Public meeting about Penn Station redevelopment set for July 31

Amtrak and the 14 companies it’s chosen to re-do Baltimore Penn Station and the surrounding area are ready to meet with the public later this month.

The July 31 “kick-off meeting” will introduce locals to the project team and their planning process, and let them chime in about the future design of the historic train station, according to an advisory from Amtrak. The meeting will run two hours, from 6 to 8 p.m., and take place at the University of Baltimore’s William H. Thumel Sr. Business Center.

The companies will be asking the public for feedback on “public realm, station experience, connectivity and neighborhood development,” Amtrak spokeswoman Beth Toll said in an email.

The group spearheading the redevelopment project, Penn Station Partners, is a team of developers, architects, contracts, engineers, consultants and various other types of firms. Beatty Development Group, the developer behind Harbor Point, the potentially publicly financed redevelopment of a stretch between Harbor East and Johns Hopkins Hospital, and other projects, is leading the charge.

Local companies on the team include developer Cross Street Partners, engineering firm RK&K, architecture firm Cho Benn Holback and graphic designers Younts Design, among others.

Toll said Amtrak will be joined by representatives from Beatty Development Group, Cross Street Partners and Gensler, another Baltimore-based architecture firm, at the meeting.

The long-awaited overhaul of Penn Station they’re planning will include a hotel, apartments, retail space, offices and a new concourse stretching over the tracks to W. Lanvale Street. The footprint for the project is 1.6 million square feet.

Penn Station is 107 years old, and in 2018 is the eighth busiest train station in the country.

In addition to new retail and office space, Penn Station Partners’ master plan includes “modernizing and expanding station facilities and amenities to accommodate growth, renovating the station’s upper floors and supporting transit-oriented development that integrates the surrounding neighborhood’s unique vitality,” Amtrak said in a December announcement.

Past development plans that fell through centered around building a 70-to-80-room hotel on the floors above the commuter platform.

This story has been updated.