What Is The Future of Northwood Plaza in Northeast Baltimore?

Описание: At its March 24, 2015 meeting, the Hillen Road Improvement Association hosted Baltimore developer Mark Renbaum and Morgan State University President Dr. David Wilson to discuss the redevelopment of the Northwood Plaza. Follow @CityExplainer on Twitter and Facebook (www.Facebook.com/CityExplainer)

This meeting was livestreamed on CityExplainer's Ustream channel: www.ustream.tv/channel/cityexplainer.

** Synopsis of the meeting provided by Northeast Baltimore resident volunteer:

Dr. David Wilson, President of Morgan State University:

*The School of Business is set to open this fall and the new Jenkins School of Behavioral Sciences is breaking ground on April 30th at 10am. It will be located next to the business school.

*Morgan owns 9 acres of property in the plaza and that includes the paved area adjacent to McDonalds that ends at the corner of Hillen Road and Argonne Drive. This parcel of land will become green space, but may be developed at a later date.

*When his tenure began at Morgan, he was struck by the amount of trash around campus. He stopped at 7-11 to buy garbage bags and began to clean up the campus. This inspired a student run initiative to clean up the campus.

Wants to work with the neighborhoods to clean up the stretch of Hillen Road from the new business school to Cold Spring Lane.

*He is concerned about the condition of the homes in the 1600 block of Cold Spring Lane and wants to work with the HRIC to push owners/landlords to improve and invest in their properties.

*This was not mentioned until late in the meeting, but Dr. Wilson said that there would be about 10 hotel style rooms on the 6th floor of the new business school. They would be part of Hospitality and Management and would be available to the public. He wasn't specific about how reservations would work, but he seemed to indicate that they would be serving guests.

Mark Renbaum, MLR Partners:

*New development is called Northwood Commons and based on the "Main Street" concept (e.g. The Avenue in Whitemarsh or Towson Row).

*The design is not final (except for maybe the plan for McDonalds) and he would like neighborhood input.

*The plan calls for a grocery store, retail stores, restaurants, and some residential space above the retail shops. The development is designed to draw "top-tier" businesses.

*The entire plaza will be razed--which the exception of the BP gas station.

*The McDonalds will move to the pad lot on the corner of Loch Raven Blvd and Argonne Drive.

*The green space on the north side of Havenwood at Loch Raven Blvd will also be developed, but there is currently no business designated for the lot.

*A large grocery store is planned for the space where the Sav-A-Lot is located. The size of the space will be large enough to accommodate any grocery store chain--with the exception of Wegmans.

*To the east of the grocery store, there will be two rows of retail shops on the north and south side of Main Street (Havenwood). The south retail may have 5-6 floors residential space above with a garage structure attached (on the site of the current McDonalds location).

*Havenwood Road will no longer be a thru street. There will be no access to Havenwood from Hillen Road. Also, the developer said that they had no plans to create new entrances anywhere in the plaza--including for the new McDonalds location.


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