Baltimore officials consider selling city-owned office tower at 7 E. Redwood St., most likely for conversion to apartments

Will Baltimore’s next office-to-apartment conversion be on Redwood Street?

The Baltimore Development Corporation is exploring plans to sell the 20-story office tower at 7 E. Redwood St., and officials say it’s a prime candidate for conversion to apartments.

City Council member Eric Costello recently introduced legislation that would authorize the sale and the council’s Ways and Means Committee, which Costello chairs, endorsed the legislation at a public hearing on Tuesday.

No buyer has been identified, and the city can’t officially put the building on the market until the enabling legislation is passed. But officials say the city has been approached by “folks” who have inquired about the possibility of buying it, and that has prompted them to start laying the groundwork for a possible sale. They say residential conversion is “the most likely scenario.”

If the city moves ahead with a sale to a residential developer, 7 E. Redwood St. would join a list of more than two dozen downtown office buildings and hotels that have been converted to apartments by developers over the past decade.

“We felt that the time was right, with the interest that we were getting from various entities…to sell the building,” said BDC executive vice president Kimberly “Kim” Clark, after the council hearing. “It is a brilliant building. It’s just gorgeous…We hope to get a lot of interest with it”

Baltimore’s central business district didn’t have many residents until 10 to 15 years ago, when the introduction of high performance and historic preservation tax credits provided incentives for developers to start converting older office buildings to apartments.  

“There was a point in time when there was no one living in downtown. Literally the sidewalks rolled up at five o’clock, except for theaters and restaurants,” Clark said. Sparked by tax credits and other incentives, the conversions “have created a neighborhood downtown that didn’t exist” before.   

Built in 1924, the tower is located at the southwest corner of Redwood and Light streets and also has the address 14-18 Light St. It contains about 150,000 square feet of leasable office space. The city has been a partial owner since the 1990s, and it became the 100 percent owner in 2013.

In recent years, the city has used the building to house city agencies or city-related agencies that benefit from being downtown and close to City Hall.

Current tenants include: two divisions of the Baltimore City Police Department, the Early Intervention Unit and the Equal Opportunity and Diversity Section; several divisions of the Mayor’s Office of Human Services; the Community Relations Commission and the Civilian Review Board and Wage Commission within the Office of Civil Rights & Wage Enforcement, and the Baltimore City Fire & Police Retirement System

The Municipal Employees Credit Union was on the first floor for many years. The Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts is another former tenant.

Clark said the building has an appraised value of $10 million but will eventually need approximately $18 million in capital improvements such as upgrades to the elevators and mechanical systems – another reason the city is considering selling it.

Clark and Costello said the legislation must be approved by the full City Council and Baltimore’s Board of Estimates before the BDC can market the building. The council bill will go to the Board of Estimates on Sept. 20, Clark said.

Because the tenants of 7 E. Redwood St. are all connected with city government, city officials could arrange to relocate the occupants if a buyer wanted to clear out the building in preparation for conversion to apartments, she said.