Baltimore Business Journal - by Daniel J. Sernovitz Staff
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Copyright (C) American City Business Journals Inc.
A&R Development Corp. has been tapped to launch a $17 million development of apartments and retail space at Central and Lombard streets in the city’s Jonestown neighborhood.
The project falls into the city’s aims to remake Central Avenue, which has seen a wave of new development in recent years building off the success of nearby Harbor East.
A&R, led by Anthony Rodgers, hopes to build a mixed-use development including 107 rental apartments, 18,000 square feet of retail space and 156 parking spaces.
The Baltimore Development Corp. said Tuesday it awarded the firm exclusive negotiating rights for the city-owned land at 110 S. Central Ave. and 1120 Granby St. The properties combine for about 29,000 square feet.
The BDC, the city’s economic development arm, offered the property, and two others, up for redevelopment in August 2008.
“These properties give the city the opportunity to take vacant, underutilized properties and have them renewed as private enterprises that will generate taxes and enhance the Jonestown/Washington Hill community,” BDC President M.J. “Jay” Brodie said in a statement.
The city also tapped Mitey LLC to negotiate for a second site at 1301-1309 E. Lombard St. Mitey is a real estate company formed by Gerry’s Tire Service, which hopes to use the property to expand its adjacent business. Mitey plans to use the 4,518-square-foot property in the short term as a temporary parking lot for its business and would expand onto the city-owned property in the future.
The city is reserving the rights for the third property, at 130 S. Central Ave.
Three historic buildings on the west side of downtown Baltimore will be preserved as part of a $40 million hotel, apartment and restaurant complex conceived by the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
The University System of Maryland Board of Regents selected a team headed by A & R Development of Baltimore to carry out the project, which will preserve the former Drovers and Mechanics National Bank building at the northwest corner of Eutaw and Fayette streets, the front portion of the former Sons of Italy lodge on Fayette Street and the former Devine Seafood building at 110 N. Eutaw St.
The development will include a 140-room Marriott Town Place Suites hotel, a 207-space garage, about 90 market-rate apartments, an upscale restaurant and other street-level retail space.
The project is the latest sign that the University of Maryland's academic campus and medical center in Baltimore are growing northward and stimulating redevelopment of additional properties.
It's also part of a west-side trend in which three or more properties are consolidated to create one large development rather than being rehabbed individually. Other examples include the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, the Centerpoint apartments and the Fayette Square student housing.
Consolidating properties is a good way to create the critical mass that makes privately funded redevelopment feasible and fundable, said Terrence Smith, the university's senior associate vice president for operations and planning.
By itself, the Drovers building might not be large enough to do much with, he said, but by combining it with existing buildings and new construction, a developer can create a more complex, marketable project.
"It's ideal for this neighborhood," he said of the proposed development. "It meets a variety of needs that the university has."
The hotel is an "extended stay" brand that has the potential to serve several market segments at once, including hospital patients waiting in town for a transplant, visiting faculty members and delegates attending a conference, said Robert Tennenbaum, director of real estate development for the university.
The hotel also could house actors and others in town for performances at the neighboring Hippodrome theater, Tennenbaum said. The lower level of the Drovers building, meanwhile, could be an impressive restaurant space, he said. "The interior is magnificent, with a coffered ceiling and huge columns."
The land - nearly an acre - is bounded by Eutaw, Paca and Fayette streets and Marion Alley. It's north of the France-Merrick center and south of the Lexington Market Arcade.
Most of the property was acquired by the university over the past decade and will be leased to the developers on a long-term basis. Two buildings are being acquired by the city to be part of the assemblage.
The most prominent structure is the former Drovers bank, an 1894 structure designed by Joseph Evans Sperry and expanded in 1917. It has been vacant since the 1980s.
The front portion of the Sons of Italy building will be preserved as part of the development, but a rear section most likely will be removed to make way for new construction.
Along with the smaller Devine Seafood building, the Sons of Italy and Drovers structures have been identified by preservationists as being worth preserving. A fourth structure, the former Palmer House restaurant on Eutaw Street, will be torn down to make way for new "infill" residences.
The university selected A & R to be "master developer" over three other groups that expressed interest in the project early this year. A & R developed the Fayette Square student housing one block to the west.
Other members of the team include: Murphy and Dittenhafer, the master architect; Gordon & Greenberg, the consulting hotel architect; R.D. Jones & Associates, the interior designer; Whiting-Turner, the general contractor; Hospitality Partners, the hotel operator; and Parkway Corp., the parking-garage consultant and manager.
The preliminary plan calls for the Drovers building to be rehabbed and combined with new construction to provide about 80 market-rate apartments on the east side of the block, with an upscale restaurant in the bank's former grand banking hall.
The front portion of the Sons of Italy building on Fayette will be renovated for six more apartments, and the former seafood store on Eutaw Street will be renovated for retail space.
The Marriott hotel will rise on the west side of the block. Early plans call for a five-story hotel over a four-level garage, with retail space and a hotel lobby at street level.
Besides preserving the historic buildings, the architects say they will try to include eco-friendly features such as "green" roofs that limit rainwater runoff.
The regents' approval means that the university can negotiate a long-term lease with A & R to carry out the project. That lease and other details must come to the regents and the state Board of Public Works for additional approval before construction can begin. The university is not contributing financial assistance for construction under the terms of its offering. The leased property will revert back to the university when A & R's lease expires.
A & R's tentative schedule calls for construction to be completed by the summer of 2011. In rehabbing the exteriors of the historic buildings, the developer is expected to comply with federal restoration standards so it can receive tax credits for historic preservation.
Fairfield Inn by Marriott - 1st Green Hotel in Baltimore
Marriott International Inc. executives heralded Monday what they said will be Baltimore's first certified "green" hotel and only the second such environmentally friendly location in its portfolio.
The Bethesda-based hotel chain has lent its Fairfield Inn & Suites name to a 154-room hotel to be built at the former Baltimore Brewing Co. site at President and Lombard streets in downtown Baltimore, slated to open in spring 2009.
"This is part of an overall effort to green Marriott as an integral strategy" to the company, Kathleen Matthews, executive vice president of global communications and public affairs for Marriott, said in a telephone interview.
Matthews said Marriott (NYSE: MAR) has sought for several years to design energy-efficient hotels, but the company did not break ground on its first LEED-certified building until the Inn & Conference Center at the University of Maryland, University College in College Park. The Fairfield is slated to be Marriott's second LEED-certified hotel.
The designation, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a designation system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. There are several levels of LEED certification, based on a point system for the number of energy-efficient techniques and equipment used in the buildings.
The hotel is being developed and will be owned by Summit Associates LLC, of Raleigh, N.C., A&R Development of Baltimore, and Hospitality Partners, of Bethesda. Summit and Hospitality Partners have been working on the project for nearly a year, picking up from Bozzuto Homes Inc.’s failed efforts to convert the former brewery into a seven-story apartment building.
A&R was brought on as a minority partner in the project, Matthews said. She said Marriott kicked off a diversity ownership initiative in 2005 designed to increase minority and women ownership of its hotels, and the company has set a goal of 500 minority- and women-owned properties by 2010. She said Marriott seeks to develop strong relationships with its development partners and could look to work with A&R, as well as with Summit and Hospitality Partners, on other hotel projects in the future.
"I think it's going to be the first of many we'll do with them," she said. "We're always looking for new partners that are not just one-offs."
A barber who for five years has cut hair at the Dynasty Barber Salon on Hawaii Avenue NE has always had his heart set on opening his own store in the Brentwood neighborhood he grew up in. Now may be Marcus Williams-El's chance.
After six years of developing a town center plan and hashing it out with the Brentwood neighborhood at more than 30 meetings, Mid-City Urban LLC and A&R Development are finally marketing a $96 million project on the Rhode Island Metro station to national and local retailers.
The town center, modeled after the Shirlington and Bethesda Row projects developed by Federal Realty Investment Trust, will have 70,000 square feet of shops and restaurants along a boulevard, yet to be named, in the heart of D.C. Ten percent of that space has to be locally owned, according to Caroline Kennedy, a development associate for Mid-City Urban.
D.C.-based Mid-City Urban and Baltimore-based A&R Development, which both won a 60-year land lease from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in 2001 to develop the 7.5-acre parking lot, unveiled their retail plans at the International Council of Shopping Center’s annual convention in Las Vegas last month.
The developers and leasing agent D.C.-based Asadoorian Retail Solutions have met with about 20 national retailers, including banks, health clubs, drug stores, restaurants and home-furnishing stores. They declined to give specific names.
"We have concrete next steps with each" of the national retailers, Kennedy said. "We should have letters of intent for half the space by the end of the summer."
The project, formerly called Brentwood Town Center, has been changed to Rhode Island Station to reflect its proximity to the Metro station. The town center is in a neighborhood that is starting to regain businesses after many left over the past 20 years because of a lack of investment in the neighborhood.
Twenty years ago, the Brentwood neighborhood had "more poverty, not a lot to do," said Williams-El. "Now you have these new stores and shopping centers. Back then there was none of that stuff. All we had to look forward to was the recreation and basketball."
In 2005, Montreal-based Walker Development opened a shopping center called Rhode Island Place that has a Giant Food grocery store, The Home Depot and as of last year clothing store A.J. Wright and Anna Linnens. The stores are doing so well that the company is building a 6,500-square-foot expansion across from A.J. Wright, but that project is still in the preliminary stages. CEO Rick Walker is also building a five-story senior-citizen apartment building on the lot.
Rhode Island Station, which is adjacent to Rhode Island Place, will change the area much more dramatically, especially depending on the retail tenants the developers sign.
The Brentwood neighborhood wants to see healthy food options there, said Ron Allen, the facility manager at Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church at 610 Rhode Island Ave. NE. He says he talks to the 90 church employees regularly about the neighborhood.
It's that kind of input that the developers have been getting from the neighborhood, including feedback on the actual plans. And they say it has slowed down the process.
The community did not like the original plan's proposal for one tall parking structure, so the developers changed the plan to have two parking structures that are not as high.
Plans and designs have been moving quickly since the developers received final zoning approval in April from the D.C. Office of Planning. By August, the developers plan to apply for permits. If all goes smoothly, they will break ground in January.
"Those of us who are used to shopping in Prince George's County and Montgomery County, we no longer have to do that," said Advisory Neighborhood Commission President William Shelton. "Most of us shop at The Home Depot; most of us shop at A.J. Wright. The District does not have a bona fide shopping base. If we want to travel to shop, we go to outlet malls. We want to walk five or 10 minutes."
