Public Housing: Let Me Set the Record Straight

Now public housing has always been somewhat of a hot button issue in Baltimore and every large city across the country and I would like to tell you where I stand on it. First of all I keep reading that's a waiting list to get in to public housing that's growing by the day. At the same time I hear that complexes continue to grow vacant. One could use the argument that beggars can't be choosers but that would be ignorant and wrong.Now why are complexes going vacant? It's not due to a decreasing number of qualified residents it's simply a matter of safety and the condition of the structures. Even with renovations in the 80s and 90s many complexes have fallen into a state of disrepair and residents are moving out and residents on waiting lists simply refuse to move in. Still it's not that simple there are some who would love to move in to the vacant run down complexes but the city is systematically emptying them out to demolish and rebuild them as new mixed income communities. If you've read my blog for any length of time you will know that I'm in favor of this and I'm against deep concentration of poverty that were the order of the day in the 1940s through the 1970s when the bulk of these complexes were built. I'm not against public housing in fact I think it's a necessity in breaking the cycle of poverty that's plagued Urban America for generations. Now how can government hand outs break the cycle of poverty you ask?Public housing in my opinion should be used a stepping stone. When you move into public housing your goal and the goal of the city should be to get you out quickly. In other words don't get too comfortable. Now how do we achieve this? When someone moves into public housing they will be assessed on their current situation and what it will take for them to be gainfully employed and no longer needing public housing. Now what all does this include? It includes free college education, job training, daycare, health and dental insurance (this can include drug rehab and counseling) and proper interview etiquette. Now that our public housing resident has become gainfully employed he/she can move out on their own and not need the assistance of public housing and the unit that's been vacated someone else can move in the whole process will start all over again. If the number of residents who need public housing dwindles the number of units allocated for public housing will go down as well. It almost sounds too easy right? This is just my Utopian ramblings that will never see the light of day.Now lets get back to the physical condition of the complexes. HOPE VI funding has dried up thanks in no small part to the war in Iraq so the city has stepped up the plate with redeveloping their blighted complexes. Uplands, O'Donnell Heights, Westport Homes Extension, 100 units of Cherry Hill Homes, and Somerset Homes either have or will hit the wrecking ball. There is talk of demolishing Douglass Homes and Perkins Homes. Other complexes that need redevelopment are LaTrobe Homes, Mount Winans Homes, Owsego Mall, and Poe Homes. Sure on paper the number of public housing units will go down but the vacancy rates in these complexes are so high that the number of functioning units once the redevelopment is complete won't be a whole lot lower than they are now. Not only that deep concentrations of poverty have been broken up and middle and upper income families will begin moving into once depressed neighborhoods.

Northern Parkway:Every Cloud Has a Silver Line

They say every cloud has a silver lining, that after every tragedy something good comes from it. Land on Northern Parkway west of I-83 is tragically underutilized but something good can come from it, redevelopment and a transit line; the Silver Line.

Northern Parkway was built in the earlier part of the 20th century before interstates to accommodate the automobile, the declining streetcars, and the increasingly suburban nature of north Baltimore. Today Northern Parkway is a four to six lane thoroughfare that runs east west from Belair Road to Liberty Heights Avenue. East of I-83 Northern Parkway isn't much of an issue, the neighborhoods although suburban are generally clean, relatively low crime and vacancy rates, and low poverty rates.

Now let me shift gears a little bit and talk about transit. I've spoken my opinions on the state of Baltimore's rail transit but I'm going talk right now as if everything in the Baltimore Regional Rail Plan was built already and exactly to my specifications granted hell will have frozen over and pigs will be flying but stay with me anyway. Many of the transit lines go through north Baltimore but they've got no connection within North Baltimore they all meet up Downtown. Suppose someone wants to stay in north Baltimore but wants to ride rail transit? That's where the new silver line comes in. It will allow north Baltimore region to ride rail transit without having to go Downtown if they don't want to.

The Silver line will be the only line that doesn't go Downtown but it will connect to other lines allowing for TOD and gentrification. The Silver Line will begin at Belair Road and then meet the Green Line Northern Parkway stop at Harford Road and will travel west along Northern Parkway and meet the Yellow Line at York Road and Belvedere Square. It will then meet Charles Street marking the northern terminus of the Charles St.Trolley Line. It will then meet the Blue Line at I-83 and continue west to meet the Green Line. My tweaking of the Green Line will have it meet Reisterstown Road and travel under it above Northern Parkway and then will turn westerly to run parallel to Northern Parkway and the Silver Line until it meets Wabash Avenue and the Green Line will turn south and run under Wabash Avenue which it currently runs above. After Wabash Avenue the Green and Silver Lines will no longer cross paths, Northern Parkway dead ends at Liberty Heights Avenue right after this. Now this is where things will get complicated because although Northern Parkway ends, the Silver Line still has a journey to complete. It will have a stop at Grove Park (The End of Northern Parkway) and then turn easterly to run under Liberty Heights Avenue. It will stop at Gwynn Oak Avenue at the newly redeveloped retail center that will replace Super Pride. It will continue on Liberty Heights until Garrison Boulevard where it have a stop and it will turn south and run under Garrison Boulevard. Garrison Boulevard ends at Clifton Avenue which will be a great place for a Walbrook Junction stop. It will run under Clifton Avenue for a New York Minute and then it will once again turn south and run under Hilton Parkway. The Silver Line will finally end once and for all at the red line's Rosemont. stop.

Now lets talk benefits of the Silver Line. West of I-83 Northern Parkway may eventually have a lot to offer. The road itself will be narrowed to 2 lanes in each direction with on street parking, sidewalks furniture plantings, additional lighting, and updated traffic signals. Mt. Washington basically turns it back on Northern Parkway with a thick forest separating the two. Well not anymore, new high density mixed use development with apartments, condos, and offices all with ground floor retail will replace the trees from I-83 to Reisterstown Road. Pimlico Middle, which closed last year will be torn and redeveloped in the process. Further down Northern Parkway the aging Seton Business Park will redeveloped as a high density 21st century office park. Across the street from the Seton Business Park is Grove Park and another large swath of trees. I bet you can't guess how I'd develop it huh? Well you're right another mixed use TOD development.

Once the Silver Line parts from Northern Parkway the benefits will be more limited because the neighborhoods aren't as blighted and land isn't available for development. One benefit may include better retail selections for residents like sit down restaurants and high quality grocery stores. Residents have been waiting many years for these services and haven't gotten them yet.

Now it has been said that every cloud has a silver lining but I don't think they were talking about rail transit and the development that follows. Now Here's your Silver Line.

Hotels:The Sign of a Great Economy or an Ailing One

I work in the hotel industry so I'm particularly excited about this. The 757 room Convention Center shows a huge commitment to the city of Baltimore and the belief that Baltimore's tourism economy will be viable for decades to come. It takes decades to make back the money one spends building and operating an upscale hotel so the owner of a hotel has to have great faith before committing such huge funds.

In addition to the convention center new hotel construction is drawing board for every big development project. The State Center Development, Westport, Canton Crossing, and the Westside of Downtown are slated to have an upscale hotel while two have already been built at Inner Harbor East. These are just new hotels this doesn't even account for the dozens of hotels that vary in age and amenities. With all this new hotel construction the new hotels will no doubt have features like Hi-Def TVs, WI-FI Internet access in all areas and over all more modern decor in sleeping rooms, conference rooms, banquet rooms, and restaurants. Will this mean that older hotels built from the 1980s and 1990s will lose business due to increased competition? Well they're not going down without a fight.

Many of Baltimore's upscale hotels are going through, have gone through or are slated to go through massive renovations. A general rule of thumb is that hotels need to be renovated every 5 years to keep current with market trends, technology, and decor. The cost of renovating a hotel with several hundred rooms, multiple restaurants, a couple dozen conference and banquet rooms is staggering. Hotels try to go as long as possible without renovating (I know from personal experience) but you can't delay the inevitable. The same projection that warrants the building a new hotel is used for renovating an existing one. You'll eventually make your money back. If these hotels didn't think Baltimore had the economy to support their hotels they wouldn't renovate and may even close but they're renovating mostly to the tune of eight figures.

If you read the paper and get depressed about all that's wrong with Baltimore such as a decaying housing stock, population loss, out of control murder rate, and a failing public school system just look at the construction and renovation of hotels to cheer yourself up because it speaks volume about Baltimore's economy and that thousands will travel here whether for business or pleasure.

Public vs. Private Investment: One Hand Washes the Other

What comes first? The Chicken or the Egg? This has been a question asked for centuries by every great philosopher. Every one can have a valid argument for each side. One can't find an answer. Keep in mind I'm not a great philosopher and I don't want to try to debunk the theory myself.Now we come to Baltimore,which has its own version of the chicken/egg argument. Public and private investment which comes first? There are many instances in the gentrification of Baltimore where one or the other has come first. The question still remains for neighborhoods that have yet to be gentrified, which will come first for Baltimore in the future, public or private dollars?As always lets first examine the past. Charles Center began with a group of Civic Leaders on the private sector headed by none other than James Rouse who formed the Greater Baltimore Committee. They came up with the Charles Center plan and presented it to the City. The City then paid for the acquisition and demolition of the buildings at the sight. Then the land was sold to developers who built the buildings known as Charles Center.

Next came the Inner Harbor, this started at the public sector with the promenade lining the waterfront, The Convention Center, the National Aquarium, and the Maryland Science Center. The first brick for the waterfront was barely laid when the private investment began pouring in. Rouse built the Harbor Place and the Gallery mixed use projects. The old Power Plant building was transformed into retail and hotels were being built by the dozens. Meanwhile on the residential side public investment began in the way of homesteading and the famous $1 row home in hopes of attracting private investors. It worked like a charm, after all this is Charm City and neighborhoods like Otterberin Federal Hill and Fels Point were transformed from gritty industrial wastelands to upscale rehabbed homes shops, boutiques, restaurants, and bars. Plans for Inner Harbor East were beginning to surface but that will be discussed later.While the Inner Harbor began thriving ever since the opening of Harbor Place many neighborhoods to the north west were not. One that stood out most was Sandtown Winchester. In 1987 upon Kurt L. Schmoke's election Sandtown was on the top of his agenda. The Enterprise Foundation and B.U.I.L.D., a charities that took interest in this distressed neighborhood were able to funnel $60 million in public and private dollars. They took a Comprehensive look at every thing in the neighborhood housing, education, employment, retail, crime, and health of the residents. Not surprisingly the whole neighborhood suffered from deep rooted problems in all departments. Some 21 years later the neighborhood has seen its share and successes and hardships which I will discuss in a post dedicated to it.

Then came the westside of Downtown. It didn't get the same renewal and attention that the Harbor and Central Business District did. It came at first in the form of Stadiums. First it was Oriole Park at Camden Yards then it was M&T Bank Stadium. Both were public/ private ventures where the government paid to have the sites and offered enormous tax breaks to the developers and owners of the teams. Although these were great additions to Downtown they didn't help the Westside that much. The Schmoke administration came up with the Westside Master Plan that involved tearing down almost every building in the district. Historic preservationists lobbied against this and the plan was scrapped. That didn't mean renewal didn't start on Baltimore's once thriving retail and shopping district it just came in the form of reusing existing historic buildings. I don't believe that the stadiums were the catalysts for change in the Westside. The renovation of Lexington Market and the Hippodrome Theatre brought in the big bucks to the Westside I believe. New development and investment of note on the private sector include the Stewarts Building, The Hecht Company Building, Centerpoint, Bank of America Superblock, and the Zenith. Public investment of note include the expansion of the University of Maryland Campus and the 757 Hilton Convention Center Hotel with a "Green" roof.

Another pet project of the Schmoke Administration was Inner Harbor East. The Inner Harbor East Urban Renewal Plan was set up before Schmoke took office as well as the purchasing of the land that would become Inner Harbor East by John Paterakis. The majority of the planning and financing on both the public and private sector happened during the Schmoke years. Most of the physical construction took place during the O'Malley years and will continue through the Dixon years. Inner Harbor East brought a hodgepodge of upscale restaurants and bars, a whole foods, two hotels of the Marriott brand, office space Legg Mason will be moving there, and apartments and condos like Spinnaker Bay, Inner Harbor Lofts, and The Promenade at Inner Harbor East to name a few.

Some projects were never meant to have private investment. The projects in question are HOPE VI. HOPE VI was the brain child of Maryland Senator Barbara Mukulski which ear marked federal grants for distressed public housing developments mainly high rises to be torn down and rebuilt as mixed income communities consisting mostly of town homes. The ink barely dried on the bill before Baltimore received grants for its distressed high rises. The finished products were for the most part a huge success albeit suburban in nature. When President George W. Bush took office HOPE VI funds were slashed almost to the point of no return. Baltimore then took the place of the feds and began tearing other distressed public housing developments and coming up with mixed income neighborhoods to take their place.

At the turn of the century Baltimore elected Martin O'Malley as their mayor. O'Malley brought a number of new ideas that used public funds to encourage private investment. First there were SNAP or Strateic Neighborhood Action Plans which took six clusters of neighborhoods mostly on the outer edges of the city. These clusters were in decent shape but were just starting to show signs of slipping. The SNAPS were publicly funded and used market forces and highlighted the neighborhood attributes to funnel in private dollars and eliminate blight that was just begining to appear. Another is Area Master Plans or AMPS AMPS were designed for neighborhoods that are more in the inner city and have suffered from blight, crime, and poor living conditions much worse and much longer than their SNAP counterparts. Much more intense intervention is needed to turn these neighborhoods around, mainly redevelopment and displacement. Another one which superceeds the two is porject 5000 in which the city aquires 5000 vacant properties and sells them to investors for $5,000. The investor must in turn spend an undetermined amount of money to rehab the property based on its condition and either live in or sell it to a home owner.

Now the year is 2008 and Baltimore's waterfront is on the verge of being built out. Canton transformed itself on its own with little outside help. That didn't stop Canton Crossing, a new mixed use development from being built. Now we come to Westport. Developer Patrick Turner will develop the vacant middle branch waterfront into yet another high density mixed use development. The difference between Canton Crossing and Westport is that Canton has already experienced a rebirth while Westport remains blighted. But if history is any indicator existing Westport will make a strong comeback after its waterfront's $2 Billion make over. Now we come to the Biotech Park. Johns Hopkins, Baltimore's largest employer has decided to build a biotech park in the blighted Middle East neighborhood just north of its hospital. Along with the Biotech Park 1200-1500 new and rehabbed mixed income homes are on tap for Middle East and its neighbors. Upon its completion all of East Baltimore will be transfromed and thriving. The majority of the money will come from private investment but the city will pay for the relocation of residents and te demolitin of the blighted units, yet another public/private partnership.So there you have it transformation can take place in all different ways. Mostly it starts with a little public investment and if all goes right a lot of private investment. It's true that one hand washes the other. (This was a long post and I know I left some examples out)

Perkins Homes: Now It's Your Turn

"This is it right here. The Dividing Line Between Little Italy, and Perkins Homes. My mother was from over there and my father was from over there. I used to stand here as child and listen to the two communities living side by side Italian Serenades, and Billie Holiday I don't hear that anymore now all I hear is bang bang bang I'd give anything to hear the old neighborhood sounds again. " The character who recited that recolection was Al Giardello from NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street. He was talking about the good old days with a retiring friend and how much times have changed in Baltimore. They were no doubt on Eden Street which runs north south between the two communities.Perkins Homes is a public housing development in Southeast Baltimore that was built in the 1940s right around the time soldiers were returning home from World War II. No sooner than the soldiers could unpack their bags the flight to the suburbs was on. Everything surrounding Perkins Homes became either public housing high rises or blighted. The 1980s brought unprecedented change to Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Neighboring communities that were once blighted became the hottest addresses in Maryland. By the 1990s Perkins Homes had outlived its high rise counter parts and Lafayette Courts, Flaghouse Courts, and Broadway Homes had been torn down and replaced with Pleasent View Gardens, Albemarle Sqaure, and Broadway Overlook respectively. These new communities were lower density mixed income town home communities through HOPE VI funding. It was also during the 1990s that an old chunk of abandoned industrial land was redeveloped into Inner Harbor East. This spurred further reinvestment in other neighboring communities like Butchers Hill, Washington Hill, Patterson Park and Greektown.

Today, under the Dixon administration without the help of HOPE VI (Thank you President Bush) is tearing down blighted public housing. O'Donnell Heights and 100 units of Cherry Hill Homes hit the wrecking ball in late 2007 Somerset Homes and Westport Homes Extension are set to be demolished. There is talk of demolishing Douglass Homes and Latrobe Homes as well. All of these homes are blighted and are in desperate need of redevelopment as mixed income communities but this time as higher density mixed use communities as urban living becomes more popular once again. I don't think they've gotten very far in the planning process of what will go in the place of these developments.

Now back to Perkins Homes. It's high time for redevelopment of Perkins Homes. With Perkins Homes, the Western Washington Hill, and City Springs Elementary and Lombard Middle a large enough site can be assembled for redevelopment. What will go in its place will be town homes and apartments. The new homes will be five levels which consist of two two level town homes over top of each other and an apartment below the two town homes.
Lombard Middle is set to be closed and a brand new larger
City Springs Elementary will be built as an Elementary/Middle as more schools continue to close.

The sheer location of Perkins Homes warrants new development. East Baltimore as a whole will become desirable thanks to the Biotech Park north of Hopkins. Now It's Perkins Homes' turn.

Highlandtown and Eastern Avenue:Not Quite There Yet

Gentrification, it can spread like a super virus taking no prisoners, making once working and lower middle class communities glitzy sought after addresses with home prices and rents sky rocketing to unprecedented levels. Blighted boarded up homes and businesses can be become loft apartments and boutiques or they can hit the wrecking ball to make way for a brand new mixed use development. Gentrification can also be limited and contained within only a few blocks that immediately surround the development. In the case of the Inner Harbor it has spread like a super virus and the question is where will it hit next?
In the 1990s gentrification was taking place strictly south of Eastern Avenue in communities of Fels Point, Canton, and Inner Harbor East. The real estate boom of the first half of the 2000 decade investment jumped across Eastern Avenue west of Patterson Park. Upper Fels Point, Jonestown, Little Italy, Washington Hill, and Butchers Hill were quickly transformed. The momentum of the Inner Harbor and the East Baltimore Biotech Park has lead to private investment north of Patterson Park into Library Square and McElderry Park. When elected Mayor in 1999 Martin O'Malley started a campaign to encourage investment in good neighborhoods that are showing signs of slipping. The campaign was and is known as "Strategic Neigborhood Action Plans" or SNAPs. Many neighborhood clusters applied for this designation and the extreme southeastern neighborhoods among others received it. The cluster included Greektown, Bayview, O'Donnell Heights, Medford, Graceland and Broening Manor. So far so good O'Donnell Heights, a blighted public housing development is being demolished and rebuilt, Athena Square, a new town home development in Greektown is under construction, the Bayview area is being considered for high density Transit Oriented Development, and Eastern Avenue streetscape enhancements from I-95 to the CSX Bridge are under way. I ask Again where will it hit next?
The Answer is Highlandtown but it still has a long way to go . Highlandtown is located just west I-895, south of McElderry Park, North of Canton and Brewers Hill, and East of Patterson Park. Highlandtown and points east grew up with Bethlehem Steel in Dundalk as a means to house its tens of thousands of workers, in fact Highlandtown remained a part of Baltimore County until World War I. Highlandtown, although its residents were white, it was thought of as an ethnic and diverse community for its time. Although predominantly Polish, residents haled from Ireland, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Greece, and Italy. The neighborhood consists of row homes that are were cookie cutter, small and narrow in size and without the architectural panache of the grand homes to the north and west. Highlandtown thrived as a diverse European Immigrant community until after World War II. During this time Highlandtown gained a reputation for having some of Baltimore's best bars and pubs In addition to bars Highlandtown, mainly Eastern Avenue had many hair salons, Hampden wasn't the only place the "Bee Hive" hairdo was found. This reputation will play a role in the future of Highlandtown.
Those who could afford it moved to the suburbs and those who couldn't didn't. It wasn't until the major downsizing at Bethlehem Steel in the 1970s and 80s that decline really set in in Highlandtown. In the case of many city neighborhoods with white flight there was resettlement as a black community. This did not take place in Highlandtown. By the time of Highlandtown's decline there were strict laws that forbid blockbusting and not all residents were leaving so they fought any black settlers. In the 1990s Highlandtown continued to lose population and employment and gain crime while other southeast Baltimore neighborhoods were turning around and making a come back. One thing Highlandtown still had going for it was its pubs, with the combination of East Baltimore having tons of Breweries and the diversity of Highlandtown the bars provide a huge variety of food and drinks for their patrons.
By the year 2000, Highlandtown had a vacancy rate of 15%. At the same time Baltimore and America as a whole were preparing for a real estate boom. Baltimore didn't get the full effects of the boom, only the gentrified neighborhoods and Highlandtown. I think they have may have jumped the gun by pricing homes in Highlandtown so high simply because it's a stones throw from Patterson Park and Canton. The residents were still blue collar with a burgeoning Hispanic community as is the case with all neighborhoods near Patterson Park Unfortunately, the Hispanic community as a whole has been the greatest victims of shaky real estate practices . $300-$400k for an unrehabbed row home may be fine for Fels Point but not for Highlandtown. To jump start the Highlandtown market one must look into the past successes of Baltimore revitalization and I think you know where I'm going; homesteading. Not as extreme as the $1 row house in Otterbein but something like $175-$225k for unrehabbed row house in Highlandtown a market segment in Baltimore and Central Maryland that is under served. Vacancies are spread apart throughout the neighborhood leaving no room available for big redevelopment projects but I think that's a good thing for Highlandtown. Highlandtown will make a come back one rehabbed row house at a time.
Highlandtown has had some victories in the past, it's not all bleak. Eastern Avenue has been designated as one of Baltimore's "Main Streets", a Walgreens opened up recently , a new Southeast Anchor Branch of Enoch Pratt Free Library opened up this year and Highlandtown has also been designated as an "Arts and Entertainment District" which if Station North is any indication will gentrify Highlandtown in a New York minute.
Now what's next for Highlandtown? It's a very bare community that will benefit from additional trees, plantings, and streetscape enhancements. The price tags that are being asked for a house in Hghlandtown is one that only a cosmopolitan yuppie could afford so you know what that means. Yoga and Thai Chi studios, Coffee and Tea Bars, trendy upscale restaurants, and outdoor furniture and better lighting.Granted this is a pipe dream, Highlandtown and Eastern Avenue are still not there yet but it is food for thought and they're headed in that direction.

Mondawmin Mall: Stuck in the Suburbs

The Rouse Company built this mall in 1956 just as Urban America began to crumble. As you'll soon see Mondawmin Mall has more lives than a cat. When General Growth bought the Rouse Company in 2004 for a deal worth $12 Billion Mondawmin Mall came with the package. Almost immediately after the ink was dry General Growth began a strategy to renovate this mall.
General Growth is planning a $70 million renovation to one of America's first suburban shopping malls in a big city.
Mondawmin Mall opened in 1956 in Northwest Baltimore to a rapidly changing Baltimore both racially and economically. Mondawmin Mall mimicked suburbia almost from the get go with surface level parking spaces and wide pedestrian unfriendly roads that seperate the mall from the communities it serves. Sears was the mall's only anchor. Like I said earlier Urban America was begining to crumble and in 1973 Sears closed its doors. Whether the Sears space was demolished or turned into additional mall space I have no idea but that was a big blow for Mondawmin and the communities it serves. Rouse did a modest renovation to the mall in 1981 but the biggest boost was the Metro Subway Station that opened in 1983.
As more the subway expanded in length (from Owings Mills to Johns Hopkins) more foot traffic past by the mall. The subway is also a transfer point to for bus riders making Mondawmin even more visible. As far as attracting another department store anchor to replace Sears that proved to be a difficult sell. Non traditional mall tenants began to show up and that actually boosted foot traffic more so than one would think. I write for Dead Malls.com on occasion and when non traditional tenants show up that signals the death of a mall. Mondawmin prooved to be the exception to the rule. The MVA opened a branch on a pad lot near Tioga Parkway. In the mall non traditional tenants include Social Services, Total Health Care, U.S. Army Recruiting Station, a rehab center, a parole center, and a Bail Bonds Center. These are vital community resources that add foot traffic to the more traditional mall tenants. They include Rainbow, New York & Company, Radio Shack, Ashley Stewart Woman, and Foot Locker.
With the exception of the 1981 renovation Rouse barely touched this mall. With General Growth as the new owners they are bringing in the in the big guns. Food Fare, was demolished to make way for a new Shoppers Food Warehouse, Target, and Marshalls. Two sit down restaurants are in the works as well. The mall will receive a complete makeover with new floors , lighting, and exterior facade. All this investment would be great for a suburban mall but we're in the city and Mondawmin, General Growth and the City need to realize this.

What's I'm proposing is a comprehensive Master Plan that includes Mondawmin Mall, Mondawmin, Liberty Square, Burleigh-Leighton, and Parkview Woodbrook. The new big box stores would remain intact and would have frontage to Liberty Heights Avenue and the subway stop. The mall would be transformed from an indoor complex to an outdoor lifestyle center not unlike what was done at Hunt Valley Mall. There would be a small surface lot just inside Liberty Heights Avenue but almost all parking for the mall and everything else I'm proposing would be underground. The mall has a huge surface parking lot that is dead real estate. The lots facing Gwynns Falls and Tioga Parkways would be developed into condos or apartments with ground floor retail. Warwick Avenue would be extended north of Gwynns Falls Parkway and cut through the new development and meet Liberty Heights Avenue. Speaking of Gwynns Falls and Tioga Parkways they're too wide for the urban development I'm proposing. Both roads would be narrowed and integrated into the neighborhoods that surround through sidewalks, crosswalks, and bike lanes.The neighborhoods surrounding Mondawmin Mall will instantly transformed be into sought after real estate gold. It's already happening whether anyone knows it or not. The neighborhood of Mondawmin has a healthy neighborhoods initiative that will give home owners low interest loans to renovate their homes and it's being taken advantage of. In the neighborhoods surrounding Mondawmin Mall the housing stock needs work but it doesn't need to be demolished and redeveloped. Slowly renovating row homes takes more time than tearing and rebuilding but housing stock should be saved whenever necessary. Healthy neighborhoods should be extended into Parkview Woodbrook and Burleigh Leighton to aid in their transformation. In these neighborhoods there is ample land for additional development that will be of a higher density than its older cohort but it since it's near the Mondawmin Metro Stop it will pay off.After World War II during the flight to the suburbs, like most American cities tried itself to suburbanize. This can not be more true for Mondawmin Mall. But with new high density urban investment and development in almost all areas surrounding it would be detrimental for Mondawmin Mall to remain stuck in the suburbs.