Baltimore City has it all when it comes to the infrastructure to absorb the growth in jobs and residents from the defense agencies moving to Maryland under the Base Realignment and Closure process, Cabinet secretaries reminded local economic development officials Tuesday.
The city has the roads, the mass transit, the sewer and water capacity, the housing stock and zoning, but they admitted it also has “challenges,” such as public schools and a high crime rate.
“Baltimore is the one place that can accommodate the growth,” Secretary of Business and Economic Development David Edgerley told the Maryland Economic Development Association conference at Rocky Gap in western Maryland.
Deputy Transportation Secretary Beverly Swaim-Staley said, “Baltimore has capacity in one place” to handle additional passengers on light rail and commuter buses, but expanding capacity on the rail commuter lines “is absolutely critical to BRAC regardless of where the families relocate. We know where they?re going to work, but we don?t know where they?re going to live,” Swaim-Staley said.
The new jobs will be concentrated at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County and Fort Meade in Anne Arundel. Both have commuter rail stations not far away.
State Planning Secretary Richard Hall said “Baltimore City has the lowest rate of [population] loss that we?ve seen in many, many decades.”
But still, there is “that little issue of the schools; the schools in the city are a challenge,” Hall said.
“Schools and crime are serious factors that could hold things back,” Baltimore County economic development chief David Iannucci said in an interview. “But we?re all very supportive of Baltimore,” which could be the “escape valve” for growth pressures.
While older suburbanites might not be attracted to the city, “a lot of the young grads and young tech” people may concider Fells Point and Canton a good place to live, Iannucci said.
“There are more than enough jobs to go around,” he said, and “regional economic development cooperation is at an all-time high.”
Iannucci said officials in the Baltimore region have informally agreed not to offer any special financial incentives to private contractors that will come with the defense agencies, except for those mandated by law.
Edgerley said for once in his decades in boosting business growth in Maryland, “all of you are talking across jurisdictions” about how to share and accommodate the BRAC growth.
