North Avenue Market: City’s next town square?
When I was a child, I thought Santa Claus lived at Harborplace, not just because of the annual
North Pole located between the pavilions, but because my parents revered Jim Rouse. An even fonder memory is heading to Harborplace on foot after the Ravens won the Superbowl in 2001. The entire city, it seemed, euphorically converged on the Inner Harbor. We all knew exactly where to go.
When I came of age, I found my place in Baltimore not at the Inner Harbor or waterfront neighborhoods generally but in the warehouses, clubs, dive bars, used bookstores and coffee shops of Central Baltimore. I sought places that embraced eccentricity and experimentation, and this part of the city is totally alive for me today, personally and professionally, in a way that the Inner Harbor has never been.
Part of the criticism of developer David Bramble’s Harborplace redevelopment proposal involves the notion that Baltimore will lose its “town square.” But Baltimore of today is a place with multiple centers of gravity.
Take North Avenue. It is a vital artery all the way from Gwynns Falls to Baltimore Cemetery, and its intersections with Charles Street, Broadway and Pennsylvania Avenue are among the most significant in the city. Anchors such as Coppin State University, MICA and Johns Hopkins have a presence, and there is access to local, regional and national mass transit systems. While it will never have the millions who visit the harbor each year to experience the “Magic of the Water” as my friend
Ted Rouse says, North Avenue is Baltimore: gritty, challenging, beautiful, and full of promise.
At the midpoint of North Avenue and the geographic center of the city is North Avenue Market, a 95,000 square-foot Spanish Revival-style building constructed in 1928 as a food market and duckpin bowling alley. In early March, a diverse group of
partners and I acquired it from longtime owners Carolyn Frankil and Mike Shecter. Community development requires a variety of voices, so our partnership includes two community-based nonprofits (Central Baltimore Partnership and Central Baltimore Future Fund), two developers, and an artist/ businessman. Between North Avenue Market and the Parlor, a nearby funeral home that I’m redeveloping into a bar/restaurant, my modest personal wealth is tied up on a couple blocks of North Avenue. While clear-eyed about the challenges, I’m infinitely optimistic about this part of town.
North Avenue Market alone cannot become our town square. We can, however, create a type of central gathering space that doesn’t exist in Baltimore. What’s left of the former market hall is
12,500 square feet of wideopen space with 35-foot ceilings and dramatic clerestory windows. This space is slated to become a dynamic multipurpose hall that can host large-scale exhibitions, performing artists, events, markets and more. Our goal with this area and other portions of the building is to invite the public in and create a haven for everyone, especially those who have long called Station North home and/ or supported its businesses
and arts institutions.
The remainder of North Avenue Market will house a mix of businesses and organizations that amplify Station North’s identity as an arts and entertainment district and support neighborhood assets like Motor House and Parkway Theatre. There won’t be a restaurant by Atlas Group, a famous place to get crab cakes or a whiskey distillery. There will be artist and maker workspaces, nonprofit arts programming, entertainment venues, restaurants, bars and specialty retail. Part of Harborplace’s original appeal was local merchants offering products and experiences totally unique to Baltimore. At North Avenue Market, we can do that in spades by creating lower-cost, flexible retail spaces for artists and makers who produce their wares elsewhere in the building or district.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone got off a train from NYC, walked two blocks north, and thought to themselves “Baltimore is so cool” How you work with the community and local talent to create cool, invite the broader public in, and provide neighborhood amenities in a manner that is financially sustainable is the ultimate challenge of careers spent doing things that defy conventional wisdom. This will not be easy.
To make North Avenue Market work, we will rely heavily on state revitalization programs and messy federal incentives for historic preservation and investment in historically under-resourced communities. Recognizing that Baltimore needs to focus its resources carefully, we are not counting on major city funding. Nevertheless, I believe the Mayor’s Office, Baltimore Development Corporation and city agencies will support us. Baltimore’s future relies heavily on the success of its arts districts — Station North, Pennsylvania Avenue, Bromo and Highlandtown — in part because arts-based economic development supports small businesses and engenders authentic, cherished places. The city can help simply by shouting from the rooftops that arts-centered initiatives like North Avenue Market matter.
A friend once challenged me to “live the society you want to see flourish,” and for me, that involves helping the part of Baltimore City that I love the most reach its full potential. North Avenue Market has the scale, location, and visibility to make an entire neighborhood flourish.