Waterfront community with 814 residences proposed for Port Covington area

A new waterfront community with 814 residences will be coming to South Baltimore under a plan that Mark Sapperstein of 28 Walker Development and others are proposing for the former Locke Insulators property at 2525 Insulator Drive.

Developers today showed Baltimore’s Urban Design and Architecture Advisory Panel a master plan that called for 389 town homes and 425 apartments on a 25-acre parcel bounded mostly by Peninsula Drive on the east, West Cromwell Street on the north, Insulator Drive on the west and the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River on the south. The development also includes a parcel at 11 West Cromwell Street.

The land is just west of the proposed future Under Armour headquarters site and just south of the area where Weller Development is constructing a $5.5 billion mixed-use community called Port Covington.

A drawing on one of 28 Walker’s renderings showed a sign indicating the name of its proposed community as Waterside Port Covington, although one of the presenters said that Waterside is a “filler” word and may not be the final name of the community.

Locke Insulators, a company based in Virginia, closed its South Baltimore property in 2017. Sapperstein disclosed last year that his business arranged to acquire the property and wants to build a residential community in its place. He has been seeking City Council approval to have the land rezoned from industrial use to residential use.

Others on the development team include K. Hovnanian Homes, a luxury home builder; Greystar, an apartment builder; and Kimley-Horn; KCI Technologies and Hord Coplan Macht, design consultants.

This was the first time that plans for the community have been presented to the design review panel and the first time K. Hovnanian Homes and Greystar have been named publicly as members of the development team.

The proposed building types ranged from apartments along Cromwell Street to “two over two” stacked townhouse units along Peninsula Drive to four-story townhomes away from the water to 36 luxury town homes with unobstructed views of the Middle Branch waterfront.

The largest structures were two apartment buildings that contained five levels of residences over one level of parking. Plans shown to the review panel also called for a clubhouse, swimming pool, corner green spaces and landscaped walkways along the water’s edge.