lot” north of the train station, bounded by Charles, Lanvale and St. Paul streets and the train tracks.
Although several development options are under study, Pula said, one scenario calls for a 250,000-square-foot office tower close to Charles Street and a residential tower close to St. Paul Street. Other parcels include a ‘west lot’ across Charles Street from the train station and a ‘St. Paul lot’ across St. Paul Street from the station.
“These are parcels that most of us don’t even really think about because to a large extent they sit below street level,” he said.
”If you drive north on Charles Street or south on St. Paul Street, you’ve got about two to three blocks worth of bridges that are taking you over this valley, and that valley contains Amtrak’s rail lines but also contains the Jones Falls River, which in this area is actually running beneath Interstate 83. What people probably don’t think about, because it is kind of out of sight and out of mind, is the fact that there is land about 20 feet below the levels of those bridges that has development potential.”
Struever said the time frame for the privately-funded commercial projects will depend on the status of the real estate market, as businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. He and other team members say they are currently talking to a number of minority developers about the opportunity to join Penn Station Partners and that they also want to get a high percentage of minority contractors working on different phases of construction.
Pula said part of the marketing approach behind the project is that apartments and office space cost less in Baltimore than in Washington, D. C., Philadelphia or New York, and Amtrak’s new high-speed trains will make it easy for people based in Baltimore to get to those cities quickly.
“Baltimore is simply just much more affordable than Washington and it’s much more affordable than Philly and of course light years more affordable than New York,” Pula said. “You could have office space here and very quickly hop on a train…and be in Philly or New York.”
Traylor of Amtrak said he is hoping that when the project gets underway this spring, one phase will lead directly to the next and the project will keep building.
“This is a phased development that will occur over many years, but we’re hoping that once we start, we won’t stop until it’s complete,” he said.
Two other projects that would help strengthen the effort to revitalize the Station North area, Struever said, would be, first, creating a connection from the central light rail line to Penn Station for light rail trains heading southbound from Hunt Valley, and second. improving MARC train service by building new stations in the East Baltimore Development Inc. renewal area and Bayview and improving the West Baltimore MARC station.
“Our hope is that we can soon dig into substantive conversations about potential improvements on MARC, on light rail, that would really build on this Amtrak investment, but that is to come,” he said.
Struever said he’s optimistic about the project’s chances for success in part because of the recent change in administrations at the federal level, with Joe Biden as President and Pete Buttigieg as Secretary of Transportation. He noted that Baltimore’s project wouldn’t be where it is without the strong support of the late congressman from Maryland, Elijah Cummings.
“We have what I’d like to believe is the most transit-friendly administration down in Washington,” he said. “We’ve got Amtrak Joe at the helm. We’ve got Mayor-Secretary Pete at the U. S. Department of Transportation, for starters. Just last week we had the Biden ARP [American Rescue Plan] stimulus…and hopefully, soon to come, an infrastructure bill with major funding for transit.”
In many ways, Struever said, the new federal administration could be the missing piece in creating a public-private partnership that can finally transform Station North area.
This is “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, with this new attitude in Washington to investing in economic and community development of our cities, to bring together an amazing partnership – local, state and federal with the private sector,” he said. “I think Penn Station is just a terrific opportunity to do that.”
