State Center Metro Subway Station — Transit Access for Redevelopment
State officials pulled back the curtain Tuesday on preliminary plans to tear down Baltimore’s long-dilapidated State Center complex and replace it with a mixed-use neighborhood that could include up to 1,600 residential rental units. The 28-acre office complex, which sits at the intersection of Bolton Hill, Mount Vernon, Upton and Seton Hill, has sat in various states of limbo for two decades, and the concepts presented Tuesday mark the furthest the project has moved toward actual construction in that time.
A Vision Years In The Making
The preliminary concepts were unveiled at a community meeting on Tuesday, as reported by The Baltimore Banner. Beyond the housing units, the proposal could include 64 residential units for sale, 85,000 square feet of retail space, a 125-room hotel and 165,000 square feet of office space, according to the same report. Some of the rental units would need to be set aside as affordable housing under Baltimore City regulations, per the Banner’s reporting. No developer has been selected and no construction timeline has been set, the outlet notes.
The State Center complex itself consists of four primary government office buildings totaling more than 1.75 million square feet that once housed roughly 3,300 to 4,300 state employees across a dozen state agencies, according to the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore. Built starting in the mid-1950s, per the Banner’s reporting, the buildings had gone decades without major capital investment before the state moved to abandon them altogether.
Two Decades, Four Governors, One Lawsuit
Maryland has struggled with what to do with State Center for 20 years and across four governors, the Banner reports. Then-Gov. Bob Ehrlich’s administration first floated redeveloping the site back in 2006, and the state spending board decided to proceed with a redevelopment contract in 2009 — but construction never began. In 2016, then-Gov. Larry Hogan sought to cancel the roughly $1.5 billion redevelopment deal, a move that spurred a lawsuit from the original developer…