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Dan Rodricks: A sharply perceptive perspective on Harborplace from a Baltimore architect | STAFF COMMENTARY

A few years ago, I walked around a dismal Harborplace with Klaus Philipsen, the Baltimore architect and blogger who offers sharply perceptive commentary on matters of public interest. We talked about what Harborplace needed. High-rise apartment buildings never came up.

Of course, two towers with 900 apartments are now in MCB Real Estate’s proposal for the redevelopment of James Rouse’s brainchild on Baltimore’s public waterfront.

Philipsen watched, with the rest of us, as MCB’s plans for Harborplace won swift official approval.

Citizens will get to vote to allow (or not) the redevelopment during November’s election, but Philipsen contacted me because, he says, some questionable narratives have arisen in the effort to convince the public of the wonders of MCB’s plans.

For starters, he says, there are frequent references to Harborplace as a mall, an obsolete retail model.

“The pavilions,” he says, “were never designed as malls in the first place, but as ‘festival markets.’ Unlike malls, they were not large nor surrounded by parking lots. There were no anchor stores or national chains that make actual malls look like they were cloned. Instead, Jim Rouse’s pavilions were filled with local retail establishments, were carefully managed and included an ongoing series of entertaining activities to draw people.

“The failure of the pavilions came when the Rouse Company sold them to successors who paid no attention to carefully curated retail activities or upkeep.”

OK, but few people want to keep Harborplace as it is. The whole thing needs to be radically reimagined, right?

“There’s a narrative that suggests that only some old people who remember Harborplace’s heyday cling nostalgically to memories of Rouse and Mayor [William Donald] Schaefer and can’t tolerate change,” says Philipsen. “In fact, both Rouse and Schaefer preached that, for the Inner Harbor to stay successful, it had to continually evolve.

“So we have the National Aquarium, the Maryland Science Center and the Power Plant. The visitor center was added, the Constellation got a museum and Rash Field was redesigned with a second phase still to come. The city and the Waterfront Partnership made wise investments, especially the very popular skate park and playground.

“And all that was done without violating the zoning rules or the Harbor master plan that conceived the Inner Harbor as a large public space with some generally low-height attractions.”

But MCB argues that the Inner Harbor needs new attractions. It’s here that Philipsen brought up something I’ve tried to champion — a pedestrian drawbridge from the foot of Federal Hill to Pier Five, proposed 10 years ago in the excellent Harbor 2.0 plan. That would be a dazzling attraction.

“Much less clear is that the buildings in MCB’s renderings would serve a public purpose or truly be attractions that last,” Philipsen says. “Nobody ever clamored for high-rise apartments or an office building at Harborplace in any of MCB’s public listening sessions.”

But city officials, starting with Mayor Brandon Scott, are apparently excited about the MCB plan as a way to save Harborplace.

“The Harborplace pavilions were neglected and languished for too long, first under bad management and then in receivership, burdened by significant debt,” says Philipsen. “To his credit, Mayor Scott paid attention to the situation. But in the excitement he may have also skirted proper procedure. Developer interest in this prime waterfront real estate would have been sky-high if they would have been competitively offered with unfettered rights.”

David Bramble, the face of MCB, told me in an interview that downtown needs more apartment buildings. And isn’t it likely that the apartments are in the MCB plans to help pay for the project?

“The overall notion that more people living downtown would result in more people walking the streets and the promenade sounds convincing,” Philipsen says. “But, considering how many people have already moved to downtown in recent years without stemming the ongoing departure of retail and restaurants, one has to wonder if the effect is that straightforward.

“The Inner Harbor provides a central gathering space and bestows value on all surrounding uses. Nobody would consider putting apartments in New York’s Central Park and claim it would add more value. If Bramble wants to fund the new Harborplace markets with apartments, he could do this with his other properties across Pratt Street.”

That’s a reference to the old News-American site, a surface parking lot for the last 30 years. MCB is in a partnership to develop that, too. An apartment tower on that site would certainly help a renewed Harborplace.

“Whether one likes the bold design depicted on MCB’s renderings or not,” says Philipsen, “the project needs a proper professional vetting of the financial conditions, the urban design, the market conditions, the practicality of the towers and the long-term fit for downtown.”

The Baltimore Planning Commission already approved the plan, and that gets us to Klaus Philpsen’s main point.

“The custodians of this premier piece of real estate should not be so rash with expressing their full support for a plan that almost all of them saw only hours before the developer revealed it to a flabbergasted public,” he says. “They should wonder why there is hardly any design or planning professional who shares their excitement and consider the possibility that they may come to regret their haste and willingness to be pushed over by narratives that don’t hold water. It should not simply be left to the voters to put some reason into the process via the November referendum.”

But that’s what it will probably come to.