Coalition against Harborplace redevelopment in Baltimore seeks to defeat November ballot question

Opponents of plans to redevelop Baltimore’s Harborplace with high-rise apartments and offices will take their fight to communities around the city in the coming months in a campaign to defeat a November ballot question that would allow the controversial project.

Members of the Inner Harbor Coalition argued Tuesday night during the first such forum that MCB Real Estate’s plans would forever strip the city and state of one of its most cherished public waterfront parks, and they urged residents to take action to stop it. They also said they’re exploring legal action aimed at a city redevelopment process they say has been rushed through without transparency or a master plan.

“This is our opportunity to … say, no, we’re not going to allow this to go forward and allow this clearly sacred space to be converted to public and private uses,” said Jody Landers, a coalition organizer and former City Council member who ran for mayor in 2011.

Baltimore-based MCB has proposed demolishing the twin 43-year-old shopping and dining pavilions that for decades have symbolized the Inner Harbor attraction and replacing them with four taller, mixed-use buildings, including a conjoined tower with around 900 apartments, one smaller structure in a large new park, a two-tier promenade and realigned roadways.

Coalition members addressed about 50 people Tuesday during a forum at Light Street Presbyterian Church in Federal Hill. Organizers said they plan to schedule additional community meetings, discuss the proposal with residents during upcoming festivals, and raise money for potential legal action.

The group, formed in January, has so far been unsuccessful in efforts to urge officials to reverse course on the project.

City and state officials, including Mayor Brandon Scott and Gov. Wes Moore,  have voiced support for the $900 million proposal, a $500 million private investment that would need $400 in public funds, seeing it as a chance to revitalize an attraction in decline and spur additional downtown growth. MCB unveiled plans publicly in October, on the same day three land-use bills were submitted to the City Council at the developer’s request.

The council passed the trio of bills, 14-1, in early March, including two that amend zoning law and the city’s urban renewal plan. The third bill would change the city charter and requires the approval of city voters in November.

MCB struck a deal to acquire the mostly vacant pavilions out of receivership in April 2022. The pavilions had lost tenants and fallen into disrepair over the past decade, with many attributing problems to what they saw as mismanagement by the previous, New York-based owner.

P. David Bramble, MCB’s managing partner and a West Baltimore resident, has said the new Harborplace will reflect a generational shift from indoor malls to more active, mixed-use space. His firm’s proposal has the density to be economically viable and the potential to spark a downtown renaissance, he has said.

While the project is in the planning phase, MCB has worked with the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore to select temporary tenants for the pavilions through an incubator program designed to accelerate growth of local and minority entrepreneurs. Seven Black-owned businesses are expected to open in time for the summer tourism season, operating under two-year license agreements.

One coalition member on Tuesday said he feared it could be as long as seven years before any new development is completed at Harborplace.

That’s concerning because “we don’t know what’s going to happen seven years from now,” said David Benn, a Baltimore architect. High-rise buildings would dramatically change the character of the Inner Harbor, he said, with the newly passed regulations allowing future development of “unlimited height, in perpetuity, unlimited density and any kind of use you can spell out.”

Seven Black-owned businesses moving to Harborplace pavilions as temporary tenants

The high-profile project has drawn scrutiny for its proposed density, its removal of height limits, the inclusion of hundreds of apartments and a plan that many say would privatize the public Inner Harbor shoreline. Charter amendments in the late 1970s locked in 26 acres of open space but paved the way for shops and restaurants in the low-rise pavilions.

Landers argued during Monday’s hearing that Harborplace declined and eventually was placed into court receivership not because of its physical design, which features low-rise pavilions, but because of a lack of public oversight and lack of management and investment by previous owners.

Tony Ambridge, a former City Council member who also sat on the Planning Commission and has worked as a real estate developer, criticized the city for pushing through a project before studying its impact on traffic and parking, calling it “half-baked.”

Rebecca Hoffberger, founder of the American Visionary Art Museum, called the Inner Harbor one of the most valuable pieces of land on the East Coast.

“There is already a lot of tall, luxury development on Baltimore City’s waterfront,” she said. “I beg you to see the obscenity in not safeguarding that for future generations.”

After the coalition was formed in January, Scott had responded in an email to The Baltimore Sun that it was being led by “people who had the power to effect change at Harborplace as it deteriorated for decades, but who did nothing.”

“Now that there is a developer from West Baltimore proposing a plan, they suddenly want to get involved without offering any viable alternative,” Scott had said. “They just want to say ‘no.’”