Tour of proposed development in Remington draws a crowd. (Photo by John Dean)

story by FERN SHEN and photos, except where noted, by JOHN DEAN

North Baltimore do-it-yourselfers may be thrilled by the prospect of a Lowe’s home improvement store in Remington — ‘Cool, I won’t have to go to the ‘burbs to buy plywood!’ — but there is clearly much more at stake. A $65 million mixed-use project, the Lowes redevelopment would also include a supermarket, other retail, and 50 to 60 residential units. In online forums, chilly church-hall meetings and snowy neighborhood walking tours,  the project is being closely examined and hotly debated.

Will it be a low-end, big-box suburban fortress, with stores facing in toward a parking lot, in effect presenting their backsides to the community? Could it be made to integrate into the neighborhood, and instead bolster ongoing efforts to remake the Remington zeitgeist, from bleak auto repair district to vibrant residential area?

Pro meets Con

At a meeting last Monday night at the Church of the Guardian Angel in Remington, the community grappled with these two opposing scenarios and opinion was definitely mixed.

“It looks like two big, ugly malls plopped in the middle of Remington,” said Megan Hamilton, one of about 25 people listening to the developer’s team discuss the project. “It’s got these big walls and all the stores face inward to the parking lot. It’s like, ‘Oh god, protect me from all these scary people.’”

((All photos in this online gallery are by Baltimore photographer/videographer John Dean, who has a larger slideshow about the Remington project here.))

Others at the meeting seemed pretty enthusiastic, especially about the project’s potential to lift up struggling Remington.

“There have been real positive changes here in the last ten years, but because of the economy, still no jobs,” said Betsy Childs, a member of the Greater Remington Improvment Association (GRIA). “The fact that they can offer all these jobs is impressive. I mean, you’ve got a got truck loading area. That means midnight shifts!”

Hamilton and Childs aren’t actually that far apart. Childs ackowledges there are some design problems and Hamilton, program director of Creative Alliance, knows many of her neighbors “really need the jobs” the development could bring. “I’m just here to hound-dog the process,” cracked Hamilton, to break the tension at the Monday meeting.

And it was tense, at moments. “Most of the stores are going to face in, right?” an audience member said. “I don’t think I’m ready to say ‘most,’” developer Rick Walker replied. At another point, someone on the development team promised the building facades would be compatible with those in the neighborhood, and an audience member called out: “So that means brick, right?” Walker answeried quickly: “I did NOT say brick.”

The plans are intentionally sketchy, Baltimore attorney Jon M. Laria hastened to say, in order to allow for these very dialogues, as the design evolves to respond to the community’s point of view. (Laria is working with the developers on the project.)

A formal community response will come eventually from associations like GRIA, which has not taken a position yet. In the meantime, though, they are grappling with red-hot issues that will be familiar to any neighborhood contemplating a development proposal — and wondering whether it’s a Faustian bargain or a winning lottery ticket.

Anderson Auto leaving

The site has become available because of the imminent departure of Anderson Automotive, a half-century-old Baltimore business that includes a Honda and a GM dealership. Bruce Mortimer, whose family owns Anderson, has told the community he decided to leave after bankrupt GM informed him in a letter they were no longer selling cars from his location.

End of an era? (Photo by Fern Shen)

The project developer is WV Urban Developments, a partnership of Walker Developments Inc. and locally-based Lawrence Cager. In several public meetings held over the past month, they have been describing their plan for the approximately 11-acre area bounded by Maryland Avenue, 25th Street/Huntingdon Avenue, 24th Street and, on the irregularly-shaped western edge, Sisson Street and the CSX railroad tracks:

The anchor for the project would be a two-level structure on the northwest edge of the project, with a supermarket on top and a Lowe’s store-and-garden center below – a configuration made possible by the parcel’s steep topography. (The land drops off sharply on the west side.)  The plan includes a truck-loading area and a three-story parking garage on 24th Street.

Other retail buildings are planned for the east side of the project, in the block bounded by Howard, Maryland, 24th and 25th streets. There, the developers are talking about 50 to 60 units of housing facing out, along Maryland Avenue. About 16 small retail stores would line the first floor of these houses, facing inward toward the parking area that sits on the interior of this block.

The developers promise 400 construction jobs and 800 permanent jobs. (The Mayor’s Office of Employment Development has been talking to residents about job training in connection with the project.)

Reaction in Remington

At Monday night’s community meeting, the extreme ends of the opinion spectrum were represented. “I don’t really want this here,” said Roy Skeen, objecting to the presumption that the development is a fait accompli. To Bill Cunningham, meanwhile, who owns a number of properties in the area, the fait IS pretty much accompli. “It’s going to be great for the community!” he said. “We are a junk yard community — junk cars, junk boats. I’ve been fighting for a year and a half and this will help.”

A Remington resident's blog about the neighborhood.

Also inclined to be positive are many casual observers in the community who welcome the expanded shopping choices the project could bring, and not just for hardware: “It would be great for our neighborhood to have — especially if they put a Trader Joe’s there,” said musician Caleb Stine, a Remington resident. “I’m trying to float that idea!”

Good luck with that, Caleb. So far, aside from Lowe’s, the other retailers being mentioned by the developers are tenants like Staples, A.J. Wright and Anna’s Linens.

Stine is typical, though, of the Remington artists and community activists who have been working to strengthen the neighborhood by promoting area institutions (The Community School, Duff Goldman’s Charm City Cakes, Dizzy Izzie’s) and idealistic projects (a community garden, youth band and radio show, Halloween festivities on “Hauntingdon” Avenue.) Stine admits he hasn’t really looked into the Lowe’s project’s design issues. Among neighbors who have, however, some have been, it’s fair to say, aghast.

“The design has to do two things. It’s supposed to meet the needs of the tenants who will occupy it and the community that’s going to use it. In terms of the community’s needs, the design, to me, at this point, is a complete failure,” GRIA vice president Chris Merriam said Monday, after the meeting. “This isn’t what we deserve. We deserve buildings that are accessible at the street level. Not this suburban design that makes the place separate from the community.”

Developer's drawing of northeast corner of project. (Photo by John Dean)

A number of fears were apparent Monday night. Would traffic off I-83 and the 28th street bridge be overwhelming? Would the buildings be too modern-looking? How would the Maryland Avenue part look? You’d see the backsides of the street-level, inward-facing retail and the second and third-floor living units would be stacked above?

Nearby communities weigh in

East of Remington, residents share many of these concerns, said Peter Duvall, vice presient of the Old Goucher Community Association. “We need to know a lot more specifics in order to take a position.” One of his initial worries, he said, is about traffic. “It’s hard to do much about the traffic flow. There’s tons of speeding traffic on Howard, you can’t make it like ‘The Avenue ‘in Hampden,” Duvall said. “People will find you might have to drive your car to get from Lowe’s (across Howard) to Anna’s Linens and it might not be a pleasant experience.”

Houses on Maryland Ave. would face the eastern edge of the project. (Photo by Fern Shen)

Likewise, Charles Village hasn’t taken a position on the development either, but Charles Village Civic Association board member Matthew Compton has a lot of strong initial reactions. One is quite positive: “I give them credit,” said Compton, who is an architect. “To stack that supermarket on top of the Lowes is a lot better than having a Lowe’s at one end, a supermarket at the other and a sea of parking in between.”

Generally, though, he’s pretty critical. “I haven’t been excited by what I’ve seen so far,” he said. He shares Merriam’s concern about “so many properties facing in toward a parking lot. This is not what a city is.” Compton speculates that the architects are hampered by the fact that there are no firm commitments from tenants, so they can’t show the custom-designed features that would make the project more palatable to neighbors.

“I feel this is where they are headed,” he said. “You don’t have as attractive a baseline, so (that) any old tenant will be able to come in there.”  Getting it right is important, he argues, because the right development could hurt or help this whole  north central part of the city. “That area between Hopkins and the train station, including that Station North Area, is really starting to pop,” Compton said. “You’d hate to see something that stunts that growth.”

How to make it work?

While organizations like GRIA and CVCA ponder strategy, some folks are just trying to make practical suggestions. (Hamilton is one of them, though she puts it differently: “I want it not to be as ugly as it could be!”)

“I would like to see setbacks and lots of green on the exteriors of buildings, ivy or some kind of vines,” she said. If the old stone church at the corner of 24th and Sisson is demolished, she said, the stones should be used for a low wall separating residential 24th Street from the Lowe’s truck loading area. (Walker actually agreed to this at one of the meetings, she said.) The current plan calls for a high wall in that spot, to completely hide the trucks. Light pollution and traffic are two other areas where Hamilton has a lot of ideas.

Stone church at 24th and Sisson. (Photo by John Dean.)

Bicyclists are also speaking up, including one bike advocate at the Monday night meeting who pointed out that the project would send more cars east onto Maryland Avenue, a popular north-south route for cyclists.  Earlier this year, he noted, a bicyclist was killed nearby, in an accident with a truck on Maryland Avenue, at the Lafayette intersection.

Finally, planner-types from across the region have been weighing in, with both sour reactions (“pure bottom-feeding!”) and earnest suggestions for the project, whose basic premise — returning retail to the urban core, preventing car trips to the suburbs — is what they’re all about.

“It could be very-tastefully done, a modern take on the old mills that once inhabited the valley,” wrote a commenter on the Google Group, Envision-Baltimore. Put “a line of rover birches in the gardens and disease resistant American elms at the curb,” another offers.

Experts get very specific about this project on Envision, suggesting changes in the layout, orientation, and size of buildings and parking structures. (Brew contributor Gerry Neily lays out his ideas here.) City planners would do well to comb through the Envision threads for free and heartfelt ideas.

Anyone who wants to get involved in discussions about this project should contact their neighborhood association. A working group is being formed (with representatives from the city, the developers and the affected communities) to coordinate the process. (Compton, for example, is the liason from Charles Village. He can be reached at compton.m@gmail.com .  The Remington designee, Chris Merriam, is at remplan@gmail.com .)