Reuse
NO GRAINER:
QUESTIONS FOR PATRICK TURNER

By Martha Thomas

January 2007
Baltimore SMART CEO Magazine

Patrick Turner is reserving one of the two penthouses on the top of his SILO POINT project for himself. Why shouldn’t he and his wife get to live in one of the coolest examples going of adaptive re-use (as this form of development is known)? Turner, who is also responsible for turning both the Holy Cross Catholic School and the South Baltimore General Hospital into condos and the McHenry Theater, once a vaudeville venue in Federal Hill, into an office building, is also behind Westport, a mixed-use development on the Middle Branch. He was walking around Locust Point with his cell phone one late afternoon a while back and was curious about the waterfront structures that had been vacated – but were still owned – by Archer Daniels Midland. He called the number posted on the chain link fence, and somehow, unbelievably, was transferred to the president of the company, who happened to be one of the few people in the office after hours.

TURNER:I had no idea who I was talking to and he referred me to the senior vice president of grain operations, so I asked if I should use his name and I couldn’t believe it when he told me. Of course the guy took my call, but told me the site wasn’t for sale. I called him every month for seven months and he finally agreed to sell it as long as I promised not to use it as a grain elevator. When he asked me what I wanted to do with it, I told him I wanted to do high rise condos and the line went dead. He said, “You’re either crazy or brilliant.” I think he was leaning toward the former in the beginning.

CEO: HOW DID YOU SEE APARTMENTS IN A GRAIN ELEVATOR?

TURNER: It was a no-brainer. This is a wonderful neighborhood that also happens to have a 35 foot height limitation. So I could have a building that’s 290 feet high; that juts up into the skyline, and because of the way it’s situated on the peninsula, have water views from every unit.

CEO: DID YOU NEED TO MODIFY THE STRUCTURE OF THE BUILDING TO BEAR THE WEIGHT OF APARTMENTS?

TURNER: The place had five million bushels of grain moving through it every day, it could certainly hold people – they’re a lot less load and weight.
CEO: IS YOUR FIRM COMMITTED TO ADAPTIVE RE-USE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL REASONS?

TURNER: It’s been the focus of my work for about 20 years, and I have it down to a science. I’ve been approached to do grain elevators in other states, but this one is special because it’s already in such a great neighborhood. I’m not an environmentalist per se, but I’m aware that you can develop like this without as much impact on the environment. We’re also working on the Westport project on the middle-branch. It will be a large mixed-use waterfront development – the largest in the history of Baltimore, 5.5 million square feet. It enjoys the support of the neighborhood, government officials and four environmental groups.

CEO: WILL SILO POINT BE RECOGNIZABLE AS A FORMER GRAIN ELEVATOR AND
SILOS?

TURNER: A driver is to retain as much of the history of the building as possible. For example, the apartments are called “bins.” You can live in Bin 201. You can live anywhere in the world, but you can only live in one grain elevator.