West side, Lowe's project, current layout.

by GERALD NEILY

The city’s relationship to Howard and 25th Street was largely defined long ago by the fate of two bridges, one built and the other dismantled.

Busy Howard Street was once quiet Oak Street, until a large bridge was built over the Jones Falls Valley, making Howard the city’s most automobile-oriented route out of downtown. Some years later, the high trestle bridge that was a northwest extension of 25th Street was dismantled. (This bridge carried streetcars on Huntingdon Avenue over the Stoney Run Valley to Hampden and its destruction was part of the city-wide dismantling of the streetcar system.) The elimination of this bridge turned busy Huntingdon Avenue into a dead end, and took much of 25th Street’s identity with it.

The currently-proposed Lowe’s shopping complex is the biggest development to shape the identity of Howard and 25th Street since the fate of those two bridges was sealed. Will it become just another auto-oriented fortress along Howard Street, or will it revive 25th Street to its former urban prominence? This is really the core question.

Lowes project, suggested changes in yellow.

In its earlier incarnation, 25th Street was a classic urban shopping street, but now it could benefit greatly from an infusion of energy from this new development: provided it can be assimilated into its urban environment. So, the key to making the Lowe’s development work is to give it a strong urban face along 25th Street and thus make it the anchor of its struggling commercial district.

The site geography is actually very conducive to making this work, the greatest portion of which is in a large gully beyond the west end of 25th Street. This is where the Lowe’s and the supermarket are proposed, along with the vast majority of the parking in a multi-level structure built into the gully, mostly hidden by the CSX railroad tracks and a large industrial warehouse now being renovated into a storage facility.

Here are the possible strategies that could make this work:

1 – Make the site entrance at the west end of 25th Street look and feel like an extension of 25th Street. This can be done by using street-quality curbs, sidewalks and crosswalks into the site. The bend of 25th Street into Huntingdon Avenue could also be treated to give Huntingdon its own identity as a separate residential street and a gateway to the Remington community, perhaps with a landscaped median and a neighborhood welcome sign.

2 – Extend the buildings in the Lowe’s development all the way to the sidewalk edges at this 25th Street site entrance, at the west side of Howard Street, and at the south end of Huntingdon Avenue (shown in orange on the sketch above). This will give the Lowe’s complex far greater visibility at the end of the bend between 25th and Huntingdon, instead of being hidden away in the gully, and allow it to serve as an “anchor” for the west end of the 25th Street shopping district. These new buildings can be situated so that they are most accessible from the middle parking level, distributing parking usage most efficiently, since the Lowe’s and the supermarket will likely draw parkers predominately to the top and bottom parking levels.

3 – Reduce the retail intensity on the east side of Howard Street. This becomes feasible by increasing the retail intensity on the west side of Howard, as described above. At the very least, the truck loading dock that would disrupt quiet 24th Street between Howard and Maryland Avenue should be eliminated. At most, the parking deck east of Howard can also be eliminated, which will allow for a much more pedestrian-friendly and street oriented plan.

4 – Provide all development on 25th Street and Maryland Avenue with entrances directly from the street sidewalks. 25th Street should have retail frontage along the entire block face between Howard to Maryland, to reinforce it as an urban shopping street. Maryland Avenue should have residences which all front directly onto the street sidewalk. Driveways from both streets to provide access to rear parking would be fine, and these driveways would be excellent locations for corner building doors that can be made visible and active from both the street and the parking lot.

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

5 – Save the stone church building at 24th and Sisson Streets. This gracious, irreplaceable old building is the perfect transition between the hulking new development and the adjacent neighborhood south of 24th Street, which features small-scaled houses. It could also become an identifying landmark for the retail complex, enabling potential non-local customers to associate it with Sisson Street, which provides the easiest and best access to the site from the Jones Falls Expressway via 28th Street.

- Regular Brew contributor Gerald Neily was a Baltimore City transportation planner.