Lowe’s, shopping center planned for Charles Village site 

Posted: 2:22 pm Thu, November 19, 2009
By Robbie Whelan
Daily Record Business Writer

Developer Rick Walker Wednesday night unveiled plans for the $65 million redevelopment of the 11-acre Anderson Automotive site in central Baltimore as a Lowe’s Home Center hardware store, a supermarket, a small shopping center, and about 60 units of housing.

Bruce Mortimer, who owns Anderson’s GM and Honda dealerships, said he is selling his business, which has been in Baltimore for 54 years and three generations, after receiving a letter following the bankruptcy of General Motors Corp. informing him that the company would no longer be selling cars at the city location.

Mortimer’s was one of about 1,200 GM dealerships to be closed nationwide after the automaker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Now, Walker, a Michigan native who is the chief executive of Walker Developments Inc., is partnering with Baltimore-based developer Lawrence Cager to form a partnership called WV Urban Developments LLC.

Walker described himself as a proponent of urban retail developments. Most recently, he built Rhode Island Square Shopping Center, a retail project in Northeast Washington, D.C., that includes a Giant Food supermarket, a Home Depot hardware store and an outlet of department store A.J. Wright.

“In the same way many urban markets are underserved, so is this one,” Walker said, noting that his would be the first Lowe’s store in Baltimore City. “The objective for a retail strip like this is to bring people from other markets in, and then to attract other businesses to serve them.”

The team says it has a firm commitment from Lowe’s to open a 100,000-square-foot store at Howard and 25th streets, and on Wednesday they furnished the community with letters of interest in the project from office supplier Staples and retailer Anna’s Linens.

“The thing that makes this project work economically is the Lowe’s,” said Jon M. Laria, a partner at Ballard Spahr LLC who is a consultant on the project. “Lowe’s has approved this site at very senior levels. Lowe’s wants to be here.”

The home improvement store hopes to open in 2011, Walker said.

Cager described his role in the project as “structuring the deal.” He is a former construction manager with the Rouse Co., the company that designed most of the Inner Harbor’s retail components, and he provided the community with a letter from Enterprise Community Investment Inc., expressing interest in helping allocate up to $20 million in New Markets Tax Credits for the project.

The developers expect the project to bring 800 full-time jobs and 400 construction jobs to the area.

The site consists of two large blocks bounded by Maryland Avenue, 24th Street, 25th Street and an irregularly-shaped western edge made up of Sisson Street and a CSX rail line.

Preliminary plans, put together by Baltimore design firm Kann Partners, call for a two-story Lowe’s store with a garden center that would sit lengthwise on the northwest edge of the project. On Wednesday, the developers said they would make use of the site’s topography to make the Lowe’s store and the supermarket fit.

Altitude drops about 25 feet between 25th and 24th streets west of Howard, which will make it easier for the developers to build a two-story Lowes with a truck loading area that is below pedestrian level, as well as three stories of parking facing 24th Street.

On the eastern side of the project, the Walker plans to build about 160,000 square feet, or 50-60 units of housing along Maryland Avenue, in a style that reflect the neighborhood’s typical, turreted, three-story row homes.

About 16 small retail stores will line the first floors of the rear of these houses, facing a parking lot on the interior of the block bounded by Howard and Maryland between 24th and 25th streets.

Alex Hoffman, an urban planner who works for the city’s Department of Planning, called this aspect of the project “anti-urban,” and suggested that storefronts should face the pedestrians on Maryland Avenue. She also proposed changes to Kann’s plan including moving the proposed site of the Lowe’s so that it faces 24th Street and hiding the large parking lot planned for space adjacent to it.

“Right now, what they really have is the tenant. They’re in preliminary stages,” she said after the meeting. “I think attracting these businesses into the community is a positive thing. They just have to be integrated into the urban fabric.”

Others at the community meeting were not so keen on the project.

“It’s going to have a blighting influence on the community,” said Chris Merriam, a member of the Greater Remington Improvement Association. “It’s not going to attract ancillary businesses.”

During a presentation on the supermarket component of the project, one woman shouted out, “Are we going to get a Harris Teeter or what?” referring to the Virginia-based upscale supermarket.

Mortimer said that his Honda dealership would be merged with his dealership in Hunt Valley, and that he would retain his Honda Service Center at 2507 N. Howard St., a paint shop at 2520 N. Howard St. and a body shop at the corner of 29th Street and Remington Avenue. He said that he hopes to retain about 90 employees from his GM sales operation, which will close in August 2010, in positions in his other businesses.