A sign on a vacant building at The Rotunda office and retail center announces that a new restaurant is “coming in 2025” and that it will offer “brunch, lunch, dinner, happy hour, live music, private events & more.”
The potential operators of the business, called The Barn & Lodge at The Rotunda, say it represents a capital investment of more than $4 million and will create 75 jobs, eight of which will be salaried. The operator is Titan Hospitality Group of Crofton, Maryland. MCB Real Estate, the owner of Harborplace, Northwood Commons, Yard 56 and other commercial centers in Baltimore, owns a majority stake in the Rotunda property.
But residents who live across the street from The Rotunda have gone on record as opposing live entertainment at the proposed restaurant and events space after the company and its attorney began but then broke off negotiations involving issues such as hours of operation, noise control and provisions for off-street parking.
The residents say The Rotunda already has an outdoor concert series called “Rotunda Rocks” every Friday from May to September and a Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays that also has live music. They say they’re afraid that The Barn & Lodge is a thinly-disguised banquet hall that will bring noise and crowds to the area all year long.
The opponents say that live entertainment is a conditional use in C-2 zoning districts in Baltimore, including The Rotunda at 711 West 40th Street, and Titan doesn’t have legal authority to offer the “live music” promised on its sign. They say they tried for months to meet with Titan and its attorney and the company would not meet with them, adding to their fears.
City Council member Odette Ramos, who represents both The Rotunda and the surrounding Hampden community, and the board of the Hampden Community Council also have gone on record as opposing Titan’s current application to provide live entertainment as part of its operation. More than 75 residents have signed a petition asking the zoning board to deny Titan’s request for live entertainment.
Baltimore’s Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals (BMZA) held a public hearing on the live entertainment request on September 3. But after listening to more than two hours of testimony, the commissioners said they were unable to reach a decision on the spot and scheduled a second meeting for deliberations on Tuesday, October 1.
Residents not initially consulted
The zoning board hearing comes six months after Baltimore’s liquor board granted a Class B “beer, wine and liquor” license for the project. That license allows Titan to serve alcoholic beverages at The Barn & Lodge but, because the Rotunda is a C-2 zoning district, Titan needs zoning board approval before it can offer live entertainment.
Part of the controversy is that while The Rotunda is zoned for commercial use, a row of houses immediately to the west, in the 3900 block of Elm Avenue, is part of a residentially-zoned area where live entertainment is not permitted.
The Barn & Lodge is proposed for a vacant structure on the western edge of The Rotunda, a historic complex that dates from 1921 and housed the Maryland Casualty Insurance Company before developer Bernard Manekin converted it to an office and retail center in the early 1970s.
Manekin’s conversion was one of the first adaptive reuse projects in Baltimore. Starting in 2014, Hekemian & Company invested $85 million to upgrade The Rotunda as an 11-acre, 300,000-square-foot mixed-use center, and MCB acquired a majority stake in 2021. Current tenants include a MOM’s grocery store, a seven-screen cinema complex and the 379-unit ICON Residences at The Rotunda. Nearby communities besides Hampden include Roland Park, Wyman Park and the Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus.
The Barn & Lodge is planned for a freestanding brick structure that served as a “boiler room” when the property was occupied by Maryland Casualty, plus an adjacent outdoor patio that would be covered. Located at 729 W. 40th St., and dormant for years, the structure backs up to Elm Avenue and looms above the two-story houses on the opposite side of the street. The houses have bedrooms facing the street, less than 100 feet from the building and patio where Titan wants to open its restaurant and events space.
Residents who live on Elm Avenue have led the opposition to the Barn & Lodge project, saying they can hear music from the Rotunda Rocks concerts and are worried about what they’ll hear if Titan is permitted to offer live entertainment. They note that banquet halls are not permitted uses in C-2 districts and they believe Titan is calling its business a restaurant and events venue, and then seeking approval to offer live entertainment, as a way of getting around the zoning code restriction on banquet halls in C-2 districts.
The residents have been working with an attorney from the Community Law Center to make their concerns known to the zoning board, and about a dozen Hampden residents attended the September 3 zoning board hearing with law center senior staff attorney Shana Roth-Gormley. The residents also have met with leaders of the Hampden Community Council and council member Ramos, who attended the September 3 hearing and spoke on their behalf.
At the September 3 hearing, the Hampden residents told the zoning board members that they asked to meet with Titan early on to learn about its proposed restaurant and events space but were unable to get a meeting until Ramos intervened.
When they finally got a meeting, they said, they wanted to know if Titan would be willing to limit its live entertainment to certain days of the week and certain hours of the night and not have music on its outdoor patio.
The residents said Titan initially seemed willing to consider accepting certain conditions if the community would support its request to provide live entertainment. But when the community council indicated it would still oppose Titan’s application, they said, Titan’s attorney, Drew Tildon, withdrew the offer to work with the residents. The residents say that made them worry all the more about how Titan would operate without any limits on live entertainment.
‘Mea culpa’
Tildon is an associate attorney with Rosenberg Martin Greenberg who specializes in land use and zoning cases and frequently represents applicants seeking waivers and variances from Baltimore’s zoning board. Rosenberg Martin Greenberg represents MCB in its efforts to secure city approvals to replace the Harborplace pavilions with a $500 million mixed-use development at Pratt and Light streets.
At the September 3 hearing, Tildon apologized for not scheduling a meeting with Hampden residents until Ramos intervened. She said she didn’t do so because she considered The Rotunda to be a commercial center and didn’t think it was necessary to meet with homeowners in the surrounding area.
In terms of community outreach, “I will note that we did not initially reach out to the Hampden Community Council, which is our policy,” she admitted to the board. “We always reach out, when we submit an application, to the applicable neighborhood community association. But given the fact that this is in the Rotunda shopping center where there are already two uniquely live music events that are actually outdoors, it just, it didn’t cross our minds, and we really very much appreciate the fact that the councilwoman reached out in advance of our initial hearing date in June and requested a meeting and we said, ‘Of course, we’re happy to share our plans.’ ”
A 2021 graduate of the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, Tildon said it was her fault that Titan didn’t meet with the community sooner.
“It is, frankly, mea culpa,” she said. “I should have reached out.”
When Ramos raised the issue of setting certain restrictions on Titan’s application for live entertainment, Tildon said, Titan initially indicated it would be willing to accept conditions, including removal of outdoor live entertainment entirely, “if that is something that was going to bring greater comfort” to area residents.
But when the Hampden Community Council said it was still going to oppose its application for live entertainment, Tildon said, Titan changed its stance about negotiating with the community.
Tildon said Titan had already postponed its previously-scheduled June meeting with the zoning board in hopes that it could “discuss other opportunities to bring comfort to the community.” But seeing that its efforts “were not met with any sort of response outside of outright opposition from the community,” she said, Titan didn’t want to wait any longer and decided instead to present its application directly to the zoning board.
“Given the fact that the conditions that we proposed had not alleviated their concerns, we are no longer proposing to add them to this application,” she said at the September 3 hearing. “We present them to the board at this board’s discretion. In fact, we are happy to have the board condition this approval on any sort of operational needs that the board believes are in the best public interest, but we are not here today presenting specific conditions.”
$4 million investment
In her presentation, Tildon emphasized the economic benefits she said the Barn & Lodge project would bring to the city, including its monetary investment and the number of jobs created. Tildon said the plans include a “traditional dining room” with about 100 seats, two 14-seat private dining rooms, a “private events space” for about 100 people, and a covered outdoor space with about 73 seats, just south of the building. She said the capital investment would be $4 million; Titan representative James King later referred to it as a $7 million investment.
Tildon said the hours of operation would be from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Monday through Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays. Unless there is a private event, she said, the restaurant generally will not stay open on weeknights until 1 a.m. Unless there is an event in the private events space, she said, indoor live entertainment will be limited to dinner service, with acoustic music, and outdoor live entertainment will be limited to happy hour, with acoustic music.
“Unless there is a private event in the private events space, there will not be public shows,” she said. “Live entertainment is going to be limited to dinner hour and happy hour.”
Tildon told the board that the restaurant is permitted “by right” at The Rotunda and that Titan’s zoning board application only concerns “accessory live entertainment.” She said The Rotunda “has an abundance of off-street parking,” that accessory live entertainment does not require additional off-street parking under the city’s zoning code, and that the restaurant is not required to provide additional off-street parking. She said she was not appearing to address hours, staffing or other details related to the restaurant, only the project’s live entertainment component.
‘Arbitrary and capricious and illegal’
Tildon warned the board members that the conditional use standards they must follow state that it would be “arbitrary and capricious and illegal” for them to deny live entertainment at The Barn & Lodge, so long as the adverse impact of the live entertainment there is “not going to be any worse than any other C-2 zoned property.“
The applicants “understand and recognize that there are homes that are adjacent” to the proposed project, she said, “but that is inherent to a community commercial district. The C-2 commercial district is designed to be adjacent to residential properties and to actually provide commercial uses that will serve the residential properties.”
But the residents said denying Titan’s conditional use application would not be arbitrary and capricious. They say they are concerned because the structure that was used as the boiler room is on the edge of the Rotunda property, very close to houses on the other side of the street, and that makes it different than if it were in the middle of the 11-acre Rotunda parcel.
The residents noted that the zoning board recently turned down an application for live entertainment for a proposed food and beverage operation in the 4000 block of Falls Road on the grounds that live entertainment would have an adverse impact on nearby residences there, and they believe the board should do so for Titan’s application as well. They argued that the Rotunda project is another case with unusual circumstances for the zoning board to consider, starting with its location on the dividing line between a commercial district and a residential zone, the attorney’s failure to reach out to the residents from the start, and the community’s distrust of Titan.
“The applicant…has not been forthcoming with neighbors in sharing a plan for this space, which it proposes to turn into a 271-seat venue with an outdoor patio, live entertainment and events,” states the petition signed by Hampden residents.
“We love restaurants, but this project will simply not work in this space,” the petition continues. “We are extremely concerned about the effect this venue would have on our community and on our ability to continue to live, work and play without significant nuisance caused by traffic and late-night noise.”
The Rotunda is not known for its night life, and people who live nearby “do not wish to have live music and entertainment entering their homes and bedrooms at any hour, much less until 1 a.m. or later,” said Blaise Ahearn, an executive board member of the Hampden Community Council.
“The Summer Concert Series, Rotunda Rocks, is one day a week, five months out of the year, until 9 p.m.,” Ahearn said. “It accounts for six percent of all days of the year. This is troublesome enough for these residents and they do not wish to increase this headache 60-fold by allowing live music 365 days a year and certainly not specifically into early morning hours.”
The Barn & Lodge “is different than any other place at the Rotunda,” Ramos said her letter of opposition to Titan’s application. “Not only will it be an upscale restaurant, but also an event space…The indoor live entertainment request is challenging for the residents of the apartments at the Rotunda, customers to the many shops, and for the residents on Elm Avenue behind the venue. Moreover, the parking and traffic is already a challenge at the Rotunda, and without valet, all of the shops will suffer.”
Not coming to the community initially was a misstep, Ramos said.
“They should have known to come to me and the community with their proposal,” she said. “They took for granted that all of the plans in the Rotunda have been approved recently. It was not until I brokered a meeting with the [Barn & Lodge] representatives and the community members did anyone from either party really understand the impact. That first meeting, there was agreement on a few items with the community, like no amplification of the outdoor music and reduced hours of the outdoor music. In their email back to us confirming the items we agreed to, those were modified along with some of the other items. The distrust began right there.”
Ramos said she would like zoning board chair James Fields to require that more negotiating meetings occur, and that a formal Memorandum of Understanding be drawn up with formal conditions on the conditional use.
“These should include every day of the week valet parking, no loading on Elm Avenue, leaving the original brick on the façade, and other requests the community has had but no agreement has been reached,” she said. “While it is exciting [Barn & Lodge] would like to move into Baltimore City, they cannot move forward with their project without consideration for the impact on the surrounding community.”
Currently, she said, “there seems to be no regard for any past agreements between the former owners of the Rotunda and the community, and no regard for at least making the community — the residents in the apartments and the residents in the surrounding community — aware of their plans and asking for feedback. For this reason, I am asking the BMZA to vote to oppose the use. Hopefully with your help we can get back to the negotiating table and come up with resolutions to each of the community’s concerns.”
The zoning board’s deliberations on Appeal No. 2024-028 have been scheduled for 12:30 p.m. on October 1 in the eighth floor conference room in the Charles Benton municipal building, 417 E. Fayette Street. The meeting is open to the public, but the board is not expected to take public testimony.
Thank you, Ed, for writing about this situation. As a nearby neighbor of the Rotunda, I appreciate learning the details of this situation. It’s obivous that Titan Hospitality hasn’t spent any significant time in the Rotunda–parking is already a clusterf—. Adding a 270+ seat event/restaurant space is going have a huge impact. I hope a compromise can be reached.
In this blog, you’ll learn about Hampden residents and City Council representatives opposing plans for live entertainment at a new $4 million restaurant and events venue in The Rotunda. A significant community concern!