Remington is getting a new Neighborhood Master Plan, eight years after its current plan was accepted by the city.
The designers chosen to prepare the plan were introduced to the community on Wednesday during a virtual meeting of the Greater Remington Improvement Association’s Land Use Committee.
They are: Unknown Studio, a landscape architecture firm whose work includes the Druid Lake vision plan and the Pikesville Armory redevelopment in Baltimore County; Present Company, an architecture firm headed by Megan Elcrat and Phillip Jones; and Kittleson & Associates, a multimodal transportation, planning, engineering and research firm. Steve Holt is the engagement consultant.
The Greater Remington Improvement Association (GRIA) is moving ahead with the effort as several large projects have been identified for the community, including potential development of the Sisson Street bulk trash drop-off facility at 2840 Sisson St.; potential development of the Potts & Callahan storage yard parcels at 2701 and 2801 Falls Road; and Seawall Development’s Sisson East mixed-use development on the east side of the 2800 block of Sisson Street. Seawall is currently building a six-story apartment building to replace the recently-demolished 7-Eleven store at 211 W. 28th St.
Development in Remington is guided by a master plan that was officially accepted by Baltimore’s Planning Department in 2018 and is included on the Baltimore City Neighborhood Plans index. The community-led master planning process began in 2008, was approved by GRIA in 2015, and was submitted to the city’s planning department for its review in 2017. The Neighborhood Design Center worked with GRIA on the earlier master plan, and a number of key projects identified in that document have been realized.
Jed Weeks, chair of GRIA’s land use committee, said the organization’s leaders began thinking about launching a new planning effort more than a year ago but didn’t have sufficient funds to hire a design team. A year later, he said, GRIA has secured enough money to hire consultants and get underway.
Planners say their schedule calls for work to begin this summer and continue in stages until the spring of 2027. They’re aiming to have a final plan by April or May to present to the city. Along the way, they plan to have three community engagement sessions with Remington stakeholders, with the first one scheduled for the third week in September. Others will be in November and February.
“We see it as really an opportunity to build off the 2017 plan and establish a shared direction for the next decade,” Unknown Studio co-founder Nick Glase said of the planning effort. “In broad brush strokes, we’re imagining that this plan is going to clarify where growth and how growth should occur. We also see it as a real opportunity to strengthen neighborhood identity and public realm connections across the neighborhood. We’re going to be looking at how to integrate housing and what kinds of housing, what kinds of buildings and building types would serve the neighborhood.”
In addition, “this plan needs to deliver equitable growth and not displace the current residents, and it needs to be aligned with what’s realizable in Baltimore so [the team will be] working with all the agencies across the city and project partners to implement it,” Glase said. “We ‘re hoping the plan is going to be clear, it’s going to be actionable and usable by the residents to serve the future of the neighborhood for the next decade.”
