A new plan for Pratt Street would create retail space, green areas on city’s key boulevard.
Baltimore’s main street will receive a $100 million facelift in the city’s most visible renewal plan in decades, city officials said Wednesday.
The plan would create shops and restaurants along Pratt Street in downtown Baltimore, as well as add more than an acre of public park land at the intersection of Pratt and Light streets.
The most striking measure of the plan calls for the creation and sale of parcels of land on nine blocks of Pratt Street to private developers for 650,000 square feet of retail shops and restaurants.
Mayor Sheila Dixon was scheduled to announce the plan Wednesday night at the annual meeting of the Downtown Partnership, a non-profit corporation that serves as a booster to the city’s central business district and the Inner Harbor.
“It’s 16 blocks, each block is going to be treated differently,” said Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership. “Unlike a stadium, this is a series of projects. It’s a conceptual plan to tie together all the diverse elements and create a unifying theme.”
A team led by Baltimore-based design firm Ayers Saint Gross and Olin Partnership of Philadelphia was selected in March 2007 to redesign the Pratt Street corridor following a competition.
Plans call for a new sculpture garden along the Lower Jones Falls, and the demolition of the McKeldin Fountain at the intersection of Pratt and Light streets as well as the removal of sky bridges across those streets to encourage ground-level pedestrian traffic.
The latter two measures were surprising, said Stephen Walters, professor of economics at Loyola College, as the fountain and walkways are about 25 years old.
“This looks like a do-over,” Walters said. “I have my fingers crossed that they’re doing it right this time, because they’re redoing things they did a generation ago. And a generation in the life of a city is not that long.”
The new Pratt Street
Plans call for:
- The creation of 650,000 square feet of retail space along parcels created on nine blocks of Pratt Street.
- Maintaining one-way traffic on Pratt Street but adding a median strip to create a separate lane for buses and bicycles.
- The removal of the 25-year-old McKeldin Fountain at the intersection of Pratt and Light streets.
- The elimination of several northbound lanes of Light Street near the Light Street pavilion of Harborplace, and in their place the creation of a more than one-acre public square to be called McKeldin Plaza.
- The elimination of sky bridges across Pratt and Light streets to encourage ground-level pedestrian traffic.
Source: Downtown Partnership
Staff Writer Andrew Cannarsa contributed to this story.
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