Work began in recent weeks on the infrastructure for 247 townhomes by Ryan Homes at the One Westport development in the Westport neighborhood of South Baltimore. The townhomes are phase one of a development by Stonewall Capital on a 43-acre waterfront parcel on the Middle Branch.

Stonewall Captial sold the 11.2-acre Parcel B of the development to H&H Rock, a land developer working to create townhome pad sites for Ryan Homes. Ray Jackson of Stonewall Capital said he expects vertical construction to begin on the townhomes in the first quarter of 2025 with the completed homes being delivered in the spring or summer.

Read more at SouthBmore.

Planning for the revitalization of Baltimore’s Middle Branch waterfront is getting back on track, with the pending hiring of a design team led by a prominent consultant who has worked on transformative projects such as the High Line in New York City.

Baltimore’s Board of Estimates is scheduled this week to approve a request to commission James Corner Field Operations and other project partners to update a master plan guiding development along 11 miles of shoreline on the southern edge of Baltimore, framing the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River.

Corner, based in New York but with offices in London, San Francisco, Shenzhen and elsewhere, has provided the vision behind some of the most attention-grabbing projects in urban areas, from the Manhattan High Line to Chicago’s Navy Pier and Tongva Park in Santa Monica, Calif.

Corner would replace a consultant that won a design competition to take on the project but was removed after photos circulated showing guests in blackface at a party at the firm’s office in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

The South Baltimore project is considered one of the most signficant recreation, economic development and community-building opportunities in the city, and would breath life into what many consider to be an underutilized stretch of waterfront.

Corner was the runner-up in an international competition in 2019 to identify a design team to reimagine the Middle Branch waterfront. West 8 Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, a Rotterdam-based planning firm, was ultimately selected, but was removed from the project last July after a photo surfaced of three white children of a former employee attending a holiday party wearing blackface.

The photo, sent by a tipster known only as “Middle Branch Citizen,” infuriated residents of Westport, Cherry Hill and other predominantly African American communities that are part of the study area. It came five weeks after the May 25 murder of George Floyd, which set off nationwide demonstrations that focused attention on the Black Lives Matter movement and structural racism in American cities.

Corner and others would be retained by the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership, a non-profit entity created to use funds from casino gambling in Maryland to improve Baltimore neighborhoods.

The study area includes Port Covington and Westport, two areas where extensive waterfront development activity is underway or planned. Putting the request on the Board of Estimates agenda is a sign that the city’s Planning Department and the gateway partnership have reached terms with the New York-based designer and that Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration supports bringing him in.

The amount of the contract is $851,451. According to the agenda item, the “non construction consultant agreement” with Corner will last for a year, with an option to renew for another six months. More than $300,000 is coming from funds generated by Baltimore’s Horseshoe Casino, and the rest is coming from the partnership.

The commission involves working with communities along the Middle Branch to develop a “Waterfront Vision and Implementation Plan” to improve the shoreline and strengthen connections between the waterfront and the communities close to it.

The project’s scope includes designing parks, trails, bridges and other amenities and infrastructure along the north and south shorelines to enhance the area for residents and visitors, while also creating a more attractive setting for future development.

The Middle Branch is “a project that we felt very passionately about,” Corner said when city officials began negotiating with him several months ago. “We feel privileged to have this opportunity.”

West 8’s withdrawal put a temporary halt to the planning activity. After West 8 resigned in early July, the gateway project worked with Mahan Rykiel Associates, one of the subcontractors on the West 8 team, to finish a preliminary phase of the work. West 8’s founder, Adriaan Geuze, recommended to then-Mayor Bernard “Jack” Young that Baltimore keep going with the team of 14 subcontractors he had assembled, with Mahan Rykiel in charge.

Editor’s note: This article won second place (Division O) in the Growth and Land Use category of the Maryland, Delaware, and D.C. Press Association’s 2020 Contest. Read our other award-winning pieces here.

In 2016, Baltimoreans organized to demand community investment from a developer seeking one of the largest subsidies in city history.

Sagamore Development had planned a brand-new mixed-use waterfront neighborhood that would host a corporate campus for Under Armour, one of Baltimore’s biggest business success stories. In pursuit of a $535 million package to finance roads, rail, parks, and other public improvements at Port Covington, the developers appeared at a Baltimore City Council hearing, displaying projections that Under Armour staff would quadruple over two decades and saying, “It’s grow here or grow somewhere else.”

Community leaders and citizens showed up by the hundreds, buoyed by the civic energy that had followed Freddie Gray’s death a year earlier. Many objected to what they saw as inequitable development: the city’s repeated use of financing packages to spur development of downtown and waterfront neighborhoods rather than the city’s poorer sections.

The city and Sagamore struck a deal in September 2016 after months of acrimony over whether the package was truly beneficial to all city residents or a giveaway to a well-connected developer. Four years later, Baltimore is about to learn whether lofty promises about affordable housing, jobs and minority investment will come true.

Tax increment financing (TIF) packages are meant to subsidize development the city believes would be too expensive for builders and investors to undertake otherwise. It’s essentially a gamble: the city bets that a development will eventually bring the city more property tax revenue than if it were left alone. The city sells bonds to fund the infrastructure, and any increase in property tax revenue in the area is used to repay the loans. It can take decades for a development’s property taxes to start flowing into the city’s general fund, and some critics believe the strategy benefits big developers at the expense of already underinvested city neighborhoods.

If Sagamore Development was to get a nine-figure TIF, much of the crowd in Baltimore’s War Memorial Building that evening in 2016 wanted to see city residents get something in return. And they wanted to make sure that this new neighborhood, situated on a peninsula that already contained the 93-percent-white neighborhood of Locust Point, did not become a rich white enclave in a city that is nearly two-thirds Black.

Activists and organizers pressured Sagamore all summer through direct negotiations, rallies, and testimony at several City Council hearings.

Sagamore got its record TIF package, but not before promising an historic $100 million community investment. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) committed Sagamore to affordable housing and local hiring benchmarks, as well as multimillion-dollar funding for parks, workforce development, and education.

This commitment was on top of a separate $39 million agreement with a coalition of South Baltimore neighborhoods called SB6 to fund a long list of community needs, such as affordable housing, education, and workforce development.

The city and Sagamore agreed that the $100 million agreement would begin once the city borrowed money to pay for the new infrastructure. Four years later, the city has yet to borrow the money. Under Armour’s star has fallen, with dipping stock prices, founder Kevin Plank’s resignation as CEO, and an SEC investigation over whether the company misrepresented its sales figures. These developments all cast doubt on the development of the much-ballyhooed Under Armour headquarters at Port Covington. And now the pandemic is wreaking havoc on the commercial real estate market.

However, with a $233 million equity investment from Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, the team— with Weller Development taking the lead from Plank’s Sagamore — has begun work on its first phase of development. An appraisal and market study of the plans says the new phase will add eight buildings to Port Covington, which already includes the City Garage incubator space, the Baltimore Sun offices and printing plant, Nick’s Seafood restaurant, a distillery, a tavern, and Under Armour office space.

In June, the city took its first step toward borrowing money for Sagamore’s infrastructure project, approving the sale of $148 million in bonds. That sale will officially trigger Sagamore’s $100 million pledge, testing an informal and more fragile bond forged four summers ago between a global brand carrying the blessing of city and state power brokers and a newly energized community in pursuit of economic and racial justice.

The Maryland Economic Development Corporation says the bond sale could take place as soon as late October, at which point Weller Development’s historic promises to the city will be put to the test.  Among the questions soon to be answered: How inclusive will Port Covington to be in its housing, hiring, and contracting under the agreement? Who is holding them accountable for their obligations in the agreement?

To gain insight into the answers, Baltimore Fishbowl reached out to Weller Development, city and state government officials, and community leaders.

Weller declined to make anyone available for an interview. John Maroon of Maroon PR, a public relations firm hired by Weller, provided information via email. Maroon also sent a summary of Weller Development’s “community impact” to date.

The official memorandum of understanding can be found here.

Affordable Housing On Site. But for Whom?

One of the most contentious provisions of the community agreement was a promise to make 20 percent of housing at Port Covington “affordable,” doubling Sagamore’s original offer of 10 percent.

Still, the ACLU of Maryland and other community advocates noted loopholes in the final agreement. The language defined “affordable” as high as 80 percent of the area median income for the entire Baltimore region, or $83,200 for a four-person household, according to the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. (This area includes six counties surrounding the city, two of which are among the richest in the nation.)

The final housing provision also allowed the developer to create affordable units in other parts of the city rather than on site, potentially in areas of concentrated poverty, or even to simply pay into a city housing fund without creating any units if the developer considered construction impossible “on a financially reasonable basis.”

Maroon wrote to Baltimore Fishbowl in a July e-mail that “while the program may evolve,” Weller intends to make 20 percent of 445 total units affordable, all on-site, in the first round of housing development. The official agreement set a goal to make half of that 20 percent of units affordable at 60 percent of the area median income. Maryland DHCD multifamily housing director Greg Hare says 54 units of the site’s Rye Street Apartments will be affordable at 50 percent of the area median income, thanks to a combination of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and what Hare called a “very large” tax-exempt loan. Hare said his agency’s $72 million in financing would allow rent for Rye Street’s affordable units to be set between approximately $843 and $1,250 per month — a significant discount compared to the 200 market-rate units set to rent for between $1,800 and $3,000 monthly.

Less clear is the availability of rentals for poorer households at Port Covington. The developer agreed to make one-tenth of required affordable units, or two percent of all on-site housing, affordable at 30 percent of the area median income, or $31,200 for a four-person household. But the memorandum of understanding places the responsibility on the city, saying the 30 percent units will materialize as long as the Housing Authority of Baltimore City or another city agency provides housing vouchers or other assistance.

Maroon said that Weller “will have offerings ranging from 30% to 80% AMI, with the 30% AMI units receiving housing vouchers from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City.” Baltimore Fishbowl asked the city housing authority if the agency had dedicated any vouchers to Port Covington. Spokesperson Ingrid Antonio responded via e-mail that the authority has “no record of Weller Development contacting HABC regarding vouchers for any units to be developed in Port Covington.” Sent that response, Maroon responded via e-mail: “Because we are committed to truly equitable, mixed-income development, we intend to provide 30% units and have had conversations with HABC around its vouchers for those units in accordance with the MOU.”

Meeting and Surpassing?

Weller says it has spent more than $10 million toward its obligations in the $100 million community agreement. The company has also met two milestones that came due before the bond sale: funding 100 positions in the city’s youth job program every year since 2016, and paying $5,000,000 toward a “center for recreation, entrepreneurship, and workforce development” at Pleasant View Gardens, the former site of the Lafayette Courts high-rise housing project. That center is now UA House at Lafayette, run by the Living Classrooms Foundation. “We had a great experience” working with the developer, said Living Classrooms president and CEO James Piper Bond.

Weller’s numbers on contracting indicate that they have significantly exceeded their goals. The agreement requires Weller to contract 27 percent of infrastructure work to minority-owned businesses and 10 percent to women-owned businesses. Weller’s community impact summary claims that 81 percent of the work has been awarded to minority-owned businesses and another 18 percent to women-owned businesses. In addition, Maroon wrote, about 36 percent of on-site employees are city residents, surpassing a requirement of 30 percent. Weller “has met and will continue to meet all obligations under the MOU,” Maroon said.

Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, a community organizing group involved in MOU negotiations, is encouraged by Weller Development’s progress. But a statement sent to Baltimore Fishbowl by Rev. Andrew Foster Connors, co-chair of BUILD, stresses the city’s ongoing responsibility.

“We urge the Mayor, City Council and respective agencies to verify these reports and maintain oversight as outlined in the development agreement,” the statement reads. “If the City holds Weller Development strictly accountable to the community benefits agreed upon in the deal, Port Covington will increase opportunities for residents in south Baltimore and across the City.”

A key to that accountability is contained in the agreement, which requires Weller to pay $151,000 per year for a Level 3 Auditor in the city Comptroller’s office — solely dedicated to Port Covington-related compliance. That 20-year requirement kicks in when the bonds are sold. The city hasn’t assigned an auditor yet, according to James Knighton, a spokesperson for Comptroller Joan Pratt.

“The Department of Audits is considering restructuring to better serve the city,” Knighton wrote in a July 15 e-mail. “The goal is to have the restructuring completed in the next few months. Auditing the MOU is an important factor in allocating staff resources as part of the restructuring.”

In 2021, Baltimore will have a new mayor and comptroller. The likely incoming mayor, current City Council President Brandon Scott, cast the sole vote against the issuance of Port Covington bonds in June. The likely incoming comptroller, City Councilman Bill Henry, defeated Pratt with a campaign message of transparency and accountability, and he abstained on a 2016 committee vote to authorize the tax increment financing package partly because of a disconnect he saw between developers’ “glowing” affordable housing promises and what the official language of the agreement actually required of them. And he has been pushing the city to adopt stricter inclusionary housing requirements for years. (Democrats Henry and Scott each won their primaries, and are expected to win easily in the November general election, given the city’s overwhelmingly Democratic voter base.)

“If you look at the MOU, it’s binding: we will be able to take legal action and other action to recoup and ensure that the city is not harmed in this process,” Scott said in an interview. “This will not be something that we’ll just let go off on its own like we’ve seen happen with other big projects in the past.”

Scott said that if elected, he would use more than just the developer-funded auditor to monitor Weller’s performance. “Every agency that can be involved will be involved,” he said, including the city’s wage enforcement, minority contracting, and employment development offices. He also said he’d pressure the Baltimore Development Corporation to work more outside of its Inner Harbor “comfort zone” and develop Black- and minority-owned businesses at Port Covington.

Ultimately, enforcement of the agreement lies with the city solicitor’s office. Scott emphasized that, as with other city contracts, it’s important to first communicate if a developer falls behind on a goal: “You say, ‘Listen, this is a problem.’ You see where things are versus where they should be.” But, Scott said, if the developer is “blatantly” missing goals, “severe action” might be necessary.

“Hopefully we don’t get to that point, but we know all the tools that we have,” Scott said.

Unity in the Community?

Much is riding on the sale of the first chunk of Port Covington TIF bonds. But the city won’t be selling the bonds itself, instead leaving that to a quasi-governmental entity called the Maryland Economic Development Corporation (MEDCO).

James Knighton of the city comptroller’s office wrote in an e-mail that the city’s finance department told him city officials didn’t want to jeopardize Baltimore’s AA bond rating by adding the massive Port Covington TIF obligations to its $200 million in outstanding TIF debt.

Technically, the bond sale could happen in less than two months. MEDCO director of bond financing Jeff Wilke wrote in an August e-mail that his agency projected closing on the bonds “towards the end of October.” That date, however, could “shift a bit,” Wilke wrote. Wilke pointed out that while the people investing in the TIF bonds want assurance that there is enough private investment in the development, the private investors want reassurance that they can count on the bond proceeds. The bond sale hangs on the “successful financing” of the first phase of development.

The Board of Estimates’ June vote to issue the bonds had revived a fracture in the community. When Sagamore Development signed the agreement in September 2016, leaders from BUILD appeared with them to announce it at City Garage, a Sagamore property in South Baltimore. Two other coalitions, known as PORT3 and Build Up Baltimore, had refused to accept Sagamore’s last offer. The appearance of the bond issuance authorization on the Board of Estimates agenda in June prompted several PORT3 organizations, including ACLU of Maryland and Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, to ask the city to postpone the vote.

“We believe the Port Covington project and TIF financing is neither fiscally responsible nor consistent with the City’s race equity policies,” they wrote in June.

The coalition argued that the public had gotten little notice of the vote, and that since the 2016 approval of the TIF, the project’s “financial viability has become shakier and shakier.” They also objected that bond sales would reimburse Kevin Plank for more than $400,000 worth of “legal costs associated with securing approval of the TIF ordinances and negotiation of the MOU.”

Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition executive director Marceline White said that the city’s track record of development-related accountability is spotty. “That could change under a new mayor and new leadership, but past experience in Baltimore has shown that the city has not been great about going back and really enforcing projects,” she said.

White said the project reflects a larger failing in how Baltimore approaches economic development. “Do we have a vision that’s coming from the city, with community participation, of where we want to be and how we want to get there?” she said. “Or are we open to all bids from developers? Is it a developer-driven process, or is it a process set by city leaders and community leaders?”

Keisha Allen, a co-founder of the coalition of South Baltimore neighborhoods that negotiated its own agreement with Sagamore Development, is also critical of city government’s record on community development. But to Allen, a 13-year resident of Westport in South Baltimore who served as president of her neighborhood association for nine years, the Port Covington developers are a breath of fresh air.

Westport backs up to the Middle Branch of the Patapsco, the same river that Port Covington overlooks. Westport is nearly 90 percent black, with a median income far below that of the region. Allen says she has seen developers and speculators play games with her neighborhood for years.

“When you’ve gone through these disappointments before, you put your guard up not to get too disappointed,” Allen said.

Weller Development has not disappointed her. Allen’s coalition negotiated a funding stream tied both to sales of Weller properties and to the amount of square footage of commercial space occupied on site. Allen is happier dealing with these developers than with city government, which she believes has favored East and West Baltimore while letting infrastructure and public safety fall behind in South Baltimore neighborhoods like Westport and Cherry Hill.

“They don’t care,” she said. “They’ve shown for 50, 60 years that they don’t care.”

Allen supported the bond sale and criticized Scott for voting against it. (Scott said his vote reflected a “process” issue; the vote appeared on the Board of Estimates agenda so quickly, he said, that he didn’t even get briefed. “If they’ll spring things on me, they’ll spring things on Cherry Hill in a heartbeat,” Scott said.)

White, the consumer advocate who protested the bond sale, says Baltimore City too often operates in silos.

“There’s not one group that speaks for the city,” White said. “I think as a city we have a lot more work to do to be able to have conversations where we can really develop a shared vision of what’s best for the city, an economic vision that’s not driven by developers. If you look at other cities’ economic plans, you see a really clear vision of how they want to build out.”

However, White wants to see the city benefit from this deal, and she wants to see Weller fulfill the most ambitious requirements and goals in the community investment pledge. “This is a case where I’d like nothing more than to be proven completely wrong,” White said.

It will be years before anyone is proven right or wrong about Port Covington. Weller claims to have met or exceeded obligations thus far, but this is just the first chapter in the construction of the new Port Covington—literally “Chapter 1B” in the developer’s plans. There’s a lot left to go—assuming the next chapter materializes. Ultimately, Weller plans to build out 45 square blocks over 235 acres, with 14 million square feet of housing, retail, offices, hotels, and other developed space. They claim the full development will create $11.5 billion in economic activity, with “54,000 construction jobs and an additional 25,000 follow-on jobs.”

“If Port Covington is actually as they say it will be, if they pull it off, it will be transformative,” said Henry, the presumptive comptroller.

That is the next question Baltimore faces in Port Covington: if—not when—they can pull it off.

Lawrence Lanahan is a Baltimore-based freelance reporter and the author of ‘The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore’s Racial Divide.’ (The New Press, 2019). Last summer, he wrote a Baltimore Sun opinion piece challenging the use of the Opportunity Zone program at Port Covington.

Dutch landscape design firm West 8 has emerged as the top contender among three companies that submitted proposals to beautify and repurpose the Middle Branch Waterfront—and its plan proposes a major urban planning overhaul for South Baltimore.

The Parks and People Foundation, which managed the design contest on behalf of the city, said the firm’s entry received the top ranking from a five-member jury of local leaders and design pros, besting submissions from James Corner Field Operations and Hargreaves Jones, both based in New York.

This isn’t a done deal, Parks and People’s announcement noted: “If the City and West 8 cannot reach acceptable terms, the City will continue down the list in rank order.”

A spokesperson for the foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on which firm was picked as the runner-up.

The contest solicited ideas for a brand new park encompassing 11 miles of shoreline in the oft-overlooked waterfront wrapping around Cherry Hill, Brooklyn, Westport, Riverside and Port Covington. Proposals from each firm included various interconnected parks and trails, boardwalks, boat launches and other amenities that would bring new life to the area. None of them included projected costs, notably.

West 8, which helped reinvent New York’s Governor’s Island and has spearheaded major projects in Seoul, Madrid, Toronto and elsewhere, proposed a “blue green heart unifying the Middle Branch of Baltimore.”

The design puts forth a radical plan for the century-old Beaux Arts-style Hanover Street Bridge, converting it into a “linear park” shut off to traffic—a dream for cyclists and pedestrians, albeit a South Baltimore commuter’s nightmare—with repurposed recreational space beneath its arches.

In shutting down the passageway to cars and making it “the clasp that holds together a network of waterfront access, programs and development,” West 8 calls for building a brand new route to the south, called Ferry Point Bridge, that would lead directly to and from Port Covington.

“Investing in a new bridge will be less costly in the long term than maintaining the historical structure of the Hanover Bridge as a modern vehicular corridor,” a slide says.

A 2018 study by a city-hired consultant proposed a $50 million overhaul for the aged viaduct that would make it a four-lane roadway, down from five lanes currently, with more room for pedestrians and cyclists on sidewalks on either side of the bridge and two-barriers separating them from traffic. It also suggested closing the drawbridge and filling in the steel grate deck to save the city money on maintenance costs, and creating a “unique urban space” with art and recreational facilities underneath, among other changes.

Along the shoreline, West 8’s proposal envisions an expansive “green boulevard” situated above an amphitheater and performance space, plus biking and walking paths and boardwalks. Beneath the linear park on the Hanover Street Bridge would be a “kayak stop” with floating piers, facilities for boating and public spaces beneath the arches.

The design would also make renewed use of the stranded, decrepit CSX swing bridge in the Patapsco River. The plan says it “could be re-imagined to accommodate an education center and cafe forming a spectacular edge to Ridgley’s Cove.”

Parks and People sent the jury’s rankings to Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, who’s since directed city agencies “to begin analyzing issues that should be addressed in contract negotiations with West 8 in planning for a phased, multi-year design and construction project.”

Young said in a statement that he supports West 8’s plan.

“I am extremely excited to learn that the jury recommended West 8 as the landscape architecture firm to advance the Middle Branch Waterfront Plan,” the mayor said in a statement. “We received three impressive proposals, but I agreed with the jury of community leaders and experts in the field that West 8’s vision most closely aligns with what residents want to see in their communities.”

The panel that chose West 8’s proposal included South Baltimore Gateway Partnership board chair and local attorney Geoffrey Washington, Baltimore City Recreation and Parks Director Reginald Moore, South Baltimore 7 chair Michael Middleton Jr., Susannah Drake of the New York-based landscape design firm DLANDstudio and the director of Columbia University’s Graduate Urban Design program, Kate Orff.

Rankings were based on technical merit, feasibility, ability to integrate community feedback, originality, responsiveness to contest objectives “and to the site and its context,” and general quality and clarity of the presentations.

Jury members used feedback from Baltimore residents, the foundation said, and also interviewed the designers from each firm. Reed Kroloff of Chicago-based design consultancy firm Jones/Kroloff and Parks and People Foundation CEO Frank Lance facilitated and oversaw the jury process.

Moore told Baltimore Fishbowl that “all three firms were awesome, they all had unique ways for how they could re-energize the waterfront itself.”

West 8’s presentation in particular “was innovative, creative and really thought outside the box,” he said. On the firm’s proposed repurposing of the Hanover Street Bridge as a park, he said Baltimore “has to decide at some point” what to do with the passageway, and could benefit from making it more pedestrian-friendly.

He also appreciated the idea to make renewed use of the iconic swing bridge. “Every time I ride by on 95, it’s just sitting there.”

Here’s West 8’s plan in greater detail (or view the firm’s actual presentation to the jury here).

Ignored by and large for decades as the Inner Harbor, Fells Point and other harbor locales redeveloped, the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River is now due for a beautification.

Three national landscape architecture firms have submitted proposals, unveiled today, for a planned waterfront park stretching 11 miles of shoreline in Cherry Hill, Westport, Brooklyn, Port Covington and other neighborhoods in view of the Hanover Street Bridge.

Their plans tout beaches, boardwalks, new piers, boathouses and launches, green spaces and gardens dotting the waterfront, connecting communities through a network of parks and trails. View them here.

The idea, said Michael Middleton of SB7, Inc., a nonprofit representing seven neighborhoods due to receive benefits from Port Covington’s TIF-backed redevelopment, is that “South Baltimore will become a jewel for the entire city of Baltimore.”

Frank Lance, president and CEO of the Parks and People Foundation, said at this morning’s announcement the organization held more than 50 private and community meetings with residents from the area about the shoreline redevelopment plan.

They also surveyed more than 20 national landscape architecture firms who’ve done work to this scale, eventually narrowing the pool down to three companies. Each one then sent a team to Baltimore for two days in late April, and have now returned with designs.

They are: James Corner Field Operations of New York, which famously designed Manhattan’s High Line; Hargreaves Jones, another New York-based firm behind New Orleans’ Crescent Park, Penn’s Landing in Philly and other waterfront transformations; and West 8, whose resume boasts projects in Seoul, Toronto, Madrid, Governor’s Island in New York and elsewhere.

The designs can be viewed online, and in-person from today through June 12 at Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Cherry Hill Branch and City Garage in Port Covington.

That piece is important, particularly for those who live in the neighborhoods along the Patapsco. The next two weeks are the public’s chance to weigh in on whether they’d want to visit the park as designed in each concept, whether it will “stand the test of time” and other queries in a brief questionnaire.

A jury will collect those comments, assess the three concepts, interview the creators and make a final recommendation to Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young. Each firm will also get a chance to make a final presentation to a jury.

The winner is due to be unveiled at a public presentation at City Garage next month.

Young noted that the project is made possible in part with funds generated from Horseshoe Casino.

As it turns out, far more than the originally announced estimate of 379,000 gallons flowed out of a damaged sewer main in Westport early this month, after the leak reopened and spurred additional ones blocks away.

The initial break occurred in a “large sewer main” at Kent Street and Annapolis Road on Oct. 3, DPW said. The agency blamed the damage on a contractor for local utility giant BGE, which responded in turn by blaming the city, alleging it was DPW’s crews, not BGE’s, that damaged the pipe when making repairs. (Our recap of that back-and-forth here.)

The break sent roughly 378,600 gallons of sewage flowing into the Patapsco River’s Middle Branch via the Gwynns Falls before it was stopped three days later, DPW said nearly two weeks ago. But according to an update announced today, the pipe actually began leaking waste again on Oct. 10. That lasted four days, adding more than 1.2 million gallons to that total.

And what’s more, the original damage caused other problems three blocks north, at the intersection of Annapolis Road and Clare Street and the 2100 block of Sidney Avenue. The former overflowed on Oct. 6, leaking an estimated 73,170 gallons, and the latter on Oct. 9, sending an estimated 63,500 gallons into the river.

DPW said the two other leaks were “separate from, but related to the damage,” and spurred by recent rains.

The total overflows stemming from the initial damage to the sewer main now stand at about 1.7 million gallons.

“Full repairs will not be completed for several weeks,” DPW said today.

One day after the city blamed a Baltimore Gas and Electric-contracted crew for damaging a sewer line in Westport and sending thousands of gallons of sewage flowing out by the hour, the utility giant is saying was actually a city contractor that caused the foul leak.

As BGE tells it, the story is a bit muddier than originally stated by the Department of Baltimore Works.

In a statement Wednesday, the company said the issue originated with a job they were performing last month, on Sept. 19. That day, BGE-contracted crews were “following safe digging practices” near Kent Street and Annapolis Road, “yet damage occurred to an underground sewer line that was improperly marked,” the company said. BGE’s contractor notified DPW about the damage and asked them to make the needed repairs.

Yesterday, a little over two weeks later, DPW sent out its own contractor to do just that, BGE said: “During the repair work by the city contractor, additional damage occurred, resulting in the release of sewage in the area.”

But DPW says that’s not quite true, either. In an email Wednesday, agency spokesman Jeffrey Raymond wrote, “neither the City nor a contractor was doing repair work at the site on Oct. 2. We were there investigating to determine the extent of the damage when the sewer main was pierced on Sept. 19.”

Asked for a response, BGE spokesman Justin Mulcahy said in an email, “We stand by the original statement.”

Raymond also noted that it’s Miss Utility that handles the task of marking sewer lines, not the city. However, a spokeswoman for Miss Utility said in an email this morning that that’s not true, either: “Miss Utility collects information from excavators about their plans, and then relays that information to its member utility companies, who then send out locators to mark lines. Miss Utility is not responsible for marking the lines.”

So basically, none of the involved parties have taken responsibility for the line being unmarked at the start of this ordeal last month.

The leak occurred in what DPW yesterday described as a “large sewer line,” sending sewage flowing out at a rate of around 100 gallons per minute. Raymond said late Wednesday evening that the leak has not yet been stopped entirely, but the waste is “being contained in a pit at the location.”

The utility and the city and now “working closely…to determine what if any additional actions may be needed,” BGE said. Hopefully that will include stemming the flow of our sewage.

This story has been updated.

In a classic case of utility work gone horribly wrong, a contractor for Baltimore Gas and Electric today damaged what the Baltimore City Department of Public Works says is a “large sewer line” in Westport, sending human waste flowing into the Patapsco River’s Middle Branch nearby.

The break started around 9:30 a.m., DPW spokesman Kurt Kocher said via email.   “Approximately 100 gallons per minute” was flowing from the pipe, according to a release, which would amount to tens of thousands of gallons of sewage throughout the day if it hasn’t been stemmed.

DPW crews have been working to divert the fecal flow to another sewer main using sandbags and other methods, according to a release. “This work is in progress so overflow totals, including into the Patapsco, are not known at this time,” said the announcement at around 4:30 p.m.

The break happened on Kent Street near Sidney Avenue, roughly two blocks from the edge of the neighborhood touching the Middle Branch, and close to the MTA Light Rail stop in Westport.

Kocher said it’s unknown what type of project BGE’s contractor was working on. Baltimore Fishbowl has reached out to the company for comment.

The sewer break adds insult to everlasting injury for Baltimore’s waterways after one of the rainiest months on record. While DPW and contractors have been working together for years to replace century-old pipes and modernize the city’s sewer system, it still contains structured outfalls that were designed long ago to let out mixed sewer and rain water when the pipes become inundated during storms.

A tally of wastewater leaks from DPW indicates more than 64 million gallons of sewage entered Baltimore’s streams and harbor from the start of Labor Day Weekend through the end of September. Around 6.4 million gallons came from outfalls and a leaking manhole in Southwest Baltimore on Friday, Aug. 31. Another 24.5 million gallons came from a storm on Sept. 9, 19 million gallons more came from post-Hurricane Florence storms on Sept. 18 and an additional 14.6 million gallons flowed out during storms last Thursday and Friday.

This story has been updated with new details from DPW to reflect that it was a contractor for BGE, not the company itself, that damaged the sewer main.