"Panel in Baltimore OKs Westport plan"

By Steven Overly

7.7.2007

Daily Record

Plans to redevelop two industrial sites garnered mixed responses from the city's architecture review panel Thursday, as developers and city officials debate the future of Baltimore's historically industrial waterfront.

A preliminary master plan for Westport, a 54-acre swath along the Patapsco River's Middle Branch, got the green light from the Urban Design and Architectural Review Board to turn the former home of the Carr-Lowrey glass factory and a BGE power plant into a mixed-use property with residential, retail and commercial space.

During discussion on Westport, panelists praised developer Patrick Turner of Turner Development Group, architect Chris Pfaeffle of Parameter Inc. and Ellen Neises with Field Operations, a New York- based landscape architecture firm, for being so receptive to comments made at a previous meeting and amending the plan accordingly.

Panelists still had concerns about the project, including a desire to more clearly define architectural components of each building, but determined those would be better addressed in coming months when specific guidelines for the site are drafted.

M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's economic development arm, offered a "cryptic" caution to the developers, however, saying that being too receptive can create ambiguity in later stages of development and told them to establish "principles" and hold firm to them.

"Try to delineate the first principles of the plan," Brodie said. "If that's not articulated strongly in a master plan, those things tend to wither away."