Some years, the most memorable events involving Baltimore’s urban landscape are the grand openings of one or more major, long-awaited developments, such as Harborplace in 1980 and Oriole Park in 1992.
Other years are marked more by announcements of big plans and behind-the-scenes strategizing for long-term changes to the built environment, such as Kevin Plank’s proposed redevelopment of Port Covington.
Both the past year on Baltimore’s urban landscape front, and the year ahead, might best be summed up by one recurring theme: the activation of long-dormant places and spaces that were waiting to be rediscovered and brought back to life.
To be sure, Baltimore gained a number of impressive buildings and public spaces in 2025, from a new district courthouse at 500 N. Calvert Street and a laboratory and office for the University of Maryland’s BioPark to the Bloomberg Student Center on the Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus and a new world headquarters for T. Rowe Price at Harbor Point.
But recently, some of the most significant changes have come when residents polished off existing places that weren’t living up to their potential and repositioned them, or at least made significant progress towards making them more useful and attractive. And that activity appears likely to continue in the coming year, all around the city.
What makes many of these activations particularly noteworthy is that they energize places that had been dormant or underused for years and yet were essentially right out in the open for all to see.
‘Do we have no energy?’
In Mount Vernon, a group called UNITE Mount Vernon acquired the 1872 Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church in July and announced plans to restore it as a multipurpose community hub and anchor for the Mount Vernon historic district.
Since then, the long-dormant landmark at 2 E. Mount Vernon Place hasn’t been so dormant, serving as a setting for tours, concerts and a holiday book shop. There’s more to come, including a Grateful Dead-themed concert on Feb. 21 and a flower show in the spring.
A one-month collaboration between UNITE and The Ivy Bookshop was so successful that it was extended for two weekends into the new year. Architects with Quinn Evans will hold community engagement sessions in 2026 to get ideas for how the church can best be used. The adjoining Asbury House at 10 E. Mount Vernon Place has been purchased by a member of the UNITE Mount Vernon’s board and is also being restored.
Through a partnership between UNITE Mount Vernon and Preservation Maryland, serving as UNITE’s non-profit fiscal sponsor, “the acquisition and long-term preservation of the iconic church…has been made possible,” President and CEO Nicholas Redding wrote in an end-of-the-year message to Preservation Maryland supporters.
“With its future previously uncertain, the church now bursts with life and possibility – a reminder that renewal is possible through the work of many hands,” Redding said.
Gaining control of the property was the key, UNITE board member Elizabeth Bonner said in a recent podcast.
“It was important to get that site control,” Bonner told the hosts of the Sanity Lounge podcast. “To let that go would just be like: What are we doing here? Do we have no energy? Do we have no faith in the future? Are we so much at the end of something? And we’re not. We really had to do that. And in the bigger picture, it’s for Baltimore, too.”
Mount Vernon is “a very important part of the different pieces that make up Baltimore City,” Bonner continued.
“It’s not the oldest part, but it’s one of them, and it’s had a very long history and been very connected to people who really wanted Baltimore to be better. Great philanthropists all lived, in the nineteenth century, they all lived around the [Mount Vernon] squares. In a way, you stand on the shoulder of giants, and you feel that there, and I think the church is a part of that. Those were the people who had the vision to build a church like that. It was built in two years.”
‘Radical kindness’
In North Baltimore, the Roland Park Community Foundation successfully concluded a 25-year-long effort to buy 20 acres from the Baltimore Country Club and turn it into Hillside Park, a community gathering space that is open to the public like a city park but operated and programmed by a private organization. Area residents gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Oct. 11.
“Hillside Park is a great example of radical kindness and a commitment to preserving green space in Baltimore,” said Mary Page Michel, chair of the community foundation and leader of the effort to raise $9 million to purchase the wooded hillside that’s visible along Falls Road, across from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and Western High School. “Hillside Park is about access, equity and honoring nature – a space that reflects the values of our city and invites everyone to enjoy it.”
A second major public space became available on Baltimore’s waterfront when Point Park opened May 1 as a signature amenity for the Harbor Point community. Designed by iO Studio, the 4.5-acre park was created at a cost of about $22 million next to the new T. Rowe Price headquarters, on land where the Allied Signal chromium plant once stood. Harbor Point’s master developer, Beatty, also added apartments, parking, shops and a hotel to its 27-acre planned community.
On Market Place, a 1.1-acre green space opened where Baltimore City Community College’s long-shuttered Bard Building was razed. The placeholder for as-yet undetermined future development, the green space is bounded by Lombard Street on the south, Market Place on the east, Water Street on the north and the grounds of Baltimore’s Holocaust Memorial on the west.
Downtown Rise
As part of his Downtown Rise initiative, Mayor Brandon Scott shifted Baltimore’s Artscape festival from Midtown and Station North to War Memorial Plaza and the area beneath the Jones Falls Expressway where the Baltimore’s Farmers’ Market takes place.
Along with that move, the city-owned War Memorial Building at 101 N. Gay St. was converted to a temporary gallery for Artscape — an installation called Scout Art Fair, showcasing works by several dozen artists in a secure, climate-controlled setting. It was as if the building had been designed for that purpose – and should be used that way more than one weekend a year.
Another benefit of relocating Artscape: The Peale, Baltimore’s community museum at 225 Holliday Street and part of the festival’s new footprint, had more visitors during Artscape than it typically gets in months. Artscape 2026 will return to the downtown location May 23 and 24.
Adaptive reuse
Activation can take many forms. One of the most common is adaptive reuse of existing buildings, and there were plenty examples of that over the past year.
In Midtown, the University of Baltimore’s Academic Center at 1420 N. Charles St. was turned into a temporary high school – a new location for Baltimore City College high school while its home at 3220 The Alameda undergoes a three-year renovation.
The university’s administrative offices were relocated to the former headquarters of The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore at 101 W. Mount Royal Ave., after The Associated moved its headquarters to 5700 Park Heights Ave.,now called the Goldsmith Campus.
In the 100 block of East Madison Street, five vacant row houses reopened as an extension of The Loyola School, an affiliate of St. Ignatius Church and part of The Rev. Bill Watters’ legacy as an educator and Jesuit priest. Passing motorists might be hard pressed to tell that the five buildings have been consolidated and reconfigured to accommodate the new use.
Architects Pavlina Ilieva and Kuo Pao Lian transformed the former Enoch Pratt Free Library Branch No. 19 at 606 S. Ann St. in Upper Fells Point to Library 19, a cultural hub and community amenity that houses the headquarters of their design firm, PI.KL Studio, and other tenants.
In retailing, a notable activation was Ruth Shaw’s move from The Shops at Kenilworth in Baltimore County back to The Village of Cross Keys, where the business started in 1973 and then left in 2017.
The women’s designer clothing boutique moved into the space previously occupied by The Store Ltd., which closed after the death of owner Betty Cooke, the well-known jewelry designer. “There is no place like home,” said Ruth Shaw co-owner Brian Comes, “We look forward to getting back to our roots.”
A large-scale art installation called ‘Soft Gym’ replaced a former bank building at 101 W. North Ave. as part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ $1 million ‘Inviting Light’ initiative to help revitalize the Station North Arts District. Designed by artists Daniel Wickerham and Malcolm Lomax, “Soft Gym” will be used by the Central Baltimore Partnership as a new Ynot Lot, an outdoor events venue available for community-oriented programming to replace the former Ynot Lot at the northwest corner of Charles Street and North Avenue.
In West Baltimore, a food hall called The Mill on North opened at 2626 W. North Ave. with food vendors, a bar and a space for art and music where Walbrook Mill & Lumber Co. used to be.
From bus station to squash courts
The activations are continuing in 2026.
One of the first is Baltimore SquashWise’s $14.5 million transformation of the former Greyhound bus station at 601 N. Howard St. to its new home, with six squash courts, a multipurpose space, a student lounge, changing rooms and offices for SquashWise staffers.The non-profit will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Feb. 23and a Grand Opening Community Day event on Feb. 28. The six courts are already in use.
The Titan Hospitality Group of Crofton is opening its first project in Baltimore City, Barn & Lodge at The Rotunda, a $4 million restaurant and events venue inside a former boiler plant that served the old Maryland Casualty Insurance Co. campus at 711 W. 40th St.
The Chick Webb Memorial Recreation Center at 623 N. Eden St., named after the Baltimore jazz legend, is expected to reopen in early 2026 after a multi-million dollar renovation.
The Inner Harbor’s next major attraction will open this summer, when work is completed on the five-acre, $18 million second phase of improvements to Rash Field Park along the 200 block of Key Highway. Features will include a large open lawn for field games or special events; extensive gardens and several walking paths including a nature walk and a fitness trail with exercise equipment; a kayak launch operated by the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks and the restored Pride of Baltimore memorial.
Entrepreneur David Couser is turning the long-dormant Savings Bank of Baltimore building at 1 E. Baltimore St. into a 15,000-square-foot events venue called Charm City Palace.
MCB Real Estate broke ground at 850 W. North Ave. for a four-story, $44 million, 63,000-square-foot headquarters of the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development as part of its $170 million mixed-use Reservoir Square project. The MOED building is slated for completion in August.
The Korean biotechnology company Nature Cell is converting the five-building Gaslight Square complex at 1401 Severn St., part of the Carroll-Camden Industrial Area near Pigtown, to a 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. Work will be completed in phases through 2031 and result in the creation of an estimated 500 jobs.
The B&O Railroad Museum at 901 W. Pratt St. began a $38 million campus transformation project that includes restoration of its 33,000-square-foot South Car Works building, the oldest continuously operating railroad repair shop in the country. The work will reorient the museum to face Southwest Baltimore, establish an amphitheater and green space called the CSX Bicentennial Garden, create an Innovation Hall, expand the museum’s archival space and provide new classrooms for students.
The Odorite building at 1111 Maryland Ave., the former headquarters of a cleaning products supply company, was sold at auction in December. Astoria Charm Property Management Inc. on Tuesday completed its acquisition of the building. According to auctioneer Charles Billig, they have indicated that they intend to use a portion of the building for their own business and lease the rest. The property has been vacant since mid-2023.
In process
More projects are in the works but don’t have firm completion dates.
Operators of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum received a $165,000 city grant to help stabilize a former Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad roundhouse at 2601 Falls Rd. as part of a 10-year plan to enlarge and upgrade its campus at 1901 Falls Road in the lower Jones Falls Valley.
Artist and entrepreneur David Weisand, proprietor of McLain Weisand Custom Furniture and Decorative Arts at 1013 Cathedral St. and the House Demiurge home goods store at 1008 Morton St., is turning the former Plaza Artist Materials & Picture Framing store at 1009 Cathedral St. into a retail space called Pedestal Arts and Antiques. The Plaza building has been closed since March of 2024.
The Maryland Historical Trust awarded $5.25 million in revitalization tax credits to support conversion of the fire-damaged Court Square office building at Calvert and Lexington streets, vacant since 2021, to an extended-stay hotel and restaurant. The estimated total project cost is $58 million.
State revitalization tax credits will also help turn a midblock building at 12 W. Chase St. in Midtown into a cultural center for Urban American Indian and Alaskan Native communities across Maryland; convert the former Shofer’s Furniture showroom building at 930 S. Charles St. to apartments with ground-floor commercial space; transform the Ambassador Theater at 4604 Liberty Heights Ave. to cultural hub for theater, education and the performing arts, and renovate Buildings 50 and 54 at the former Crown Cork and Seal Co. property off Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown.
Last fall a group led by developer C. William Struever and his Cross Street Partners acquired the Crown, Cork and Seal property, which was associated for many years with bottlecap making and is now home for artists and makers. A $1.75 million state revitalization tax credit will be used to create production space and artist studio space focused on blacksmithing, metalworking, ceramics and fire arts.
MCB Real Estate is renovating the former Detrick & Harvey Machine Works factory at Preston Street and Greenmount Avenue at a cost of $25 million to serve as a 49,000-square-foot, multi-tenant manufacturing and maker space.
The Central Baltimore Partnership purchased a vacant bank building at 1901 N. Charles St., previously owned by restaurateur Tony Cheng, and plans to renovate it at a cost of $3 million to $4 million for uses that would support the Station North arts district.
Baltimore residents Amrita “Ami” Kaur Dang, Catherine Borg and Megan Elcrat disclosed plans to turn the former Trip’s Place nightclub at 1813 N. Charles St. in Station North to a lounge and entertainment venue called Laverne’s, part of a larger arts and cultural hub planned for the 1800 block of North Charles Street. The larger complex includes the former Gatsby’s nightclub at 1817 N. Charles St., once the headquarters of the Noxzema skin cream company.
Episcopal Housing Corporation and Health Care for the Homeless are transforming several long-vacant historic buildings bounded by Park Avenue and Fayette and Liberty Streets to Sojourner Place at Park, a $26 million affordable housing community containing 42 apartments with commercial space at street level.
The Living Classrooms Foundation is raising funds to expand the Crossroads School, a tuition-free public charter school in Harbor East, from a middle school for 162 students in grades 6 to 8 to a school for 425 students in kindergarten through grade 8. The foundation also launched a six-month Rigging Renovation Project to get the USS Constellation ready for the Summer 2026 tourist season.
After initially floating plans to build 119 luxury townhouses on part of the land used by Under Armour before its move to Port Covington — a seven-acre parcel in the 1400 block of Beason Street, known as the Cheer Building — developer Mark Sappenstein said the property instead would be used to create a new home for the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, currently located at 420 S. Chester St. The fate of the rest of Under Armour’s former Locust Point campus, the 14-acre Tide Point property originally occupied by Procter & Gamble and currently for sale, will depend on who buys it.
Last month, the Maryland Stadium Authority approved a request from operators of the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center to hire architects to survey the four-building complex, including the historic Hippodrome Theatre at 12 N. Eutaw St. and the M&T Bank Exchange at 401 W. Fayette St., and recommend ways to renovate the state-owned arts center for continued use as Baltimore’s home for touring Broadway productions and other events. The improvements could cost several hundred million dollars and be completed in phases over the next five years. A property condition report from Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners is expected this summer.
The stadium authority also demolished the old clubhouse and other buildings at Pimlico Race Course to make way for a sports and entertainment complex that will serve as the new home for the Preakness Stakes starting in 2027.
De-activations
The past year saw its share of de-activations as well, and fires were the biggest culprits.
A seven-alarm fire in September decimated the so-called Superblock of 18 city-owned buildings near the intersection of Howard and Lexington streets, the city’s traditional retail crossroads. In all, the city lost 11 buildings that were part of the Five & Dime Historic District and had been targeted for adaptive reuse. The Baltimore Development Corp. (BDC) and Baltimore Planning Department are working to come up with a new plan to revitalize that part of downtown.
Fires in Hampden forced the closure of Falkenhan’s Hardware store at 3401 Chestnut Ave. and displaced tenants of the former Northern District police station, known as ‘The Castle,” at 3355 Keswick Road. The year before, 10 rowhouses in the 3400 block of Keswick Avenue were destroyed by fire and two residents died. “Is Hampden cursed?” asked the January edition of the Hampden Happenings newsletter. “How has our quaint little neighborhood been plagued with so many fires over the past year?”
In Midtown, Crosby Jenkins Associates, the interior design firm started in 1972 by Alexander Baer and known for many years as Alexander Baer Associates, disclosed plans to move from its longtime home at 24 W. Chase St. to a new base at 6239 Falls Road in Baltimore County. The Bare Hills location became available following the closure of the Princeton Sports store earlier in the year. According to partner Jay Jenkins, Crosby Jenkins will operate from Chase Street for much of 2026 while its new home takes shape.
Mount Vernon Marketplace, a once-bustling food hall at 520 Park Ave., steadily lost tenants and eventually closed in August after 10 years in business. The building owner, listed in land records as 520 Park Avenue Business Trust, said on social media that it is “actively exploring new ways to reimagine and reactivate the space.”
After 48 years of continuous operation, C. Grimaldis Gallery closed at 523 N. Charles St. and announced plans to “transition to a primarily online presence” through its website, www.cgrimadisgallery.com, platforms such as Artsy and Artnet, and participation in art fairs. Across the street, the former Louie’s Bookstore Café building at 518 N. Charles St. is vacant and up for sale after the latest of a string of replacements failed to stay in business.
C. Grimaldis Gallery is Baltimore’s oldest contemporary gallery, specializing in postwar American and European art. It opened in 1977 in the front parlor of a Mount Vernon row house at 928 N. Charles Street and moved in 1986 to the 500 block of N. Charles St.
From 1990 to 1993, owner Constantine Grimaldis also had a building at 1006 Morton St. to show large-scale sculpture, which he called the C. Grimaldis Gallery Sculpture Space.
Second thoughts
Two proposed deactivations didn’t take place after they were announced.
At the start of last year, Robyn Murphy, the CEO of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (now Create Baltimore), announced that the Top of the World Observation Level on the 27th floor of Baltimore’s World Trade Center would close because its landlord, the State of Maryland, wanted to explore other uses for the space.
After hearing strong opposition from stakeholders who argued that the attraction is a valuable asset and promotional tool for the city, Gov. Wes Moore agreed to let it stay in place at 401 E. Pratt St. City and state officials are expected to hammer out a long-term lease by the end of June.
Similarly, a plan to relocate the city’s bulk trash drop-off facility from 2840 Sisson St. to 2801 Falls Road drew opposition from city residents on the grounds that the Falls Road site is in a floodplain and located along a picturesque stretch of the Jones Falls Valley. In response, Mayor Scott formed a 13-member task force to explore other options.
This is one development saga that probably wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card at the start of last year, but it has brought up serious questions about the city’s long-range plans for handling bulk trash and hazardous waste. The panel’s recommendations are expected by March, and members have already voted to eliminate the Falls Road site as a relocation candidate.
Another unpopular deactivation plan was the city’s announcement about closing the Mimi DiPietro Family Skating Center in Patterson Park – the place columnist Dan Rodricks calls the ‘Mimi Dome’ — due to concerns about its structural integrity, specifically a “wall that houses the rink’s ammonia refrigeration system.” They say replacing the rink would cost $5 million to $10 million and the city has other priorities.
For now the ice rink is still open, but officials have warned this will be the last season for a facility that has served Patterson Park for 39 years.
Long-term developments
One reason so many adaptive reuse projects are dominating the headlines in Baltimore is that the city’s most ambitious developments aren’t quite ready to move to the construction phase.
For MCB Real Estate, the company that proposed in 2023 to replace Harborplace with a $900 million mixed-use development containing shops, offices, open space and two high-rise apartment buildings, 2025 was largely a year of planning. Managing partner P. David Bramble has indicated that construction could get underway in the second half of 2026. His company has also added short-term tenants to activate the pavilions until it’s ready to move ahead with construction.
The Baltimore Peninsula, formerly known as Port Covington, is another area where no new buildings opened or began construction in 2025 but tenants were announced to fill existing office space at the 235-acre development.
The big news here was about the company that had led the Baltimore Peninsula’s development in recent years, New York-based MAG Partners, which departed as master developer in October along with MacFarlane Partners of San Francisco. In addition, Kevin Plank’s Sagamore Ventures and equity partner Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group said they won’t be involved in any future development at Baltimore Peninsula but will retain ownership of the 1.1 million-square-foot first phase, which includes office and retail space, apartments and a hotel.
Development decisions for the Baltimore Peninsula are being made by Bank OZK, an Arkansas lender that holds the note on all of the undeveloped land there. Hines, a Texas-based real estate firm, is managing the already-developed portions of Baltimore Peninsula.
In Fells Point, brothers Kevin and Scott Plank sold their Sagamore Pendry Baltimore hotel at 1715 Thames St. for $49 million to Montage International, the hospitality management firm that has operated the hotel since it opened in 2017. It’s now called the Pendry Baltimore.
In conjunction with the sale – and the elimination of the word ‘Sagamore’ from the hotel’s name — the sellers removed one of its hotel’s signature works of art, “Horse and Bridle,” a 3,500-pound, 12-foot-long bronze horse sculpture by Colombian artist Fernando Botero, who died in 2023. Although it couldn’t exactly be called public art, Botero’s sculpture was accessible to anyone who visited the hotel and provided a striking centerpiece for its courtyard.
In Remington, Seawall suffered a setback when a potential office tenant pulled out of its proposed Sisson East development, forcing partner Thibault Manekin to redesign the project.
In addition, the BDC didn’t accept the company’s proposal to redevelop the Sisson Street bulk trash drop-off facility, after Manekin had touted plans for a grocery-store anchored commercial project to replace it.
Seawall and Charm City Buyers are moving ahead with construction of a six-story, 60-unit apartment building and plaza where a 7-Eleven branch closed in November at 211 W. 28th St. The target completion date is the second quarter of 2027.
In Little Italy, A New Jersey developer pitched plans to build a 24-story apartment tower at 301 S. President St. if the City Council would change zoning for the property to make it legal. The present zoning allows construction of a building no taller than 125 feet, or about 12 stories. A poll of little Italy residents and business owners showed little support for a zoning change.
Recent Openings
One of the most high-profile buildings to open in Baltimore in 2025 was the $250 million Bloomberg Student Center at Hopkins. It’s the first student center on Hopkins’ Homewood campus, which never had a traditional student union, and one of the largest buildings in Baltimore with a mass timber structural system, rather than a framework of steel or concrete. It also featured a high-profile design team, including the Bjarke Ingels Group, the Rockwell Group and Shepley Bulfinch.
The student center opened to students and other Hopkins affiliates last summer but never fully opened to the general public, even though it was touted as an amenity for Charles Village residents as well as the Hopkins community. It’s expected to open to the general public sometime in 2026.
Baltimore gained a new hub for life science activity when an eight-story, $180 million, 250,000-square-foot multi-tenant laboratory and office building known as 4MLK opened at 4 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, providing a new gateway for the University of Maryland BioPark. Wexford Science & Technology constructed the building in collaboration with the University of Maryland, Baltimore and has its headquarters there.
In March, T. Rowe Price employees began moving into their new headquarters at Harbor Point, a nine-story, 550,000-square-foot building overlooking Baltimore’s harbor, but the company never had a public ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new headquarters.
Many of T. Rowe Price’s 1,700 employees came from the office tower at 100 E. Pratt Street, leaving that building mostly vacant. The vacancy rate for office space in downtown Baltimore is around 30 percent, the highest it’s ever been.
There had been speculation that T. Rowe Price would put its name on Oriole Park at Camden Yards, one of the few major league ballparks without a “name” sponsor. T. Rowe Price did put its name on the scoreboard, replacing The Baltimore Sun, but not the ballpark itself.
One of the most significant public sector projects to open in 2025 was the Johnson Square branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library at 1100 Greenmount Ave., part of The Hammond at Greenmount Park apartment building. Nearly 1,000 people gathered for the opening of the four-story building with 109 affordable apartments and the first new Pratt library branch in more than 15 years.
At 500 N. Calvert St., a new Baltimore City district courthouse opened to replace an outdated courthouse at 501 E. Fayette St. It’s called the Hubbard Courthouse in honor of the late Judge Mabel Houze Hubbard, the first African American woman ever appointed to a judicial bench in the state of Maryland.
At 4529 Harford Road, MCB Real Estate opened The Enolia, a new kind of off-campus student housing for Morgan State University, entirely leased by Morgan State students. Named after trailblazing educator, civil rights activist and community leader Enolia Pettigen McMillan, the five-story building cost $58 million and houses 473 students in 151 apartments. It’s the first new privately built off-campus housing in 20 years to serve Morgan State students. The university has had five straight years of record enrollment, reaching a high of 11,559 students for the 2025-2026 academic year.
A second phase, slated to open in 2027, involves the adaptive reuse of the former Markley Hotel at 4511 Harford Road to contain a café on the ground floor and about 24 apartments above.
In addition to the Johnston Square and Park Avenue projects, public funds are assisting construction of affordable housing in numerous sections of Baltimore, including Oliver, Park Heights and the Perkins Somerset Oldtown redevelopment area. Severn Development and CAM Management are planning to convert the former Institute of Notre Dame property in East Baltimore, closed since 2020, to 126 affordable apartments for seniors.
Market-rate housing developments are underway in Reservoir Square, Locke Landing and Westport. A 94-unit apartment building is nearing completion at 400 Park Ave. Off the 5100 block of Falls Road, Questar Properties and Caves Valley Partners are building a six-story, $130 million, 331-unit luxury apartment building called Sanctuary at Cross Keys.
NexCore Group of Denver is building The Gallery at Roland Park – An Experience Senior Living Community with 111 upscale residences on land it cleared just east of The Falls at Roland Park apartment building at 1090 W. Northern Parkway.
Colleges and universities
At a time when there’s little need for new office space in the city because of the already-high vacancy rate, colleges and universities account for a large percentage of the construction work currently underway.
Hopkins is nearing completion of a new home for its Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute on Wyman Park Drive and an Early Learning Center at 115 University Parkway. It’s also renovating the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, a $130 million project.
In East Baltimore, Hopkins tore down Reed Hall, Hampton House and the Denton A. Cooley fitness center to make way for a six-story Life Sciences Building that will provide more than 1,200 lab benches for scientists engaged in biomedical research. Other medical campus projects include the CMSC (Children’s Medical and Surgical Center) North Tower Addition and plaza; expansion of the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the multidisciplinary Henrietta Lacks building rising at the corner of Ashland and Rutland avenues.
Hopkins also has been involved in one of the city’s biggest real estate controversies. The university’s plans to construct a two-building home for its Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Institute have drawn opposition from area residents who say it’s too big for the proposed site at Remington Avenue and Wyman Park Drive. They also warn that it will be detrimental to the surrounding area in a variety of ways, including loss of mature trees; noise and vibration from construction; disruption of traffic patterns; loss of on-street parking and potential harm to wildlife in the Stony Run stream valley.
Despite neighbors’ objections, a stretch of Wyman Park Drive has been closed for the four-year construction period and preliminary sitework has begun.
Morgan State is adding and renovating on-campus student housing to accommodate its growing enrollment, building a massive science center and preparing to raze the former Lake Clifton High School (later known as the Lake Clifton Eastern High School), closed since 2005 in the 2800 block of St. Lo Drive, to create a satellite campus.
Notre Dame of Maryland University and Brightview Senior Living have begun construction of Brightview Homeland, a senior living community that will contain 170 independent living, assisted living and memory care residences on the Notre Dame campus.
Public infrastructure improvements account for another large segment of construction activity in Baltimore. Among the biggest recent projects are the reconstruction of the Howard Street Tunnel, which was lowered so rail cars double-stacked with shipping containers can pass through, and the reconstruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Aggressive developer
One of the most worrisome developments was the collapse of Brandon Chasen’s real estate empire after he sought bankruptcy court protection. Chasen was aggressive in buying old buildings in areas such as Fells Point and Mount Vernon with ambitious plans to activate them, but work stopped when he ran into financial trouble.
Some of Chasen’s properties have been sold to other companies, others languish in various states of completion or need repair. In December, Baltimore’s housing department posted an emergency condemnation and demolition notice on the front of a fully-occupied apartment building that Chasen controlled at 8 E. Eager St., across from the Maryland Club, after bricks fell from a side wall onto the alley below.
Baltimore’s restaurant scene had a flurry of comings and goings in 2025, as it always does. Newcomers included the Atlas Restaurant Group’s Nine Tailed Fox at The Village of Cross Keys; Spike Gjerde’s La Jetee replacing Cindy Lou’s Fish House at Harbor Point; Hana Sushi taking over the former Souvlaki space in Hampden and a new version of Supano’s Steakhouse at Harborplace. An entity linked to Workshop Development bought the late Peter Angelps’ old Boccaccio restaurant in Little Italy with plans to tear it down to create parking for the neighboring Bagby Building and its cluster of restaurants.
On Jan. 26, The Cheesecake Factory closed after nearly 30 years at Harborplace. This month, Brewer’s Art restaurant and pub closed after 30 years in Mount Vernon. La Cuchara, the Meadow Mill restaurant known for its Basque cuisine, closed “until further notice” due to a fire that started in its venting system. Starbucks shuttered numerous locations closed around the city, include stores Mount Vernon and elsewhere.
Changing of the guard
Over the past year, Baltimore saw a higher-than-usual amount of turnover involving people who are in key positions that influence the city’s built environment.
City Planning Director Chris Ryer retired and was replaced by planning veteran Tim Keane. Attorney Jon Laria replaced Sean Davis as Chair of Baltimore’s Planning Commission.
BDC President and CEO Colin Tarbert was replaced by Otis Rolley, a former city planning director. Kim Clark, the BDC’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, announced plans to retire this spring. Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore President Laurie Schwartz was replaced by Dan Taylor, the BDC’s former Vice President for Business and Neighborhood Development. Larysa Salamacha retired this month after more than 38 years with the BDC.
Al Hutchinson stepped down as President and CEO of Visit Baltimore; Kireem Swinton is the interim CEO. Lauren Schiszik replaced Eric Holcomb as Executive Director of Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architecture Preservation and chief of the city planning department’s Historic and Architecture Preservation division. Attorney Rebecca Lungberg Witt resigned as Executive Director of the Baltimore City Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals. Tonya Miller Hall, the mayor’s high-energy Senior Advisor of Arts and Culture, left city government.
Fagan Harris, former Chief of Staff to Gov. Wes Moore, replaced Robert C. Embry Jr. as President and CEO of the Abell Foundation, a private non-profit that supports a wide range of civic initiatives. John Racanelli retired as President and CEO of the National Aquarium, triggering a nationwide search for his replacement; Senior Vice President and Chief Mission Officer Jennifer Driban is the aquarium’s Interim President and CEO. Ashley Wallace replaced Ellen Janes as Executive Director of the Central Baltimore Partnership.
Ellen Owens became Executive Director of the American Visionary Art Museum, just as it marked its 30th anniversary. John Suau was named Executive Director of The Peale, replacing founding Director and Chief Strategy Officer Nancy Proctor. Proctor became the Executive Director of the SNF Parkway Theatre and Maryland Film Festival. Entertainment industry veteran Thomas Bailey replaced Jonathan Schwartz as CEO and general manager of Lyric Baltimore. Nicholas Steege succeeded Kevin Bonner as general manager of the Center Club.
Art historian Daniel Weiss, Hopkins’ Homewood Professor of the Humanities and head of the university’s Office for the Arts, was named to be the Director and CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum; he will officially leave Hopkins this spring. Hahrie Han won a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation genius grant and confirmed plans to leave her position as the inaugural director of the Agora Institute but will remain with Hopkins.
Michael Frenz, Executive Director of the Maryland Stadium Authority, disclosed plans to retire in the spring. Terry Hasseltine left his position after more than 17 years as Executive Director of the Maryland Sports Commission, a division of the stadium authority. Joel Fidler replaced Luanne Greene as head of Ayers Saint Gross, one of Baltimore’s largest design firms.
Deaths of note: In February 2025, Baltimore lost James R. Grieves, the Princeton-educated founding partner of James R. Grieves Associates, who later joined with others to form Grieves, Worrall, Wright and O’Hatnick (GWWO). Grieves’ work included the first iteration of Center Stage’s current home at 700 N. Calvert St.; restoration of the Walters Art Museum’s 1904 “palazzo” building, various phases of the Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pa., and many other cultural projects.
The following month brought the death of Anna Pomykala, former owner with her husband Ron of the Gramercy Mansion bed and breakfast venue in Baltimore County and the 13-room Carrollton Inn bed and breakfast property near the Carroll Mansion and the Phoenix Shot Tower in downtown Baltimore.
A different sort of passing: Hayles & Howe, a construction firm known for its high-quality craftsmanship on projects involving architectural preservation and restoration, ceased operations as of Dec. 31, but the Hayles & Howe team has joined C. J. Coakley Company. “We will continue the work that we have always done, and our workshop is still in Baltimore,” the Hayles & Howe team said in a farewell message on social media.
Finally, to the extent that civic events influence Baltimore’s urban landscape, one of the biggest festivals in Baltimore and Baltimore County in 2026 will be SAIL250 Maryland and Airshow Baltimore from June 24 to July 1, a maritime and aviation extravaganza honoring the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
The weeklong event will feature visiting tall ships and naval vessels, flyovers and other activities in downtown Baltimore, Fells Point, the Baltimore Peninsula and Martin State Airport. If that doesn’t help activate the city, nothing will.
