Dressing up the Baltimore's dilapidated near West Side

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Apr 25, 2003 by Ezra Fieser

On the West Side of Baltimore's downtown, the Hippodrome will open next year as a first-class Broadway-style performing arts theater. Across Eutaw Street, the Bank of America is spending about $100 million to create a mixed-use apartment and retail complex. And Lexington Market just unveiled its new look.

But if you're coming from Baltimore's central business district or Charles Street, there is no pretty way to get to the West Side.

City officials are stepping in with hopes of changing all that.

The 100 block of West Lexington -- considered a corridor from the central business district to a refurbished Lexington Market and the University of Maryland Baltimore -- is being acquired by the city and will soon be offered to developers.

"We're looking at in the next several months putting out [a request for proposals] for a superblock for the south side of Lexington," said Sharon Grinnell, chief operating officer for the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's quasi-public economic development agency. "We're very close to controlling all of the properties. We have the acquisition authority and we'll be working over the next couple of months to finalize a component of that."

Developing the stretch of Lexington Street, which abounds with vacant storefronts and dilapidated buildings, is not a new idea.

"A couple of years ago we did [a request for proposals] for that area," Grinnell said. "At that time, we had one proposal submitted by the [Harry and Jeanette] Weinberg Foundation that called for new construction and major demolition. To make a long story short, they weren't able to pull that type of development together."

Weinberg, however, is not out of the picture. The nonprofit foundation has renovated the Stewarts Building at the corner of Lexington and Howard streets. The building, a combination of 25,000 square feet of retail space and 170,000 square feet of office space, is available.

"Depending on what happens with leasing at Stewarts, the plan is to continue developing the north side of the block in the same style, with ground floor retail and offices above and maybe some parking in the middle of the block," said Ronald M. Kreitner, executive director of WestSide Renaissance Inc., the nonprofit organization representing the interests of business owners and developers of the West Side.

Kreitner said the south side of the block is being envisioned as having a heavier retail presence than the north side of the block. Grinnell agrees, although she stopped short of saying the redevelopment would return that area to its retail heydays, when the West Side was known as Baltimore's shopping district.

"I don't see Lexington Street and the West Side area becoming the retail corridor that it was in the past. It's going to be more of a neighborhood kind of environment," she said. "The retail that will locate there will be based on two things: One, the people that are living there. And two, the proximity to the university."

While it has been agreed upon the block will incorporate some type of retail, little else has been decided. That will be left up to the developers.

However, the city has decided to reopen Lexington Street to vehicular traffic, as it did on the block between Eutaw and Howard streets.

"The decision to reopen the street to traffic was made for residents and office workers there," Kreitner said. "If you drive on the other block, you'll notice that there is a tight turning radius ... with one lane going each way and one lane of parking."

The street was designed that way to encourage a leisurely pace of driving, lending the block to shoppers and residents."

While work on the street and the 600-space parking garage planned for the south block could begin by year's end, a groundbreaking for the site itself is not expected for at least a year from the time of the request for proposals.

The biggest hurdle yet to be cleared, Grinnell said, is relocating some of the existing businesses.

"We can't start and then stop in midstream and start over again," she said. "Once we embark on this, on that first day after we send out letters informing them we're acquiring their properties, it starts right then. And it's going to take $30 to $40 million."