In the shade of one of the Towson Circle businesses, David Iannucci squinted at a map of the community’s planned developments.
“That’s real,” the Baltimore County economic development director said, pointing to The Quarters, a redevelopment of apartments into 900 condos. “That’s real,” he said, pointing to The Promenade, 379 luxury apartments going up along York Road.
“That’s for real,” he said, pointing to the outline of Towson Circle III, an entertainment center just off the roundabout. “These things are going to happen.”
“These things” include more than $700 million in planned and ongoing projects in downtown Towson, a flurry of activity which, officials hope, will transform the workaday county seat into a 24-hour community.
“People are kind of rethinking suburbia as utopia and considering moving back into the core area,” said Cynthia Bledsoe, executive director of the Greater Towson Committee, a nonprofit organization that promotes investment in that community. “We’re seeing that we’ve gone beyond folks living where their jobs are. They’re more motivated to [think about] where they live first.”
That core area, Dulaney Valley Road from Goucher College to Towson University, boasts a project on nearly every block, but those projects have had to overcome various obstacles, Iannucci said.
One of the biggest has been the community’s existing buildings and layout. In the case of Towson Circle, land was cobbled together from several different lots.
“When you’re in a developed community, the challenges are somewhat greater,” Iannucci said. “We’re not talking about a green field with corn. You may have multiple lots with multiple ownerships.”
Developers of residential and commercial projects have also faced a “chicken-or-the-egg” scenario, a debate over which type of development needs to happen first for the other to succeed. Iannucci believes the key is residential housing, which brings the demographics that major commercial developers want to see before investing.
“That’s kind of the prevailing argument, that you need the residential density to get the entertainment and retail,” he said.
Even some of the community’s older buildings could see new life. The Investment Building, just off the Towson Circle and largely vacant for years, may soon get a new owner and be put back out for lease by new tenants, Iannucci said.
Nancy Hafford, executive director of the Towson Chamber of Commerce, touted frequent meetings between the community and local planners as the various projects came up.
“It’s great, because never before would the government call into the community to say, ‘what do you think,’ they’d just do whatever their own experts said,” Hafford said. “It didn’t happen that way this time.”
Towson University and Towson Town Center were also brought into the process, and could factor into ongoing development in the area. Bledsoe said possibilities include the relocation of campus bookstores or graduate programs to the downtown area.
The end result of all the current projects will be a walkable, urbanized Towson with more to offer after the workday is over. “The nine-to-five we see today will be a thing of the past,” Bledsoe said. “There’ll be a vibrant evening scene. You’ll see all ages mixing, and you’ll start to see visitors coming to see what we have.”
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