More than a year after former Gov. Larry Hogan agreed to transfer Maryland’s 28-acre State Center tract over to Baltimore City, city planners have selected an urban designer to start preparing a master plan to guide redevelopment of the property.
Gensler, the international firm that serves as master planner for the revitalization of Harborplace, has been chosen to begin creating a plan for State Center as well.
Baltimore’s Board of Estimates is scheduled on Wednesday to consider a request to approve a professional services agreement with Gensler Architecture Planning & Design P. A. to perform a “marketing and conceptual predevelopment study” for the State Center area.
According to the agenda prepared for the Jan. 10 board meeting, the city’s goal is to “create a vision for the State Center site guiding eventual redevelopment as a Transit Oriented Development and anchor for this area of Baltimore.”
The request was made by Baltimore’s Department of Planning, which will serve as the client for Gensler’s study. The period of the study is from Jan. 1, 2024 to June 30, 2024, and the work will cost $396,550.00, according to the planning department.
The funding request is a sign that city officials are moving ahead with an initiative to jumpstart planning for the land formerly occupied by a dozen state agencies that are being relocated to other parts of the city.
Located at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Eutaw Street, close to Mount Vernon, Bolton Hill and the Mount Royal Cultural District, State Center is served by both the light rail and Metro Subway lines operated by the state. It has roughly the same amount of land as the Harbor Point community between Harbor East and Fells Point.
Former Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. had selected a private team led by Ekistics LLC to redevelop the State Center area as a $1.5 billion mixed-use community, and planning continued through the administration of former Gov. Martin O’Malley.
But after attorney Peter Angelos challenged the project in court, Gov. Larry Hogan and others on the state’s Board of Public Works canceled the plan in 2016, ending more than 10 years of work by the developers, public officials, and representatives from surrounding communities.
In April 2021, Hogan announced plans to allocate $50 million to relocate more than 3,000 office workers from the 12 agencies that had offices in State Center to Baltimore’s central business district.
The plan was seen as a way to move state office workers out of aging office buildings while filling vacancies in privately-owned buildings and boosting downtown’s economy. In all, more than 5,300 full time state employees are set to relocate to downtown Baltimore by April 2024.
The previous redevelopment plan called for demolition of most of the state-owned buildings, which dated from the 1960s and 1970s and would have needed extensive repairs and upgrades for continued use.
One of the few state-owned buildings that was targeted for preservation and adaptive reuse under the private developer’s plan was the Fifth Regiment Armory, a fortress-like structure that dates from 1901 and was envisioned as a potential location for a grocery store and other community uses.
According to city planners, the contract with Gensler is not for the creation of a shovel-ready plan that can be put out for construction bids but for a more general “predevelopment” plan that can be used to show the highest and best uses for the property given current conditions in the real estate market.
Such a plan, officials say, could indicate which buildings might be recycled; what new uses could be introduced; how streets might be realigned; and how development could be completed in phases, most likely by seeking proposals from the private sector.
Actual redevelopment of the parcel, planners say, will require even more planning and likely will take place over the next five to 10 years or more. The Board of Estimates meeting is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday in City Hall, 100 N. Holliday St.
