A section of Wyman Park Drive will close to vehicular traffic for four years starting on Wednesday, Jan. 7, as the Johns Hopkins University prepares to begin work on its next major construction project, a two-building complex that will house its Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) Institute.
According to an article in the JHU Hub, Wyman Park Drive will be closed to vehicular traffic from Remington Avenue to Carnegie Way for the duration of the construction period. The same one-block stretch of Wyman Park Drive will remain open to pedestrians until this summer, when it will also be closed until construction is complete. Access to Hopkins’ Early Learning Center on Wyman Park Drive will remain open until the learning center moves to a new location on University Parkway in early 2026.
Construction of the DSAI center is expected to start early this year and be complete in 2029. Designed by ZGF Architects, it will consist of two buildings, one on either side of the 200 block of Wyman Park Drive, between Remington Avenue and Carnegie Way. Housing classrooms, laboratories, faculty offices and work spaces, the buildings will be connected by a tunnel below Wyman Park Drive and a skybridge above Wyman Park Drive, which is a city street.
The construction work “necessitates the closure of a short section of Wyman Park Drive to vehicle traffic starting on Jan. 7,” the Hub article stated.
Hopkins’ plans for the DSAI project have drawn opposition from people who say it’s too large for the proposed site and warn that it will be detrimental to the surrounding area in a variety of ways, including loss of mature trees; noise and vibrations from construction; disruption of traffic patterns and adverse effects on wildlife in the Stony Run stream valley.
Despite the opposition, city officials have approved Hopkins’ request to close part of Wyman Park Drive during construction, just as they approved Hopkins’ request to close part of North Charles Street when the Bloomberg Student Center was under construction from 2021 to 2025.
After Wyman Park Drive is closed, officials say, Hopkins’ Homewood campus will still be accessible from Art Museum Drive, 31st Street, San Martin Drive and Charles Street, and no changes are planned for Hopkins’ on-campus garages or parking lots.
The university has launched a website dedicated to news and updates about the project and planners have taken other steps to minimize distribution to the campus and its neighbors, such as designating a parking area for construction workers on the former Eastern High School campus on East 33rd Street and planning a shuttle service so they don’t take up spaces in Remington.
Hopkins’ leaders have not disclosed how much the DSAI project will cost to build, but they say it’s expected to create an estimated 4,490 jobs in Baltimore during the preconstruction and construction phases and generate more than $505 million in net new economic impact within Baltimore and more than $800 million across Maryland.
“The establishment of DSAI and the construction of its new home on the Homewood campus is a key priority in the university’s Ten for One strategic plan, positioning both Johns Hopkins University and Baltimore for leadership in data science and artificial intelligence research, and fueling advancements in medicine, engineering, public health, and other fields,” senior vice president Rob Hollister wrote in a message to faculty, staff and students.
What plan does JHU have to enforce parking at Eastern by construction workers? While building the student center on Charles St, they allowed workers to park illegally on Art Museum Dr for years, blocking the normal flow of eastbound traffic.
Relying on the City to enforce parking laws is problematic and construction workers won’t want to add queueing and waiting for a bus/shuttle many blocks away coming and going to the site.
Might be good for local businesses to feed the construction workers…
Those of us using the bike trail from Falls Road to San Martin Drive don’t seem to have an option here after that small section of Wyman Park Drive gets closed.