Big Fish: P. David Bramble and reimagining Harborplace (Part II)

P. David Bramble has become the public face of the Inner Harbor, and, along with it, the future Downtown Baltimore. He assumed this consequential position himself, but it’s not quite clear how much he relishes the role.

Bramble, 47, is co-founder and managing partner of Baltimore-based MCB Real Estate, a growing firm with extensive assets in Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Massachusetts — spanning residential, retail, mixed use, office and industrial properties. His firm grew its Baltimore holdings in a big way by purchasing Harborplace through a court-governed process after a previous owner declared bankruptcy.

In one breath, Bramble — raised in West Baltimore before attending Princeton and University of Pennsylvania law school — says he and his firm need the Harborplace project “like a hole in the head.” But in the next, he says he is committed to replicating and eclipsing the excitement that Harborplace generated as a landmark waterfront destination in the 1980s and making the Inner Harbor a place for all of Baltimore to spend time, and just as attractive as The Wharf in DC. or similar projects in Singapore and Copenhagen.

After the receivership purchase, MCB hired architects and planners, solicited input in community settings and unveiled its vision in a master plan released in late 2023. Features include a new park, amphitheater, a resilient waterfront promenade with garden islands, a distinctive commercial building called the Sail, and twin residential towers of 32 and 25 stories apiece with up to 900 apartments. The plan will cost close to $1 billion to execute, with $400 million in public money for the public portions. The concept has been embraced by Mayor Brandon Scott, Gov. Wes Moore, and members of the City Council and General Assembly. In November, Baltimore voters will be asked to approve a charter amendment that lets the residential towers get built.

But other reviews have been mixed, particularly from established developers and architects. Critics say the design process was rushed, and the results are not special enough. Some have asked for a reboot. In an interview with Baltimore Fishbowl executive editor David Nitkin, Bramble embraced and defended the plan, even as he said some elements could change as community discussions continue. Fishbowl is presenting this Big Fish discussion in two parts. [Part I can be found here.] This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Baltimore Fishbowl: Looking across the country, or even across the globe, what are your favorite or your inspirations for successful waterfronts in other cities? [The Harborplace master plan lists the Research and Development District in San Diego, HafenCity in Hamburg, Germany and Copenhagen Harbor in Denmark as successful models, among others.]

David Bramble: Baltimore is so unique because a lot of those are riverfronts. So that you basically have one straight line, a lot of them don’t have as much waterfront capacity as we have. And think about it, we have one connected park that goes all the way around the water. I don’t think any of those districts match that; maybe Singapore, which I think is probably the most similar in size. What you’ll see is that we took a lot of different concepts from a lot of different places. And look, there were some things that people really leaned into, right? Like when we did the communication process, we would put pictures up of these different things, and have people come and say, ‘I want to see something that looks more like this.’ And that helped us sort of think about what would be interesting. And I’ll note that all of these are mixed-use. There isn’t anything that’s just one big old park for the reasons that we just talked about in terms of it doesn’t create enough economic activity, which is what we’re most in need of in Baltimore City.

Singapore’s very interesting. When Singapore was redoing its waterfront, they actually sent their delegation here to Baltimore to understand what we did. Obviously, this was years ago … and their harbor actually is very similar now. Their development density is on a whole other scale.

BFB: How many of these have you been to yourself? And I see that The Wharf in D.C. is on your list of models or templates.

DB: I have been to most of the U.S. ones on the list. I was literally at The Wharf a couple of weeks ago… It’s great. It’s lovely. I mean, there’s some elements to it that don’t make it as cool as what we can do because you can’t go as high. You have the fish market, which is kind of cool. But the rest of it is a little fancier. Or really, someplace where everyone feels like they should be there, not just people who are going to buy $100-a-plate dinners. So when you look at the entrance to the Sail building on Pratt Street, to us, that embodies how we’re thinking about this big old entrance archway, framing the [U.S.S.] Constellation. Guess what? I don’t care where you’re from in Baltimore. If you’re walking down the street, and you see that entrance, you’d say, ‘Oh, I’m supposed to go in there and see what’s going on.’ And that’s what we’re going for. The Wharf is a little bit more enclosed but still awesome. It’s absolutely beautiful, and there are elements from that I think we want in terms of the entertainment – and the retail is critical.

Walkability as a driver of retail success

BFB: Let’s talk a little bit more about retail. Retail hasn’t been all that successful in the existing pavilions already on the street. What are the elements of making retail successful right now?

DB: There are multiple issues. One is these were originally built as festival marketplaces [with small vendors]. That concept has waned. The original plan was that, and that worked great. Then, over time, as this went from being 100 percent Rouse to becoming a part of a mall company, effectively, they just filled it up with mall retailers, and…those businesses changed dramatically and a lot of them don’t even exist anymore. And the ones that do have realized that they don’t need waterfront real estate with paid parking. So if you’re going to buy a T-shirt from a standard retailer, you’re not going to go down to the harbor to do that. Really that doesn’t make any sense…One of the big issues that you have now is you have no walkability. And that’s one of the things that makes Pratt Street challenging — it’s basically a highway, and people are mostly using it to speed through downtown. There’s no attraction to walking on the street. It’s hard to cross the street, or it’s like taking your life into your own hands. So we think in order to make this successful, you’ve got to — and this goes beyond our plan for Harborplace and is talking to the larger plans that we want — we’re hoping that the city and other stakeholders will buy into this idea of making Pratt Street a more pedestrian-friendly street. Light Street goes to as many as nine lanes. That’s silly; you don’t need nine lanes. You can still move the traffic through relatively easily [with a smaller number]. What you want is streets that people can walk on. The real idea is what we call double-loaded retail on both sides of the street. It’s clear that this is a place that you’re not supposed to speed through. You’re supposed to park someplace and you’re supposed to walk.

BFB: So what you’re saying is you need the infrastructure; that the design for the retail is maybe even more important than what the actual retail is?

DB: Yeah, the retailers will change. The one thing about retail is it always changes. As I say, there was a time when the largest retailer in the world was A&P grocery stores. When I was a kid I never heard of Target. Target was something random in the Midwest. Now, it’s the most important retailer. People’s tastes change and things change. But I think that this retail, well done, will stand the test of time because we do plan on going back to the idea of markets, vendors, cool, unique things that you can only find in Baltimore. And there will be national retailers, hopefully, because they help pay the bills. But we don’t want this thing to turn back into what it was before — with Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory. That’s not what we’re looking for. The vibe is definitely much cooler, much more local, much more interactive.

Negotiating games

BFB: David, do developers ask for more than they want? Is it a negotiating game? Does the plan say, alright, we’re at 22 stories because we know we’re gonna get 19 or 18 at the end of the day?

DB: That happens all the time. I can tell you we’re not doing that here. I will tell you it’s a classic developer thing to go in and ask for nine times what you need and settle for less. We’re not doing that here. Because we didn’t start by asking for anything. We started by listening. And honestly, I want more. If I had my way, there would be even more.

BFB: I’ve looked at the plan. I see that you pay attention to — and it’s a term of art — your ‘massing’ studies [that analyze the overall mass of buildings] and then the views of the waterfront that you can access from various points. But are people talking about that and recognizing that you’ve gone in a certain direction for masses of buildings and views of water?

DB: They don’t know. But look, there’s only so much we can do. The thing I can tell you is there’s so much transparency here. It’s all on our website. You can see exactly if you want to read hundreds of pages of documents. It’s all there; you can see how we got from point A to point B to point C; this is how we did it, and you may come to your own conclusions. And I think that if we continue to allow people who have the loudest voices to dominate, then people won’t get to the details. But I will tell you this: I’ve done a lot of these community meetings, and nine times out of 10 at the end, actually, every time at the end, people come up to me and say, ‘I didn’t understand that. Now I do. And I get it.’ And some of them will say ‘I don’t like this,’ or ‘I don’t like that.’ But the large majority of them get it because what’s important to regular people is the ground plane — the ground plane walking along around the ground. To me, if I were still a kid and was brought there, that’s what I care about — what is my experience on the ground plane. And if you see this ground plane plan, if you spend any time with it, you love it. There’s a couple of slides, which I think are awesome, which show sort of the before and after, where you’re looking at loading docks and trash compactors or water. The videos, when you see this stuff, it’s a game changer. You’re like, ‘Holy shit, you can see the Power Plant right from the ground.’ That’s all purposeful. It’s all intentional to make your experience on the ground fabulous. And listen, that’s not to win votes. That’s to make a successful project because what’s going to make this successful is people coming and enjoying it and loving it.

Memories of cracking crabs

BFB: As a young kid, what’s your best Harborplace memory growing up? And do you have any not-so-great memories?

DB: I actually didn’t have not-so-great ones. My best ones were any time family came, our place was Phillips. If any time family or friends came from out of town, that’s where my dad and mom would take everybody. So many memories of going there, and then as kids running upstairs to eat fried dough while the grownups are eating crabs and drinking. So that’s my memory of it. And then other memories are, of course, I think everyone our age has this memory, is that the damn Fudgery. A lot of those guys went to our high school. And they were great.

BFB: You want people still at the end of the day, 10 years from now, to be able to come and eat crabs somewhere at Harborplace?

DB: Crabs are Baltimore’s thing. Yeah, there’s got to be good crabs there. But in the curse of curses for a guy who loves Baltimore, I’m allergic to shellfish now.

BFB: In the development world, people criticize, sometimes, unspecial buildings that are just built to maximize revenue. And some of the criticism out there — this has to be more special than Houston… Houston has massive, big commercial buildings. Have you hit the spot yet where you are convinced this is more special than a traditional downtown development project?

DB: We think so. But look, architecture is like art, right? There’s the practical side of it. And then there’s the side of taste. And so that’s what we have to make those choices. And we love it. Some people like it, some people love it. Some people don’t love it. And then that’s typical.

BF: Do you feel a responsibility, as a Baltimorean, about changing the skyline of the city?

DB: Absolutely. I feel that responsibility. It’s got to be fabulous. Remember, I’ve lived here my whole life. So I will tell you that … the weight of responsibility is massive. We definitely feel it. We are leaning into it. And look, I mean, I think the community engagement process that we started is evidence of that. Right? It’s a recognition of how important the voices of the community are. And my fellow developer friends are definitely not happy with the level of engagement that we’ve done, because it’s expensive, and it takes them all this time. And I’ll tell you what, name another project in the city of Baltimore that had signs on the sides of city buses asking people to come and talk to the developer… I think that’s a first. I bet that hadn’t been done in Miami, done in the country.

BFB: We’re in an election year, you acknowledged. As the charter amendment that’s gonna be on the ballot, what is the campaign going to look like to make sure that that passes?

DB: I actually don’t know… I’m not gonna be talking to people and pushing. But I’m not in the politics business. Obviously, we’re gonna lean into it. We’re gonna provide resources to it. We want this to be successful. Listen, we are a huge investor in the city. And I do mean huge. We are all over the city — in all the big parts of the city. MCB is from the east side all the way around to the west side. We believe that this project is critical for the city. I don’t think there are very many people who have expended the resources that MCB has in neighborhoods and in really hard projects that are community-oriented, as well as big fancy projects by the water. We are, I think, a pretty unique animal in our willingness to engage across the board. So we see this as protecting our investment as Baltimoreans. So we’re really leaning into it.

Part I of the Baltimore Fishbowl Big Fish interview with P. David Bramble can be found here.