Downtown Baltimore is having a moment | GUEST COMMENTARY
For all the right reasons, Downtown Baltimore has been a preoccupation, a topic of intense focus, discussion and understandable concern among business and political leaders, residents and our city neighbors north, south, east and west.
As it has been for decades, Downtown continues to be the economic engine of Baltimore, generating more than $122 million in property taxes, 85% of hotel taxes, 75% of the parking taxes and 16% of all income taxes collected by the city. At the same time, Downtown Baltimore — with its major league sports venues, 26 museums, 20 parks, four libraries, 59 public artworks, dozens of restaurants and top-tier entertainment venues (including the new CFG Bank Arena that drew over 800,000 fans to the more than 124 events, including 38 sell-outs in just its first year) — continues to be the place to be, visit and, increasingly, call home.
As we just shared in our 2023 State of Downtown Report, Downtown Baltimore is among the fastest-growing neighborhoods in the city, with over 41,000 residents living within the 1-mile radius of the Central Business District. That number, consistent with the national trend of adaptive reuse of commercial properties into residential units, is expected to continue to grow, with nearly 7,000 new downtown residential units by 2028. And, as we know, with new residents comes increased demand for new retail, dining, leisure and entertainment options.
Essential to the increased vitality we’re all working to create in Downtown is the steady stream of visitors we depend on from near and far. To their credit, Visit Baltimore has reclaimed pre-COVID tourism levels, resulting in 27 million visitors in 2023 who spent $3.2 billion in our restaurants, hotels, museums and entertainment venues — all of which supports the success of our retailers.
For Downtown to reach its full potential, our retail partners, both large and small, must flourish. While Baltimore managed to keep pace with national retail occupancy rates in 2023, our Downtown district experienced a modest year-over-year decline. It’s why we’re more determined than ever to bolster existing retailers while also fostering an environment that proves irresistible to new businesses. With the support of city American Rescue Plan funding, we’ve expanded our local and minority business retail initiatives, including BOOST, which supports Black-owned businesses, and Operation Storefront, which offers grants to retail businesses that relocate in vacant storefronts downtown. Last year, Downtown Partnership awarded 23 grants and operational support to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and small business owners totaling more than $2 million. In the coming weeks, we will announce our BOOST Harborplace Local Tenancy Program, which will activate empty retail space within the Harborplace pavilions. This initiative is proving vital to minority entrepreneurs by helping them advance their business concepts beyond a kiosk or food truck, boosting their prospects for long-term success.
While employers and employees continue to navigate the new reality of hybrid work models — a trend accelerated by COVID-19 — Downtown’s employee base is getting an infusion of more than 5,000 state employees moving into refurbished commercial office space during this year and next. Nearly 400 employees of the Maryland Comptroller’s Office have already arrived, taking up 67,000 square feet of office space.
The renewed momentum underway is further fueled by the ambitious plans of Baltimore son David Bramble to reimagine what generations have known as Harborplace, plans that admittedly require continued broad discussion and, ultimately, the assent of voters on the November ballot. But not since the late ’70s and early ’80s has there been this much focus, this much determination — this much intentionality to define the possibilities and future of Downtown. And the benefits will extend across our entire region.
Two years ago, we engaged the Urban Land Institute to help us map a blueprint for Downtown. Ultimately, they validated what we already knew and helped us define four key takeaways that we have since been working on collectively:
- Activate our public spaces and enhance streetscape infrastructure.
- Increase ground-floor activity and maximize use of all vacant properties.
- Address crime.
- Develop a Downtown strategic framework.
Working together with Mayor Brandon Scott and his administration, along with dozens of our key stakeholders, we have been developing an inclusive strategic action plan, known as Downtown RISE, the full details of which will be announced by the mayor in the coming days. From the start, we recognized the need to more fully optimize our many assets, to think and plan boldly, considering what other municipalities have done well and what we need to do better. And then last year, Downtown Partnership partnered with Byrnes & Associates and others to map our development ecosystem. The good news is that from 2018 to 2028, we identified $6.5 billion of Downtown development under construction or being planned. The even better news: The number has since increased by $400 million, totaling $6.9 billion in planned investment in Downtown Baltimore.
Over the past three years, Downtown Partnership has been entrusted with more than $34 million in state grant funding for capital improvement projects, enabling us to make visible, tangible improvements to the Downtown landscape and to enhance quality of life. Building on Urban Land Institute’s recommendations, we are activating and enhancing park spaces — like with our Spring Break Skate programming — planning for the new Liberty Dog Park, expanding successful ground-level retail initiatives (BOOST and Operation Storefront) and increasing public safety in a collaborative approach with our partners at the University of Maryland Baltimore, as well as with our city and state public safety leaders.
The State of Downtown is much more than numbers. It’s about cooperation, collaboration, a shared vision and determination. In short, it’s about being more than the sum of our parts. When this essential business district and neighborhood thrives, Baltimore thrives, and along with it, so does Maryland.
Expanding on Gov. Wes Moore’s assertion that “This is Maryland’s decade, and Baltimore’s time,” this is unquestionably Downtown’s moment. Together, with our public and private partners — our many Downtown stakeholders and those well beyond our perimeter — we intend to make the most of it.
Shelonda Stokes (sstokes@dpob.org) is president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore. The full State of Downtown Report can be accessed online here: https://bit.ly/3W40wk9.