Patrons of Artscape may have more trouble finding parking for this year’s festival than in past years because one of the largest parking garages in the area is out of commission.
The four-level garage at 1311 Cathedral St. has been closed since February, and there is no timetable for when it might reopen.
The garage’s Cathedral Street entrance is blocked off by four orange traffic cones and a locked metal gate. The grass is overgrown and the garage walls are starting to be covered by graffiti. A sign at the entrance states: “This garage is closed effective 2/15/23. Please use the Symphony Center Garage, located at 1030 Park Avenue.”
The garage occupies a city block bounded roughly by Cathedral, Preston and Mace streets and Mount Royal Avenue. If it remains closed into September, the area will have 264 fewer parking spaces to serve patrons of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Baltimore and the three-day Artscape festival scheduled for Sept. 22 to 24. It also means that a block at the heart of the Mount Royal cultural district will remain a dead zone.
According to state records, the garage is owned by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, occupies six-tenths of an acre and has an assessed value of $3.072 million as of July 1. It opened in 1982, the same year the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall opened at 1212 Cathedral St. as home of the BSO. It is the closest garage to the concert hall and has been used to provide parking for BSO patrons for more than 40 years.
Todd Yuhanick, interim CEO of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, which produces the Artscape festival for the city, said he learned about the closure during a walk-through of the Artscape footprint after he joined BOPA last month.
“It’s been condemned,” he said of the garage. Yuhanick said BOPA is making arrangements to use parking facilities controlled by the University of Baltimore during Artscape, to make up for spaces that are off limits due to the garage’s closure.
A former user of the 42-year-old garage said it was closed after one driver noticed that chunks of concrete appeared to have fallen from the ceiling and contacted city inspectors, who shut it down immediately. No injuries were reported.
In Baltimore, condemnation notices are issued by the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). They don’t necessarily mean that a building will be torn down, but they require that a building satisfies the city’s code requirements for safety and structural stability before it can be occupied.
Tammy Hawley, chief of strategic communications for DHCD, said in an email message that her agency “doesn’t have anything on this garage being condemned.” She added that “the City has had contractors inspecting garages and identifying maintenance issues over the last several years. The garage may have been closed based on those reviews.”
Hawley referred additional questions to the city’s Parking Authority, designated the “responsible agency” for the garage. The communications manager for the Parking Authority, Tiffany James, said the garage is not in the agency’s portfolio and she would try to get more information about it.
Letter of concern
The BSO is one of four organizations that signed a letter this week expressing concerns about preparations for Artscape; the lack of communication between BOPA and local arts organizations; and the festival’s impact on other events scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 22 to 24. Other signers of the letter were Lyric Baltimore; the University of Baltimore; and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
BOPA is an independent organization acting under contract with the city of Baltimore to serve as its events producer, arts council and film office. Billed as America’s largest free arts festival, Artscape drew 350,000 visitors over three days before COVID-19. It hasn’t been held since 2019.
Many of the concerns expressed by the four arts organizations are related to former BOPA CEO Donna Drew Sawyer’s decision to move Artscape from July to September even though schools will be in session, arts organizations are already busy with events in September, and other festivals are planned around the city.
When she headed BOPA, Sawyer repeatedly said she didn’t like the agency’s employees working outside in the heat of July and thought September would be cooler. No one else at BOPA was advocating strongly for Artscape to shift its dates from July, which was selected in the 1980s so the festival wouldn’t have schedule conflicts with arts, educational and neighborhood organizations.
After committing BOPA to the new schedule last fall, however, Sawyer resigned in January, after Mayor Brandon Scott said he lost confidence in her leadership. Yuhanick was hired by BOPA’s board to lead the staff and make the festival a success.
This is the final year of BOPA’s multi-year contract to serve the city, and public officials have hinted that they may not renew its contract past June 30, 2024. Last month, the Baltimore City Council withheld more than $1.7 million from BOPA’s fiscal 2024 budget as a sign of displeasure with “governance issues” involving its board of directors and other concerns about the way BOPA was spending funds allocated by the city.
Here is the text of the letter from the four organizations:
We believe strongly in the civic, cultural, and economic importance of Artscape, and in the need for a win for Baltimore City, the Citizens of Baltimore, our individual institutions, and the respective constituencies that we have the privilege to serve.
In keeping with these beliefs, we were each independently supportive of Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts’ (BOPA) plan to launch a new approach to Artscape inclusive of new Fall dates (September 22-24, 2023) and a more contained geographic footprint (North Avenue and Station North).
It is out of equally deep respect for these beliefs that we feel obligated to express our growing concern for the evolving plan – or lack thereof – for Artscape this fall to cover a more ambitious footprint than publicly announced in October 2022, and the potentially crippling immediate and long-term impacts of a less than successful outcome on the City, the festival attendants, the neighborhood, and our respective institutions.
Simply put, with 67 days to go, none of us has received a detailed Artscape schedule nor a feasible operational plan for any individual element of Artscape (e.g., traffic). There is no basis yet for us as major event partners to have faith in a “traditional” Artscape event taking place on its “traditional” Mount Vernon footprint during the weekend of September 22-24, 2023. Additionally, none of us are able to physically displace our audiences (and, in the case of one academic institution, students, staff, faculty, and parents) in order to accommodate BOPA’s request of complimentary usage of our respective facilities.
Again, we remain steadfast in our desire to see a successful/impactful Artscape event take place this September. To ensure this outcome, our united request is as follows:
1. We call upon BOPA and the Mayor’s Office to honor the commitments that were made to our institutions and the public in October 2022. Including that:
a. Artscape events will occur on the publicly proposed footprint on North Avenue and Charles Street above I‐83 on the dates of September 22‐24, 2023.
b. The Artscape concert schedule will not feature a mainstage performance at the MICA Station building on the evening of September 23, so as not to present challenging conflicts with the BSO Gala and Lyric events. In support of this plan, the BSO will present a free community concert on the Sunday of Artscape in partnership with BOPA.*
*While the original plan was for BOPA to host the BSO on an outdoor stage inclusive of production/stage cost support, the BSO remains very happy to open the Meyerhoff for Sunday’s concert, ensuring cost savings to BOPA/the Mayor’s Office while also requesting support of limited facility costs.
2. In addition to considering what Artscape events can be successfully hosted on the North Avenue and Station North footprint, we urge BOPA and the Mayor’s Office to consider the seven-plus events being hosted by the BSO, Lyric Baltimore, and MICA during September 22-24 as the Artscape programming on the Mount Royal Ave corridor.
We look forward to a constructive, two-way dialogue, on how the entirety of Baltimore City and our organizations can have a successful weekend of events this September, and how we can begin planning now for a bigger, bolder, and more impactful Artscape in 2024.
BOPA and the Mayor’s Office responded with their own joint statement about Artscape:
“Reflecting our commitment to close collaboration with the shared of aim of making Artscape 2023 the most inclusive, diverse and successful in its history, BOPA and the Mayor’s Office continue to engage regularly with the leading cultural and educational institutions of the Mount Royal neighborhood and with the many local creatives to discuss detailed plans, schedules, and the impact of the festival on neighborhoods and local communities,” they said.
“All Artscape musical performances scheduled for the MICA Station Building stage will end promptly at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 23, so as not to interfere in any way with the BSO Gala or the Nate Bargatze comedy performance planned at the Lyric that evening. The other planned Artscape musical performances will be held that evening in Station North. We are grateful to our partners for their participation in this signature Baltimore arts festival and will continue to engage with them in the planning and presentation of all aspects of Artscape.”
