Along a block of North Calvert Street, surrounded by crumbling and boarded-up rowhouses, home buyers are shelling out $400,000 and more for luxury townhouses sprouting on the site of long-demolished buildings.
At Clipper Mill in Hampden, Md., new residents are moving into a cluster of former industrial buildings converted to apartments and condominiums and are snapping up new townhouses.
And in Owings Mills, bulldozers have just begun digging ground for a nearly 50-acre town center of homes, offices, shops, restaurants, hotel, community college branch and public library.
None of the developments boasts the water views that have sparked unprecedented booms in Baltimore and the region. But the projects all offer something else: access to mass transit.
After decades of suburban sprawl, high density transit-oriented development — long a pie-in-the-sky vision among urban planners–is now hot.
In Maryland, about $2.1 billion worth of transit-oriented projects are under way or in the conceptual stage as government officials and planners increasingly seize on the concept to spearhead redevelopment, manage sprawl and traffic gridlock.
With the addition of the long-planned Red Line, a proposed transit route designed to connect the Baltimore area’s hodgepodge system of commuter bus and rail service, the still-nascent movement could explode, especially as the city continues to pull more residents from higher-priced Washington.
Cities such as San Diego; Portland, Ore.; and Dallas have been actively implementing it for at least a decade. In the Washington area, development centered around Metro stations has been credited with reviving Silver Spring’s center and with boosting jobs and housing in Arlington County while keeping traffic in check.
Now, heightened demand is spurring more developments centered around transit. Young professionals, empty-nesters and singles are increasingly seeking out homes in lively, walkable downtowns and redeveloped suburbs where they can park their cars and walk or ride transit to jobs, stores and entertainment. Growing traffic congestion, ever-lengthening commutes and the spiraling price of houses as well as gasoline add to the appeal.
“Traffic has made people want to live in neighborhoods where they can walk and bike and take public transit,” said Gloria Ohland, a spokeswoman for non-profit Reconnecting America.
Plus, “American households are becoming smaller, older and more nontraditional, and those people don’t want to live all by themselves out in the suburbs.”
In addition, as many cities invest heavily in transit, developers are realizing the potential, said Robert T. Dunphy, a senior resident fellow for transportation at the Urban Land Institute.
“The market is there, and that attracts the attention of developers,” Dunphy said.
In the Baltimore metro area, emerging transit-centered developments have the potential to handle nearly a quarter of the household growth projected over the next two decades, according to Hidden in Plain Sight, a 2004 report of the Center for Transit-Oriented Development.
The idea of walkable, mixed-use environments around public transit has been gaining traction, too, because proposed transit projects are more likely to win highly competitive federal funds if they can show how well they mesh with existing subway, light rail and commuter train systems.
Federal officials also look at whether local governments encourage such development and whether developers have made commitments.
The best designed projects, experts say, promote transit ridership, reduce dependency on autos, spur creation of homes and jobs and use land resources efficiently.
For some people, having transit near their homes or jobs simply makes sense.
Market research consultant Ernst Valery and his wife, Dana, now living in New York, bought one of the new Station North townhouses because they like the neighborhood’s cultural life and mix of young professionals, artists and students.
Living just blocks from Penn Station and a quick train ride to clients, business or entertainment in Washington or New York proved an even bigger selling point.
“The fact that this is two blocks from the train station had a big impact on our decision,” said Valery, 28. “We would like to reduce our use of the car to weekend excursions and to visit family in other cities and not to have an everyday need to get around with the car.”
The availability of subway, light rail and commuter trains and buses has helped drive redevelopment on the city’s west side, where 1,500 market-rate apartments have come online in the last few years, along with offices and shops around the refurbished Hippodrome theater.
About half the employees of businesses that have moved into the area either walk to work or take transit, said Ronald M. Kreitner, executive director of Westside Renaissance Inc. Similarly, many of the new apartment dwellers do not have cars or have just one, he said.
“The west side is the epitome of a transit-friendly growth area,” Kreitner said. “We have people who work at Hopkins in East Baltimore and take the Metro. We have people who work out at BWI and take the light rail.”
In downtown Baltimore, the Cordish Co. is planning to build a 34-story residential tower with street-level entertainment-oriented retailers and parking atop the underground Market Place Metro station.
And at Clipper Mill in Hampden, the light rail line at the foot of the wooded 17-acre site figured heavily in developer Struever Bros. Eccles and Rouse’s decision to transform the former industrial complex into apartments, condominiums, townhouses, single-family homes, offices and artists’ studios.
So far, 25 of the 34 townhouses under construction have sold, as have half the 62 condominiums. An additional 28 single-family and duplex homes are planned, all just steps from the Woodberry light rail stop.
“There’s a market of people who want options,” said Tim Pula of Struever Bros. “Most people own cars, especially in Baltimore, and Baltimore is not going to turn into New York, but there are people within Baltimore who like having options. Transit-oriented development is critical to the long-term health and viability of Baltimore.”
When Scott Sherman, a 38-year-old attorney, planned to move to Baltimore and commute to his job in Washington, he discovered it wasn’t easy to get from trendy Canton and Locust Point to Penn Station. But Clipper Mill was just a short hop up the Jones Falls Expressway. And it had the light rail line for trips downtown.
“There are some cool, funky things going on by Fort McHenry and out by Canton,” said Sherman, who moved into his new three-bedroom Clipper Mill townhouse in December. “But ultimately, I needed to be close to the train station.”
Even with the flurry of projects, transit-oriented development in the Baltimore area is “still an emerging trend not nearly as far along as other specific regions,” said Henry Kay, director of the Baltimore Transit Alliance, an organization that promotes improvements in regional transit.
“The city and counties are now aware of it as a form of development that solves a number of problems … And there are a small number of excellent developers that understand it well and know how to take advantage of it. But we have a long way to go,” he said.
The proposed Red Line offers the chance to make a quantum leap in improving public transit and fostering mixed-use development near the lines, say proponents, among them state and city officials, planners and community activists.
