Ever since Howard Street's 1970s decline to what today is essentially a ghost town of vacant retail properties, Baltimore's one-time department store hub has posed a seemingly insurmountable redevelopment challenge. Nothing has worked so far and the area is deader than ever.
In a major change of direction, Baltimore City officials are signaling they are ready to abandon their long-time premise that predicated Howard Street's revival on retailing.
Instead, the talk now centers on turning the corridor into an "Avenue of the Arts." As a first step, the Schmoke administration would acquire nearly a dozen vacant buildings on the west side of the 400 block of North Howard Street, between Mulberry and Franklin streets. Their street-level spaces would be converted into retailing, exhibit or performance spaces. Upper floors would provide affordable housing for artists.
If Los Angeles developer David Murdock's plan a decade ago of turning Howard Street into a $250 million urban mall was grandiose, this latest scenario, with its $5 million price tag, is more realistic. It would take a largely abandoned block -- once home to Schellhase's restaurant, where Henry Mencken and his merry band of raconteurs congregated -- and attempt to breathe some life into it.
The logic is that this approach would strengthen the 300 block, which is arguably the only stretch of Howard Street between Antique Row and a collection of shops near the Baltimore Arena that can still generate varied and profitable business activity. That, in turn, might regenerate struggling retail and office users along Saratoga Street and Park Avenue.
Doomsayers say nothing will improve Howard Street. They argue that many factors work against the old retail hub's revival, that there is little vehicular traffic on Howard Street, that the area's properties are largely controlled by a foundation that has little interest in redevelopment, and so on.
These are noteworthy arguments. The strength of the latest plan is that it would try to circumvent the Weinberg Foundation's dominant role as a property owner. By acquiring and redeveloping buildings belonging to smaller owners, it hopes to prove to the foundation that it, too, ought to put some money into revitalizing Howard Street.
If the city takes on the redevelopment of Howard Street, it has to see it through. The shopsteading effort of the 1500 block of West Baltimore Street around 1980 shows how a refurbished business area can deteriorate if the city does not make sure that repaired properties are occupied.