A luxury apartment building planned for a site near Little Italy and Harbor East has grown by seven stories and gained a co-developer. In North Roland Park, meanwhile, a proposed apartment complex has lost a level.
The team planning a residential and retail development on the vacant Della Notte restaurant site at President and Fleet streets yesterday unveiled plans at a city design review panel meeting that call for a $130 million building rising 23 stories – seven more than a design presented to the panel in 2015.
The revised plan calls for a building with room for about 388 apartments, up from 242 in the previous design.
Richard Manekin of Workshop Development, the original developer, said his company is now working with AvalonBay Communities, a real estate investment trust with projects in major markets around the country.
This project would be AvalonBay’s first in Baltimore City and third in the Baltimore region. It already has one in Hunt Valley and is working on another at Towson Circle at Joppa and York roads.
The Della Notte property is at the juncture of the Inner Harbor, Little Italy and Harbor East. A tentative name for the proposed development is AvalonBay Harbor East.
The developers said the project grew in size because recent changes in the city’s zoning designation allowed a taller building, The land is zoned C-5, which the developers said does not have a height limit under the new TransForm zoning legislation that was passed last year and takes effect in a few months.
Martin J. Howle, senior vice president for development at AvalonBay Communities, said the chance to construct a taller building with more residences appealed to his company, which has been looking for development opportunities in Baltimore City.
Howle said AvalonBay would not have wanted to be part of the development if it were only 16 stories tall. Hord Coplan Macht is the architect and landscape architect. The building will be clad in glass and brick.
Howle said the team is aiming to start construction by the second quarter of 2018 and open by early 2020. Howle and Manekin said the two companies are still working out the terms of their partnership.
The Roland Park development at Northern Parkway and Falls Road, tentatively called The Overlook at Roland Park, has lost a level of living space compared to plans unveiled earlier this year.
The developer is a group headed by Jonathan Ehrenfeld of Blue Ocean Realty, with Sandy Marenberg of MEI Real Estate as a “for-fee developer.” The land is a 12-acre parcel just east of Belvedere Towers, which Ehrenfeld also controls.
Plans shown to the design panel yesterday called for four levels of apartments over a two-story garage. The latest version would contain 135 apartments and about 190 to 200 parking spaces, down from 157 apartments and about 289 parking spaces. It would represent an investment of about $40 million, down from between $40 million and $45 million.
Brasher Design is the architect, and Human and Rohde is the landscape architect.
Marenberg said the development team is aiming to start construction by the end of 2017 and open by early 2020.
