Owen Rouse Jr.: Who Moved My Core?

The Exelon headquarters site selection choice seems to have surprised the pundits and prompted heckles from politicians with downtown constituents. Shock, dismay and “woe is me,” seem to be the sentiment. But if you looked closely, you could have seen this selection forming like a storm cloud on the horizon or (more positively) like the sun peeking out from behind it.

In the early part of the century and extending into the late 1950s, the epicenter of Baltimore stood firmly at the corner of Baltimore and Charles streets. This corner’s importance in the city’s history cannot be understated as both the center of commerce and the center of the address numbering system of the Baltimore’s street grid. The stalwart B&O Building at 2 North Charles was one of the first to be constructed after the 1904 fire, and anchored the geography firmly and continues to be relevant.

But time elapses. Companies form, expand and die. Buildings are removed or recycled and the dynamics that affect a city’s locus are felt. New projects emerge (such as Harborplace) and the table top tilts slightly, this time south by southeast, catching the city’s previous core like a magnet and moving it to Pratt and Light streets for the next 30 years.

Inevitably, history repeats itself and more time marches on. New companies form (Laureate) and others die (New American). Some aggregate and expand (Aegon/Transamerica) and others relocate and expand (McCormick). Buildings and sites become candidates for recycling and, lo and behold, the core moves again, this time decidedly to the land of Harbor East with its modern design, street level verve and waterfront panache.

There is no one explanation for these phenomena. Available land and a vision of the “new” certainly plays a role. Integration of uses, view corridors, changing traffic patterns, demographics and exogenous events that shape policy also contribute to the core being shifted. Certainly the well-documented movement back into urban environments deserves a footnote.

So what’s a city to do? Harbor East defined itself and became what it wanted to be — upscale lodging, high rise urban residential, dining as entertainment and in a scale and density that is understandable. The “old downtown” (maybe we drop the negative vernacular) needs to understand what it is — first by defining what it is not and then allowing it to evolve.

Owen Rouse, Jr. is senior vice president, director of capital markets at Manekin, LLC. He can be reached at 410-290-1400 or [email protected].