I think the plan is shit and they should develop inclusive of the chimney and building that are currently there, but the idea there should be no development because Hampden is too crowded is a fucking joke. This is a city.

Totally agree that “Hampden is too crowded” is BS. Classic NIMBYism and why there is a housing shortage. Is there a link to the current plans that’s public?

Basically it's not difficult or expensive to keep the chimney and preserve the ancestral resting spot of thousands of migratory birds, but it is slightly inconvenient so what's going to happen is the developer will make non-committal statements about preserving the chimney and then due to an "unfortunate accident" during construction the chimney will become unstable and have to be demolished and they won't face any repercussions whatsoever. Maybe they'll even get a tax credit for building housing.

Bingo (unfortunately)

Chap is the go-to bureaucratic shit hole for people who want to obstruct new housing.

I'm really mad at Ramos about her trying to stop this. Outrageous!

The "city is too crowded" stuff is nonsense on it's face for sure, but the particular location of the bindery truly is tucked away behind a labyrinth of narrow one-way streets of rapidly deteriorating quality with extremely limited options for egress.

I'm not opposed to development but if they intend to park 150 more cars back here they need to have a plan for getting them in and out without backing up Keswick all the way to Sisson or seeing Pacific slide off the hill and into the Jones Falls from 1000% more daily use. It's halfway gone right now!

150 cars is a drop in the bucket for an urban area. Plus Its very walkable.

Drive down Pacific and tell me honestly you think that poor road can handle more traffic.

I'm not saying they can't build, I just think the development needs to include a plan for the affect on the whole neighborhood, not just the plot of land itself. I.e., fix Pacific and Chestnut and find a better way to let people exit Singer onto Keswick.

Chestnut and Crittenton in particular are 2-way streets but only wide enough for 1 car at a time. It works right now because hardly anybody comes back here. It won't work if the population of these 2 square blocks triples. There needs to be a plan. It won't just magically work out.

Whats happening is that the idiot NIMBYers are mucking up the discourse and everyone is dismissing the concerns wholesale because "oh its more NIMBYS, whatever" but there are a few actual relevant concerns that need to be addressed and aren't "waaah don't build here"

As a former professional housing advocate herself, it's definitely maddening to see this from her.

If people are so worried about the car traffic they should advocate for a building with fewer or zero parking spaces and RPP that isn't eligible for building residents. But they won't do that because if anything they actually want more cars and parking and the traffic concerns are a red herring.

Don't they already have a bitch of a time getting trash trucks, snowplows and firetrucks down there? I tried to find the piece mentions that but for trash might've been a paragraph or less in a bigger thing, and hell knows the snow or fire article might've only had a couple comments or something.

Plenty of space on the west side of Baltimore. BaltimoreBanner went through an entire block with two or three houses occupied, the rest are wrecks waiting to happen. Hampden's getting spotlighted because its spitting distance from JHU.

Sounds good to me.

You gotta build housing where people want to live.

“Ancestral” is too strong of a word for the chimney.

How wonderfully dismissive of you. Your comment talks right past everything failsafe pointed out, even the part where they more or less agreed with you.

It wasn't a critique of their comment at all, but a critique of the opponents who are simultaneously demanding more parking in the project and complaining about potential traffic. You can't have it both ways. I upvoted failsafe.

…also too strong of a word for birds

Fair enough. I upvote your upvoting them.

> I'm not saying they can't build, I just think the development needs to include a plan for the affect on the whole neighborhood, not just the plot of land itself. I.e., fix Pacific and Chestnut and find a better way to let people exit Singer onto Keswick.

Singer to Keswick is an egress plan that should never have been allowed. Point Elm north, 33rd east and 32nd/Singer west and you've more than halfway solved the roads problem in that neighborhood, but it's not anything the developer can do.

FWIW, Chestnut is marked one-way south of 33rd, and Crittenton should probably be marked one-way north. But both of those roads are obvious instances where local residents are prioritizing parking over vehicle throughput, which is neither something an incoming developer can do anything about or anything that should be held against this project.

I think the parking/traffic concerns are separate, fwiw, but one problem with the traffic argument is nobody making it supports anything that would increase vehicle throughput.