The curving traffic spur that connects northbound vehicular traffic on Light Street with Calvert Street will close permanently in November, a city planner told local tourism industry leaders on Thursday.
Caitlin Audette, Downtown Planner with the Baltimore City Planning Department, said the spur will be closed as part of the $900 million redevelopment project involving the Harborplace pavilions at Pratt and Light streets.
“I believe it’s in November,” she said in response to a question. “That’s when all the fences will go up.”
At present, the traffic spur is a five-lane roadway that separates the two Harborplace pavilions and the Inner Harbor amphitheater from McKeldin Plaza, a one-acre open space created after Baltimore’s McKeldin Fountain was demolished 10 years ago.
Audette’s presentation included a site plan showing a new configuration for the intersection of Pratt and Light streets after the traffic spur to Calvert Street is closed. It shows the intersection “squared off” and calls for drivers heading north on Light Street to make a 90-degree right turn eastbound onto Pratt Street and then turn left from Pratt Street if they want to continue heading north.
Elimination of the Calvert Street spur was approved by Baltimore’s Planning Commission earlier this year. The result is that it makes the city-owned McKeldin Plaza property part of the parcel that MCB Real Estate will control as part of its development.
MCB unveiled plans in 2023 to tear down the two Harborplace pavilions and replace them with a $900 million mixed-use development containing two apartment towers, offices, shops, restaurants and open space. Incorporating McKeldin Plaza, the developers say, will enable them to increase the amount of open space that’s directly accessible from the Inner Harbor promenade.
Downtown Rise
Audette was the featured speaker during a meeting of the Baltimore Tourism Association at the Maryland Center for History and Culture. Her talk was entitled: ”Baltimore Rise, Inner Harbor Redevelopment Plan & Process.”
The focus of Audette’s talk was Downtown RISE, a master plan for downtown Baltimore. She spoke about many aspects of downtown, including the former Morris A. Mechanic Theatre site and the proposed Red Line transit project, but most of the audience questions were about the redevelopment of Harborplace, the changes planned for Pratt and Light streets and the construction timetable.
Audette said the revised traffic plan also calls for the number of lanes along Light Street between Pratt and Conway streets to be reduced as part of MCB’s redevelopment project.
Audette told the audience that work is slated to begin in November on the Harborplace redevelopment, which is expected to be carried out in phases and take five years or more to complete. She said the first phase will involve changes to the ground plane, including raising the Inner Harbor promenade two feet in response to rising sea levels, and that work on individual buildings will follow. She said the city’s intention is to maintain public access to the Baltimore Visitor Center at least during the first phase of development and to provide access to the shoreline promenade for as long as possible. She said Pratt Street will not be closed due to the reconstruction of Harborplace.
Concerns raised
Residents of South Baltimore have expressed concerns that eliminating the Calvert Street spur and reducing the number of lanes will add to traffic congestion along Pratt and Light streets and increase travel times for drivers heading from South Baltimore towards downtown or East Baltimore, and vice versa.
Despite the opposition, city residents voted in November of 2024 to amend the Baltimore City Charter so MCB’s redevelopment plan can proceed. The charter amendment, Question F, included language that allowed McKeldin Plaza to be made part of the Harborplace redevelopment project’s footprint. The tally was 95,605 votes for the amendment and 63,043 against.
Opponents of the plan sought to place a second question on the 2024 ballot that could have prevented the use of city parkland for private development, but they didn’t collect enough signatures to get the question on the ballot.
The opponents needed 10,000 signatures to get the issue on the ballot and collected 9,912 validated signatures — 88 short. They said they relied on nearly 200 volunteers to collect signatures at grocery stores and other city locations rather than paying a company to collect signatures. They have not launched a similar effort to amend the City Charter leading up to the November 2026 election.
Audette told the tourism group that the city’s Downtown Rise plan calls for a traffic study to be conducted and that it has been funded and will begin shortly. She said the study will build off of previous studies conducted by the Harborplace development team and will consider how traffic congestion can be mitigated throughout downtown given the proposed changes to Pratt and Light streets. She said the results of the traffic study will be made available to the public.
Audette said people who need to travel between South Baltimore and areas such as Fells Point and Canton may want to consider using the Baltimore water taxi service as an alternative to cars.
Jennifer McIllwain, president of the Baltimore Tourism Association, encouraged the group’s members to think about how the traffic changes will affect their organizations and what steps they may want to take in response.
