Extreme makeover Inner Harbor edition: Five ways to reimagine Harborplace

BALTIMORE (WBFF) — Sometimes referred to as Baltimore’s "living room," the Inner Harbor has been in need of a serious makeover for decades. Big changes to the iconic site have been elusive for a number of reasons, but one of them hasn’t been a lack of ideas.

Now that Baltimore developer David Bramble has stepped in to “reinvent and reimagine” Harborplace, at the very heart of the Inner Harbor, there is renewed hope for the site after years of decline.

For years, architectural firms, urban planners and retail experts have all studied how to transform the Inner Harbor. Bramble hasn’t announced his plans for the property just yet, but he did say he wants to hear from the community about what they want to see from the Inner Harbor.

Tom Maddux, principal at Baltimore commercial real estate firm KLNB, said Bramble is known for his creativity and his resourcefulness.

“He has a lot of experience. He has the resources behind him to do things properly. He's the right guy at the right time,” Maddux said.

Here are five ideas that Bramble may hear about in the coming weeks in hopes of returning the Inner Harbor to its former glory.

Putting the waterfront in the forefront

Baltimore architect Klaus Philipsen said often lost in all the plans to fix the Inner Harbor, is the harbor’s greatest asset – the water. Making Harborplace architecturally “transparent” as possible would showcase the natural beauty of the environment.

“It is not only not pretty, but it actually blocks the view of the water,” Philipsen said of the existing Harborplace pavilions. “The whole goal is that this is all much more connected, not only to downtown but to the neighborhoods. So as the living room of Baltimore it needs to be part and parcel of everything around it.”

Philipsen, who runs the firm Archplan, said Harborplace presents a unique challenge because the complex needs to look good from all four sides. The original design leaves much to be desired on that point. Visitors walking south toward the Pratt Street Pavilion get an eye (and noseful) full of the Cheesecake Factory’s dumpster.

Philipsen said if the developers wanted, they could salvage the original buildings.

“The design of these two pavilions was somewhat nautical, and they are not really architecturally bad. So if you keep the bones and take a lot of the skin away, you can look through them. You would keep the roof and as a shelter as a pavilion more than an actual building with a closed-back.”

But Matt Bell, an architecture and urban design professor at the University of Maryland, thinks Bramble should just start over.

“The pavilions are ugly and should be torn down and rethought,” Bell said. "Their time has come and gone. They're very dated-looking. No matter what you do to them, you're still putting earrings on a pig.”

Bell agreed with Philipsen about retaining the water views. He suggested Baltimore could take inspiration from Stockholm’s City Hall and put any new buildings on pillars.

Thinking taller and smaller at the same time

Bell is the principal of the design firm Perkins Eastman that planned out District Warf in Washington. He said the Inner Harbor could emulate some of the concepts found along the Washington Canal in Southwest DC.

“One of the things about the Wharf that's really important is that the spaces are much smaller and they feel more intimate than at the Inner Harbor. The dimensions of the Inner Harbor are quite big.”

He suggested lessening the space between the buildings and water.

“It makes the experience of being at the waterside, much more intense, much more profound,” Bell said.

However, Bell said creating an intimate setting doesn’t necessarily mean smaller buildings. He suggests creating taller, mixed-use buildings to replace the pavilions.

“One of the things that I think has always been problematic about the Inner Harbor is that the use is catered really to visitors from out of town rather than people who actually go there on a daily basis,” Bell said.

Taking back the streets

Visitors to the Inner Harbor often feel like they are on an island with the water on one side and a massive highway on the other. Urban planners have been advocating either narrowing Light and Pratts street or even getting rid of a portion of Light Street altogether for years. Those plans, however, have always come to a screeching halt.

“When you try to take on the sacred cow, the automobile, then you have a lot of opposition,” Philipsen said. But with more emphasis on climate change and the fact that deemphasizing the streets would significantly expand the footprint of the property, the city and Bramble may finally pull the trigger on this controversial idea.

Tweaking the road layout would give a new purpose to McKeldin Plaza, which is currently a glorified traffic island rather than the public square it’s intended to be. Over the years, many have suggested the McKeldin Plaza become an outdoor amphitheater to replace the performance space at Harborplace that is right up against the water.

Going on a road diet has been successful elsewhere.

“San Francisco had the Embarcadero fall down in an earthquake, and since then they made it a boulevard. The waterfront is much more accessible and has benefited from it,” Philipsen said.

But Bell said even small changes to roads around the Inner Harbor can be beneficial.

“Two-way traffic would be probably an improvement for Pratt Street. Most really good urban boulevards of any quality are not one way.”

'A curated experience'

The death of retail has been greatly exaggerated, says Cynthia Nelson who follows retail trends as a senior managing director for FTI Consulting. And that's good news for Harborplace.

"You're actually seeing growth in retailers and actually an increase in brick and mortar. Since the start of the pandemic, retail really has come back with a vengeance," Nelson said.

She said the pandemic has accelerated trends in retail and a new Harborplace can be positioned to take full advantage of those trends.

"We'll continue to see an increase in what we call lifestyle centers, often open-air, really emphasizing experiences, as opposed to traditional shopping for products," Nelson said. "You're going to see highly curated product offerings that cater to a local market."

Nelson said one of the hottest trends in retail is actually very close to the vision of Harborplace’s original developer James Rouse. Rouse, who also founded Columbia, had envisioned small local vendors selling goods like a permanent farmers' market along the waterfront. And in the early years, he succeeded. But as the years passed, locals stalls moved out and chain restaurants moved in.

"So food halls are really supplanting the traditional food court that you found in regional malls, which just had the same kind of fast-food tenants throughout. The food hall is a much more curated kind of international experience with new types of retailers with attractive settings and ambiance," Nelson said. "It's really, in a lot of ways kind of goes back to Jim Rouse's original concept of places like the Inner Harbor."

Both Remington’s R House and the Mount Vernon Marketplace have dedicated followings by offering a wide variety of local restaurants under one roof. An Inner Harbor version could be the attraction that gets Baltmoreans down to the harbor.

But Nelson cautions that a fancier Inner Harbor won't come cheap.

"None of this is inexpensive, it really requires a commitment of capital to be able to transform,"

Less (Harborplace) is more?

The most radical idea for Harborplace isn’t probably going to appeal to Bramble as a retail developer. Former Sun reporter Michael Hill spoke for many in Baltimore when he wrote an op-ed in 2019, suggesting that the city just tear the complex down and not rebuild.

Philipsen said some commercial presence is needed at the site, but he said Bramble could consider doing away with one of the pavilions. Downtown is facing a steep vacancy rate. The nearby PowerPlant complex operated by the Cordish Company told the city recently that it was struggling to find tenants after the departure of Barnes & Noble and several restaurants along Pier 4. Filling two pavilions with high-quality tenants may be a tall order.

Just the Pratt Street Pavilion filled with high-quality businesses could be an option for Bramble. Meanwhile, the Light Street Pavilion could become a park. One landscape architecture firm even suggested that the Inner Harbor could become a beach.

"The data suggests that for large chunks of the summer, water quality is actually quite good – even comparable to popular public beaches along the Bay – and could safely accommodate people swimming.," Jonathan Ceci Landscape Architects wrote in 2020.

The firm's plan included an atoll and lagoon or as the firm called it: "a gargantuan life ring." They conceded that water access would have to be restricted at certain times because of water quality.

"We are in striking distance of achieving a swimmable harbor and are only missing the infrastructure that is necessary for a safe public swimming venue," the firm wrote.

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