Past Neighborhood Plans

 

“The neighborhoods surrounding the West Baltimore MARC station have been the focus of extensive community planning.”

(2015 Plan West Baltimore MARC Station Area Redevelopment Strategy)

 

2015:

West Baltimore MARC Station Area Redevelopment Strategy - April 22, 2015

Some Key Findings:

  • The Station Design Is Critical: “The multimodal connectivity and improved regional accessibility provided by a Red Line/MARC transfer underpins the potential long-term opportunity at the West Baltimore station.”

  • Stand-Up a Project Lead: “Establish a ‘Project Lead’ both internally and externally to streamline information and advocate for these goals and objectives.”

  • Cut Red Tape: “Streamline the development process.”

  • Start Small: “Focus on small-scale , infill residential development with the station area.”

  • Think Big: ‘Land Bank’ the parking lots and other sites closest to the MARC station for future development.”

 
 


2008:

West Baltimore MARC Station Area Master Plan

(City of Baltimore, April 22, 2015)

Some Key Findings:

- “The station area’s primary strength will be its mutimodal transportation access and large future development sites (the MARC parking lots).”2. Neighborhood Homes Investment Act (NHIA) - a federal bill, co-introduced by Maryland Senator Cardin, designed to incentivize renovation of, and creation of affordable housing with, vacant properties. With 6000 vacant properties in the Key Focus Area currently unprofitable to renovate, this subsidy, when coupled with Maryland bill HB1239/SB0859 (passed in 2021 - thank you Delegate Lierman and Senator Hayes) represents perhaps the only reasonable way forward to address the dual enormous challenges of vacant houses and affordable housing: to do so with a subsidized free market. The federal bill is still in committee.

 
 

3. A New Modern, Multi-Modal, Centerpiece West Baltimore MARC Station - to anchor a Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) center for the Key Focus Area. The station and TOD center would represent an entirely new way of thinking about West Baltimore’s relationship to Washington - as a gateway to that powerful economic engine.

But it would also be nothing short of a keystone development for West Baltimore itself - finally, truly and completely knitting together, with its commercial center and network of pedestrian bridges, the neighborhoods north and south of Route 40.

Coupled with a reimagined “Highway to Nowhere” bookending the eastern edge of the TOD district, and a restarted Red Line project, the station and TOD center, and the neighborhoods around them, would be Baltimore’s next great revitalization success story - and critically, they wouldn’t be anywhere near the waterfront.

(All images are conceptual references taken from local developments, and meant to indicate stylistic possibilities for the available parcels.)