vision

tonight a vision for the charles north area was revealed to a packed metro gallery by the central baltimore cultural alliance. key word: vision. i like this approach. it isn't some private developer coming in and showing some final blueprints. and making it a matter of "when" instead of "what." it's current community movers and shakers coming together to invest in the area and dream big about what it could be. (mica among them.) nothing is set in stone, but steps are being taken. and, if their word holds true (which i know is a rarity with urban redevelopment) it will be an organic evolution of the area. with just a little prod.


north avenue has grown on me even more this year. i like the designs in the brickwork of the buildings. i like the layers of mismatched paint slapped on walls to cover up graffiti. this whole thought of redesigning kind of came out of nowhere. but apparently it's been a long time coming. and mica's been a key part of it all. fred lazarus is the committee chair. it was comforting to have him there. i know he has the best interest of this city at heart. and just look at what he has done during mica's time of expansion. one of the things that attracted me to mica before even visiting was their claim to mix the old and the new, to preserve existing structures (station building) and build innovative new buildings (brown) that somehow seem to fit right into the quirky campus flow. and he has always been the one to say, if baltimore goes down, mica goes down. and vice versa.

all this optimism doesn't mean i don't have my doubts. all the artists renderings feel odd. i'll miss the aesthetic of the old north ave. things like mechanical parking seem just stupid. (shouldn't we be moving away from accommodating cars like that?) and while i like some sort of penn station redesign, i think adding on a whole new wing is unnecessary. (one thing i like so much about this vision is the focus on abandoned buildings and spaces. let's work with those before we start from scratch.)

overall, this is huge. and won't happen over night. or over a year. or over ten years. but it's kind of cool to be down the street at the start of it all.