Mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah pledges to block construction of high-rise apartments at Harborplace if he’s elected
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Baltimore mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah on Monday pledged to block the proposed construction of high-rise apartment buildings at Harborplace if he’s elected mayor.
In a morning news conference at McKeldin Square, Vignarajah criticized MCB’s $500 million proposal to redevelop the city-owned Harborplace property at Pratt and Light streets and called for a different approach.
Vignarajah said he particularly objects to plans by MCB to construct two apartment towers — rising 25 and 32 stories and containing a total of 900 to 1000 residences — on city-owned parkland where zoning does not currently permit housing. The developer has asked Baltimore’s City Council to rezone the land and waive current height limits to permit the two towers.
Vignarajah’s stance makes him the first candidate to take a strong stand against MCB’s redevelopment plan and make it a signature campaign issue. It sets him apart from current Mayor Brandon Scott, who has endorsed the plan and bragged that he secretly directed city agencies to assist MCB managing partner P. David Bramble.
Former “Mayor William Donald Schaefer would be turning over in his grave if he knew, thought, imagined that a future mayor might take this consecrated public ground and turn it over to developers to turn it into luxury high rises,” Vignarajah said.
“I am here to make a public pledge that what they are proposing will not happen when I am mayor,” he continued. “I will block the proposed construction of luxury high-rises in the Inner Harbor. We will not allow this most precious public space we have — certainly in Baltimore, perhaps on the Eastern seaboard — to be turned into an exclusive resort” for the wealthy.
In addition to two residential towers in place of the Light Street pavilion of Harborplace, MCB’s multi-phase proposal calls for offices, shops, restaurants, public space with a 2,000 seat amphitheater, and a two-tiered waterfront promenade.
MCB managing partner P. David Bramble has agreed to honor any requirements to set aside a certain percentage of apartments in the development as ‘affordable housing.’ But in a recent information session at the Maryland Science Center, he acknowledged that the rest of the units would rent for $3 per square foot per month, or $3000 a month for a 1,000-square-foot apartment, making them among the most expensive apartments in the city.
“In June of 1967 a promise was made to all future generations of Baltimoreans that our Inner Harbor waterfront would forever be dedicated public space,” the website states.
“Our current city leadership wishes to renege on that promise and allow large scale commercial development in our park.
“In the same way citizen action was able to save many Baltimore neighborhoods from eradication by a highway, citizen action is again necessary to keep Baltimore’s Inner Harbor a public park accessible to all.
“Our coalition is growing rapidly as more and more people learn about the plans to transform our public waterfront into yet another commercial development. We hope that you will join us.”
Vignarajah echoed those concerns in his statements at McKeldin Square, a city-owned public space and free speech zone that MCB hopes to make part of an expanded Harborplace redevelopment footprint. He was joined by economist Anirban Basu, American Visionary Art Museum co-founder Rebecca Hoffberger and a dozen others who support his position.
The candidate said he believes there are plenty of other parcels where luxury high rise apartments can be constructed in Baltimore, including the former News American site at 300 East Pratt Street that MCB controls. He also pointed to existing upscale housing at 414 Light Street, Harbor East and Baltimore Peninsula
“It is not as though we don’t have enough fancy apartments for fancy people,” he said. “What we don’t have enough of is public spaces and public parks, places that we can bring our families to celebrate all that is best and beautiful about Baltimore.”
Vignarjah said he isn’t against development, and he said would like to see affordable housing built all around the city. But “If you do want to build for the ultra-rich,” he said, “build on a property you already own.”
Asked what he would like to see happen at Harborplace, he said he believes the public needs to have more of a say in what is built there and that the city shouldn’t leave planning up to a private developer.
“I want to hear what the public wants to see here,” he said. “And the way to learn that is the way that other cities have gone about designing and developing their most rarified public spaces – Vancouver with Coal Harbor. New York City with the High Line. Sydney, Australia, with the Sydney Opera House. What they did was they had a master plan, they had a community-led process where, over the course of months, in a series of dozens of charettes, people in communities come together and say this is what we want.”
Vignarajah said he would assemble the best urban planners and thinkers to draw up a master plan to guide redevelopment of the Inner Harbor shoreline, with input from the public. Then once a master plan has been developed, he said, he would hold an international competition and seek design proposals that are in keeping with the agreed-upon master plan, and then have a blue-ribbon panel pick the best proposal to get built.
“We should assemble the greatest minds to think about the future of public spaces,” he said. “We should make sure there is representation from every walk of life and from every corner of the city, and collectively they should both gather public input and then channel that public voice into what becomes of our Inner Harbor.”
Above all, Vignarajah said, he wants the public to have a say in every step of the process. He said he wants ideas that “come from the people,” not developers. “I want it to come from a democratic process that’s done in open daylight,” he said.
If MCB wants to participate, he said, it would be welcome, but it would have to compete with everyone else. In his scenario, he said, “the developer comes at the end of the story, not the beginning. Developers don’t design our public spaces. They bid for the privilege of building them. And if they can’t make it profitable, I promise you someone else will.”
In the case of Harborplace, “we’re not talking about brownfields on the wrong side of the water that have no development and no arteries,” he said. “Look around you. [The Inner Harbor] is the easiest place in the world to build something that is both profitable and magical. Don’t set up this false dichotomy that the only way you can make a profit here is by destroying our public spaces…We know that a competitive process yields viable, profitable options.”
MCB officials argue that they did have an international competition for part of the site and chose a design for 10-story building called The Sail, by a firm called 3XN Architects from Copenhagen. But they never said who participated in the competition other than the winner, and they never showed any of the submissions that weren’t selected.
In other design competitions for buildings on public land, such as the University of Baltimore’s design competition for its law school at Charles Street and Mount Royal Avenue, or the Smithsonian Institution’s competition for a team to design its National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall, all of the entries were displayed in public before a winner was announced.
Even though elected officials such as Scott and City Council President Nick Mosby have backed MCB’s redevelopment proposal for Harborplace, construction can’t begin unless voters approve the plan in a citywide referendum.
In October, Mosby and City Council member Eric Costello introduced legislation that would give city residents a chance to support MCB’s project or turn it down at the ballot box in November. The council’s Economic and Community Development Committee will hold a hearing next week on that bill and others needed to change zoning and waive heights limits on the Harborplace property. The hearing will be held on February 13 at 2 p.m. at Baltimore City Hall, 100 N. Holliday Street.
