Public may soon see abuse report
Names will be redacted before release of report on Archdiocese of Baltimore
A Baltimore judge approved the needed redactions Tuesday for the attorney general’s report on sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, clearing the way for its public release.
Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor ordered the Maryland Attorney General’s Office to redact 37 names from the report and to anonymize the identities of 60 other people, removing them from the 456-page document entirely.
Taylor’s order leaves the timing of the report’s release at the discretion of Attorney General Anthony Brown, whose office must complete the required redactions and notify the 37 individuals before publishing it.
A timeline for when Brown expects to release the report was not available Tuesday afternoon, although it was unlikely the report would be released before Wednesday. The attorney general’s office will publish the report on its website.
“We will work to complete the court-ordered redactions and release the report as soon as possible,” Brown said in a statement issued Tuesday.
The timing of the release may coincide with debates in Annapolis about the civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse lawsuits and whether to pass a law that would allow survivors to file lawsuits against their abusers and the institutions that enabled their conduct, regardless of whether the suit was previously timebarred under state statutes.
The Child Victims Act (Senate Bill 686) passed committee and is awaiting its final vote in the Senate, which likely will come Wednesday morning. That bill is cross-filed in the House as House Bill 1 and likely will be voted on in the House
to unveil the report.
The number of people employed downtown last year rose slightly to 126,047 from 125,246 in 2021 and represents about a third of the city’s jobs.
By the end of 2022 most major employers had returned to a hybrid schedule of three days in the office, the report found.
“This should begin to increase foot traffic, daily parkers, transit riders and lunch goers,” the report said.
It cited cellphone data reported by The New York Times Magazine and School of Cities showing that foot traffic in downtown Baltimore has returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Activity and employment downtown are expected to increase when state employees relocate downtown from the aging State Center campus, a 28-acre area of state government office buildings near Eutaw Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near Midtown. In December the Board of Public Works approved leases for the last two state agencies remaining at State Center to move to office space on Charles Street.
But office occupancy, which had mirrored national recovery in 2021, lagged behind national numbers by 4% last year. The report explained that by saying the numbers fail to take into account all new leases.
The area’s office vacancy rate remained stable at 19.76% at year’s end compared with 19.83% at the end of 2021. Downtown’s office vacancies were higher than in the city as a whole and in the Baltimore metro area, which had vacancy rates of 16.86% and 14.62%, respectively.
Office rents in downtown Baltimore averaged $23 to $27 per square foot compared with $22 to $26 per square foot in 2021.
Tenants that reached office deals last year included Morgan Stanley, which in November finalized a lease extension and expansion at the company’s Thames Street Wharf office building in Harbor Point, Design Collective, Ballard Spahr and the Maryland Department of Health, which will move to the vacant Metro West complex.
Downtown’s residential renaissance appeared to stall last year with the number of people living in the area falling to 39,168 from 42,478 in 2021, due possibly to the redevelopment of Perkins Homes, the report said. Apartment occupancy rates fell to an average 91.3% last year, compared with 95.2% in 2021.
In apartment buildings built since 1995 with 100 or more units and amenities, average rents ranged from $1,588 for studios to $3,489 for three-bedroom units.
New housing projects that added more than 200 market-rate apartments downtown last year included a mix of new construction and residential conversions from other uses.
Investment in downtown, expected to total $6.5 billion between 2018 and 2028, reflects the area’s resilience and opportunity and shows significant progress since the onset of the pandemic, said Shelonda Stokes, president of the Downtown Partnership during Tuesday’s event.
“We were in a position where people didn’t think downtown would survive,” Stokes said.
The report said downtown’s tourism industry, nearly wiped out by the pandemic, is on the rebound and benefiting from increased leisure travel nationally. The district has more than 8,300 hotel rooms.
The number of overnight visitors was up by nearly 2 million from 2021 to 2022, the report found. Daytime visitors and visitor spending are increasing but not back to pre-pandemic levels.
Downtown’s hotel inventory has decreased, with five hotels in various stages of conversions to residential use, including the Embassy Suites by Hilton, Envy Hotel Holiday Inn Baltimore, Radisson Hotel Baltimore and Baltimore Plaza Hotel.
Hotel occupancies in downtown Baltimore averaged 56.9%, compared with a national average of 62.5%, according to
Smith Travel Research.
Retail, meanwhile, is in transition downtown, the report said, with Harborplace under new ownership, the closing of The Gallery at Harborplace mall and a revamped Lexington Market that opened in October.
While planning for Harborplace’s future is just beginning, developers plan to sign temporary tenants in the interim to enliven the now mostly vacant, waterfront pavilions, with a focus on small and minority-owned businesses. One new tenant, Crust by Mack, a Black-owned, family-run baker, opened Tuesday.
“We can’t let our crown jewel just sit around and languish while we’re working on that over the next couple of years,” said P. David Bramble, managing partner of MCB Real Estate, which is redeveloping Harborplace, said during the Downtown Partnership event.
Though specific plans have yet to be developed with input from the community, Bramble said he envisions the new Harborplace to be a safe destination that will connect with other key sites downtown, reflect Baltimore’s character and include a mix of uses — which could include office, hospitality, retail, food and entertainment. It won’t be a mall or a re-creation of what stands now, he said.
“The whole concept of the mall is basically gone,” said Bramble, whose company owns shopping centers, in an interview.
“Most towns need one big mall; they don’t need two or three. No one wants to come down to the waterfront to get something that they could get at a suburban mall.
“What’s going to make this so cool is the idea that the ... interesting things about Baltimore will be put on display and then the national tenants will be begging to come to be alongside.”
The transition of large projects contributed to keeping downtown’s average retail occupancy rate at nearly 82%, compared with higher rates of just over 93% in both the Baltimore region and nationally, the report said. New retail names last year included Top Golf in South Baltimore’s entertainment district, NKVSkin on Charles Street, and restaurants such as Kneads, GameOn Bar+Arcade and Blooms. Retail sales downtown totaled $9.6 million last year.
“The need for additional retail is paramount in re-imagining downtown’s Central Business District, as existing gaps in the streetscape impact our walkability,” the report said.
Downtown’s residential renaissance appeared to stall last year with the number of people living in the area falling to 39,168 from 42,478 in 2021, due possibly to the redevelopment of Perkins Homes, the report said.