Friday, January 26, 2007
Housing at East-Side Biopark
.... As many as 700 new homes are being proposed for a downtrodden section of East Baltimore next to the Johns Hopkins medical campus as part of a $1 billion plan to build a life sciences park there.
That's more than double the minimum of 300 housing units -- a mixture of apartments, townhouses and condominiums -- originally set by planners of the proposed New East Baltimore Community, which is slated to be built in a neighborhood plagued by high crime rates and boarded-up rowhouses.
To accommodate the developers' interest in building housing, the initial phase of the project has been expanded to include 30 acres north of Johns Hopkins Hospital, up from 20 acres. The overall project is designed to be 80 acres.
Each of the three development teams being considered to build the project's $500 million first phase is interested in constructing more than 500 homes as part of the project, said Jack Shannon, president and chief executive officer of East Baltimore Development Inc., the city-affiliated organization overseeing the project. One developer has even proposed more than 700 housing units, he said.
"There is a marketplace for housing north of the Johns Hopkins campus," Shannon said.
The developers believed that more new apartments, condominiums or townhouses could create enough "critical mass" to generate momentum for the neighborhood's turnaround, Shannon said.
Housing could also be attractive to Johns Hopkins graduate students in such fields as medicine, public health and nursing, most of whom live off campus.
Some of the East Baltimore families who are being moved out of the area to clear way for the project may want to move back to the neighborhood when the project is done, Shannon said.
Bill Cassidy, sales manager of the Long & Foster realty office in Fells Point, agreed there will be strong demand for new housing north of the Hopkins campus, especially since nearby Butcher's Hill and Patterson Park are already seeing an influx of new residents who are sprucing up old rowhouses.
"Once the whole area is redone, it will become very much like a new part of the city," he said.
The area north of Hopkins could compete with new suburban townhouse developments because there are always people looking to buy newly constructed homes, Cassidy said.
And the chance to avoid a highway commute to downtown Baltimore could be enticing for many homebuyers.
Spacious townhouses with on-site parking and easy access to the subway could be attractive to buyers who also are looking at small rowhouses with no parking spaces in nearby Canton.
The 11-member EBDI board is now slated to make a decision on a master developer for the overall project sometime in December, a delay from the original goal of mid-November. Shannon said the decision has been delayed because the board wants to do a careful and thorough review of all three proposals.
At first, the project's planners did not know, Shannon said, how big the market would be for housing in the area.
One third of the housing would be sold or rented at market rates. Another third would be designated as affordable housing, with the rest set aside for low-income households. All three proposals include a mix of rental properties and for-sale properties.
One of the three potential lead developers, Steven Grigg, president and chief executive of Washington-based Republic Properties Corp., said the residential part of the project is "probably the most important feature from an urban planning standpoint" because it could have the most impact on the area. He declined to describe his company's proposal in detail.
The other two possible development team leaders are the Washington division of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises and a joint venture between Baltimore development firm Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc. and New Hampshire-based Lyme Properties LLC. Neither could be reached for comment.
The timeline for the initial phase of the project is likely to become clearer when the developer is picked next month.
Johns Hopkins has one graduate student dormitory on the East Baltimore campus, Reed Hall
"We believe that there is some demand for some folks who want to come back to the campus," said Richard Grossi, vice president and chief financial officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Additional apartments could help to meet that demand, he said.
Johns Hopkins Medicine has committed to lease 100,000 square feet of office and laboratory space in the life sciences park, Grossi said.
That space is slated for researchers in the medical school's Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.
The project's first phase calls for 1 million square feet of office space. Hopkins is playing a role, Grossi said, in trying to recruit companies to the park.
"We've had some people come unsolicited and say, 'Look we're interested in being there,' " said Grossi, who declined to give names. "I'd like a couple of large companies." ¶ 4:11 PM
That's more than double the minimum of 300 housing units -- a mixture of apartments, townhouses and condominiums -- originally set by planners of the proposed New East Baltimore Community, which is slated to be built in a neighborhood plagued by high crime rates and boarded-up rowhouses.
To accommodate the developers' interest in building housing, the initial phase of the project has been expanded to include 30 acres north of Johns Hopkins Hospital, up from 20 acres. The overall project is designed to be 80 acres.
Each of the three development teams being considered to build the project's $500 million first phase is interested in constructing more than 500 homes as part of the project, said Jack Shannon, president and chief executive officer of East Baltimore Development Inc., the city-affiliated organization overseeing the project. One developer has even proposed more than 700 housing units, he said.
"There is a marketplace for housing north of the Johns Hopkins campus," Shannon said.
The developers believed that more new apartments, condominiums or townhouses could create enough "critical mass" to generate momentum for the neighborhood's turnaround, Shannon said.
Housing could also be attractive to Johns Hopkins graduate students in such fields as medicine, public health and nursing, most of whom live off campus.
Some of the East Baltimore families who are being moved out of the area to clear way for the project may want to move back to the neighborhood when the project is done, Shannon said.
Bill Cassidy, sales manager of the Long & Foster realty office in Fells Point, agreed there will be strong demand for new housing north of the Hopkins campus, especially since nearby Butcher's Hill and Patterson Park are already seeing an influx of new residents who are sprucing up old rowhouses.
"Once the whole area is redone, it will become very much like a new part of the city," he said.
The area north of Hopkins could compete with new suburban townhouse developments because there are always people looking to buy newly constructed homes, Cassidy said.
And the chance to avoid a highway commute to downtown Baltimore could be enticing for many homebuyers.
Spacious townhouses with on-site parking and easy access to the subway could be attractive to buyers who also are looking at small rowhouses with no parking spaces in nearby Canton.
The 11-member EBDI board is now slated to make a decision on a master developer for the overall project sometime in December, a delay from the original goal of mid-November. Shannon said the decision has been delayed because the board wants to do a careful and thorough review of all three proposals.
At first, the project's planners did not know, Shannon said, how big the market would be for housing in the area.
One third of the housing would be sold or rented at market rates. Another third would be designated as affordable housing, with the rest set aside for low-income households. All three proposals include a mix of rental properties and for-sale properties.
One of the three potential lead developers, Steven Grigg, president and chief executive of Washington-based Republic Properties Corp., said the residential part of the project is "probably the most important feature from an urban planning standpoint" because it could have the most impact on the area. He declined to describe his company's proposal in detail.
The other two possible development team leaders are the Washington division of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises and a joint venture between Baltimore development firm Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc. and New Hampshire-based Lyme Properties LLC. Neither could be reached for comment.
The timeline for the initial phase of the project is likely to become clearer when the developer is picked next month.
Johns Hopkins has one graduate student dormitory on the East Baltimore campus, Reed Hall
"We believe that there is some demand for some folks who want to come back to the campus," said Richard Grossi, vice president and chief financial officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Additional apartments could help to meet that demand, he said.
Johns Hopkins Medicine has committed to lease 100,000 square feet of office and laboratory space in the life sciences park, Grossi said.
That space is slated for researchers in the medical school's Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.
The project's first phase calls for 1 million square feet of office space. Hopkins is playing a role, Grossi said, in trying to recruit companies to the park.
"We've had some people come unsolicited and say, 'Look we're interested in being there,' " said Grossi, who declined to give names. "I'd like a couple of large companies." ¶ 4:11 PM
