commercial real estate : Development News

A new coworking space in Charles Village is offering entrepreneurs and freelancers the chance to work in a shared office.
 
The Charles Village Exchange, which began operating Oct. 1, has dedicated about 900 square feet for coworking. The practice involves sharing office space in an environment that is more professional than a home or coffee shop, but that is less expensive and less contractually binding than renting an executive suite. The Exchange joins several other coworking spots in Greater Baltimore. 
 
The space is located at 2526 St. Paul Street on the third floor of the building, where co-owners Doug Austin and Eve Austin’s businesses are housed on other floors.
 
The Charles Village Exchange includes an enclosed meeting room, a kitchenette, a lounge, a bathroom, soundproof phone booth and seven workspaces that make up the main area.
 
The cost varies based on how many desks are licensed and the duration of the license but range from $260 a month per desk to the entire floor for $1,600 a month for a year.
 
Doug Austin says that he and Eve Austin chose the building about a year ago, when his business, UPD Consulting, outgrew its previous location in Ridgely’s Delight and moved to its current Charles Village location.
 
“This building in particular is a really beautiful building,” Doug Austin says. “It’s in the heart of Baltimore. It’s close to the train station, which was convenient for us. And we just really liked the neighborhood.”
 
But after realizing that they had extra space on the third floor, he says that coworking was the perfect way to put the space to use.
 
“It’s actually kind of exciting to have that kind of energy and different types of people and businesses in the same building with us,” Austin says. “There are a lot of budding entrepreneurs in this neighborhood. We don’t want them to move down to D.C. or Philadelphia or something because they don’t have something like this that is enticing to them.”
 
Charles Village Exchange will hold an open house on Nov. 20. For the first 25 guests at the event, the business will donate a turkey in each visitor’s name to the Margaret Brent School in Charles Village.

Writer: Daryl Hale
Sources: Doug Austin, Holly Burke, Charles Village Exchange

The Inner Harbor’s Brookshire Suites hotel will feature Baltimore beers and wines in its new lobby lounge when it opens in January.The yet unnamed lounge is part of the Brookshire’s $3 million property-wide renovation.

The 100-seat lounge will likely serve coffee during the day and transition to beer and wine around 4 p.m., says Brookshire General Manager Jason Curtis. He expects to hire four full-time staffers for the lounge.

“Our hotel is going to be very Baltimore specific, we’re trying to provide our guests with a very unique experience in Baltimore,” Curtis says. The hotel hasn’t decided which brands of local beer and wines it will serve.

The 97-suite hotel, at 120 E Lombard St., lost its liquor license three years ago when the property went into receivership. Baltimore City’s liquor board approved its new liquor license Nov. 14. Modus Hotels in Washington, D.C., now owns the property.

Renovations to the club level, meeting room and exercise room have been completed. Work is currently underway on the lobby, registration desk and on the lounge, after which work on the guest rooms will begin.

The Brookshire is positioning itself as an “urban playground” with its renovations. It's the latest Baltimore property attempting to rebrand itself amidst more competition. The Radisson Hotel at Cross Keys is undergoing a $6 million facelift and is soon debuting a new contemporary Italian restaurant Scoozi. The Lord Baltimore Hotel on West Baltimore Street is undergoing a renovation and opening its new Matisse Kitchen and Tavern later this month.

“Our goal is to be fun and creative and do something that no one else in the Inner Harbor is doing,” Curtis says.
 
Writer: Amy Landsman
Source: Brookshire Suites Hotel
 
 

A Persian restaurant is taking the place of the former Stoneleigh Bakery Cafe in Towson.

Villagio Café is opening Dec. 1 at 6805 York Road in the Stoneleigh neighborhood. Serving grilled kabob, lamb, salmon, basmati rice, hummus, baba ghanoush and Greek salad, Villagio will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Owner Foad Borhani is renovating the 1,800-square-foot space to seat 40 and another 10 on the sidewalk. He says he hasn’t set the menu yet.

Borhani was a restaurateur in Phoenix, Arizona, where he previously lived. He moved to Baltimore about a year ago to be closer to family. Borhani says Villagio will be very casual, with comfy booths for eating in, and take out service available. The restaurant will employ four.

The Stoneleigh neighborhood is a quaint historic district that was first developed in the 1920’s. The storefronts lining York Road are nearly all independently owned shops, including Uncle Wiggly’s Ice Cream, Mandarin Taste, Gennuso’s Barber Shop, and Stoneleigh Duckpin Lanes. 
 
Reporter: Amy Landsman
Source, Foad Borhani, owner, Villagio Café

The highly anticipated Cunningham’s restaurant at the Towson City Center building made its debut Nov. 22 with a cafe soon to follow.

The 10,000-square-foot restaurant employs 80, Bagby Restaurant Group Director of Marketing Dave Seel says. Cunningham Café will open early 2014.

Specializing in local, sustainable and seasonal cuisine, Cunningham’s relies on produce from Bagby Group Owner David Smith’s Cunningham Farms in Cockeysville. 

Billed as a sophisticated take on mid-Atlantic cuisine, Cunningham's will serve wood-fired flatbreads, grilled seafood and dry-aged steaks. Executive Chef Chris Allen recreates flavors that tap into his childhood in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Ryan Shacochis, formerly of the Wine Market, has been brought on as the restaurant’s general manager. 

The 260-seat restaurant consists of three dining areas, including a bar and a private dining space. The patio will seat another 80 during the warmer months. The modern decor includes big yellow lights that ador the ceiling and a lighted marble bar.

Cunningham Café, a 2,000-square-foot café and bakery on the ground level just under the main restaurant, will feature locally sourced ingredients for breakfast and lunch, fair trade coffee, artisanal bread and pastries. The café will seat 40 indoors and another 20 outside.  

Though Towson has lots of fairly casual places serving office workers, students, and the community, Seel says he believes Cunningham’s will fill a gap in terms of destination dining.

“There’s a huge need for new restaurants, different types of restaurants up there,” he says.
 
Cunningham’s will be the Bagby Restaurant Group’s fourth restaurant. The others are Bagby Pizza Co., Ten Ten and Fleet Street Kitchen, which are all located in Baltimore’s Harbor East neighborhood.
 
Writer: Amy Landsman
Source: Dave Seel, Bagby Retaurant Group.

Terra Nova Ventures LLC last month received approval from the Baltimore City planning office for the $17 million redevelopment of a Hampden mill into apartments, offices, restaurant and retail space.
 
The Baltimore developer expects to request building permits in early 2014 and begin construction on Whitehall Cotton Mill in the spring. Construction on the historic building will wrap up a year later, in spring of 2015.
 
David Tufaro, Terra Nova principal, says the building at 3300 Clipper Mill Road, about 100,000 square feet in size, will be divided into thirds for the different uses – one-third for apartments, one-third for offices and one-third for restaurant/retail. The plan calls for 27 rental apartments although he says it is premature to predict rents.
 
Though Tufaro is now calling the project Whitehall Cotton Mill, the name may change upon completion.
 
The building is located along the Jones Falls, where other former mills and factory buildings have been redeveloped in recent years. Among them is Mill No. 1, Terra Nova’s most recent project, the 1847 cotton mill that opened last month. Like 3300 Clipper Mill Road, Mill No. 1 contains apartments, offices and restaurant space.
 
Tufaro says the 3300 Clipper Mill Road building is adjacent to Mill No. 1. Distribution firm Komar Company owns the circa 1900 building and currently uses it as its headquarters. 
 
“It’s in the middle of the city and close to everything,” Tufaro says of the location. “And the buildings are different from other areas.” 
 
The Clipper Mill Road building and property was assessed at more than $616,000 in 2008. The building is located in the Hampden Historic District, and Terra Nova’s plan requires both federal and state historic approval.
 
Source: David Tufaro, Terra Nova Ventures LLC
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

The Radisson Hotel at Cross Keys is putting the finishing touches on its new contemporary Italian restaurant Scoozi that will open Dec. 11 at the Roland Park property.

Scoozi — a play on the word for “excuse me” in Italian — will seat 120, about double the capacity of the old restaurant, Crossroads, Radisson General Manager Tom Cook says. He estimates the restaurant renovation cost around $300,000. A $6 million facelift is also underway at the property. 

The 1,500-square-foot eatery will serve pizzas, salads and pasta dishes throughout the day. Scrambled egg-and-sausage pie and caramelized apple and almond pizza are some of the breakfast dishes cooked up by Culinary Institute of America graduate and Scoozi Chef Tim Robertson. Scoozi will employ 30 and feature 60 types of wines.

The revamped space will include a show kitchen and a hearth oven for pizzas. The hotel will remove a wall currently separating the main dining room and the lounge as part of the renovation.

The 147-room hotel at 5100 Falls Road is in the midst of the second phase of a building-wide renovation, with a new lobby and new carpeting, furniture and fixtures. The lobby now displays new artwork from Renaissance Fine Arts in the Village of Cross Keys. The first phase of the renovation was a complete overhaul of the Radisson’s mechanical systems, water lines, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

Built in 1973, the Radisson is part of the original Rouse Co. vision for the Village of Cross Keys, a planned residential and retail community. The hotel was last partially renovated 12 years ago. In April 2011, Greenwood Hospitality of Denver purchased the hotel from Meitzel Hotel Partners LLC.

The Radisson will remain open and operating throughout the renovation process.
 
Writer: Amy Landsman
Source: Tom Cook, general manager, The Radisson at Cross Keys
 

Movies have returned to Pikesville for the first time in 27 years with the Nov. 1 opening of the Pikes Cinema Bar and Grille.

Ira Miller, the owner and operator of the Rotunda Cinemas in Hampden, operates the new Pikesville theater in the historic Art Deco building that also houses the Pikes Diner & Crab House. The cinema consists of two, stadium-style theaters that seat about 75. The theater will show a mix of first-run films, art films and independent movies. 

Pikes Diner Owner Wil Reich has spent about $200,000 to renovate the building at 921 Reisterstown Road. The project also received $50,000 from the Baltimore County Department of Planning.

Miller came up with the idea of turning the front of the diner into a movie theater, Reich says.

"I’d like to take credit but I can’t. Miller approached me with the idea."

Reich subdivided the approximately 7,000-square-foot, circa 1930s building. Reich is turning the front portion, about 3,000 square feet, into the theater space.The rear portion remains a restaurant but with a new menu that serves a combination of seafood, burgers and Mexican cuisine.

The Baltimore County Council approved a zoning change in April that will allow movies to return to the location. The building originally opened as a movie theater in 1934.  It has gone through several changes since closing as a theater in 1986.
 
After an extensive renovation, it reopened as an Italian grocery store. It then became a kosher restaurant before Pikes Diner opened in the rear portion of the building. Pikes Diner last year changed its name to Pikes Diner & Crab House. The restaurant has a separate entrance; the marque from the original movie theater remains atop the front of the building.
  
Reich says that because the last movie ends around 11 p.m., the future Cinema Bar and Grill will stay open later than the current Pikes Diner to accommodate patrons. Reich also owns Jilly’s Bar & Grill, located across the street from the Pikes Diner, and it too will adjust its hours, he says.

Source: Wil Reich, Cinema Bar and Grill
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 

A Baltimore chef who has worked for the Wine Market and Fleet Street Kitchen opened a casual contemporary restaurant in an industrial building on the edge of Little Italy Oct. 15.

The 1,350-square-foot By Degrees Cafe serves soups, salads and sandwiches for lunch and half a dozen entrees for dinner. By Degrees serves lunch at the counter and relies on wait staff for dinner.

Located in the redeveloped Fallsway Spring building at 415 S. Central Ave., the restaurant will hopefully appeal to young professionals in the neighborhood and adjacent Harbor East, Owner Omar Semidey says. 

Semidey says he wants to offer a small, intimate dining experience for diners who want an alternative to the massive, swanky eateries in tony Harbor East. By Degrees will seat 50 in the dining room and another six at the bar. 

He describes By Degrees as a “third-day” restaurant. When you have a friend in town, you take him somewhere nice the first day. The second day you cook dinner at home. And the third day you’re ready to eat out again, but somewhere that offers "solid food that doesn’t break the bank.” Most entrees at By Degrees cost less than $17 and soups around $5 and sandwiches under $10.

“The goal is not to revolutionize the culinary landscape, but shift it by degrees,” Semidey says.

Semidey is working with a silent business partner, whom he declined to name. He also declined to say how much he and his business partner will spend on the restaurant, financed with cash. 

The building’s developer Larry Silverstein is responsible for refurbishing several other properties in East Baltimore, including the Union Box Co. and the Holland Tack Factory, home of Heavy Seas Ale House and My Thai. 

Writer: Julekha Dash
Source: Omar Semidey, By Degrees Cafe

Morgan State University is undergoing a major expansion of its campus in northeast Baltimore, on property it owns at Hillen Road and Argonne Drive. The new west campus will contain the long-awaited Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, opening in 2015, and the Behavioral and Social Sciences Center, to open in 2017. Together, the two buildings cost around $149 million.
 
An undetermined amount of funding is being sought for a third building and parking garage on the site, according to Cynthia Wilder, a Morgan State planner. Morgan State owns more than 170 acres, of which 143 acres constitute the main campus for its approximately 8,000 students.

The expansion is taking place on nine Morgan State-owned acres on the west side of the main campus. Part of the property is occupied by the Northwood Shopping Center, although Wilder didn’t have an acreage breakdown. The shopping center will remain and the Morgan State buildings will be built next to it. A bridge across Argonne Drive will connect the West Campus to the main campus.
 
“The main campus is filled and we had no option but to look elsewhere to replace facilities that can’t serve what we need,” she says. The new business school will have a trading simulation hall like that of the New York Stock Exchange and offer more hands-on instruction. The social sciences center will contain demonstration spaces, observation rooms and a forensic anthropology laboratory.
 
Wilder says Morgan State’s business programs are held in a building on campus, McMechen Hall, and will be consolidated in the new business school, which will house management, accounting, hospitality and marketing. The 140,000-square-foot business school cost $82 million, of which the state funded $81 million and Morgan State the rest.
 
The design process has begun for the Behavioral and Social Sciences Center, a 125,000 square foot facility that will house classes now being held in the circa 1974 Jenkins Hall. Construction will begin in 2015 and the center will open in 2017. The state will issue bonds to pay for the approximately $67 million project, Wilder says.
 
Wilder says that both the business school and social sciences center will be green buildings, the LEED certification level still to be determined. 
 
Source: Cynthia Wilder, Morgan State University
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

Rendering of Morgan State University Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management courtesy of Ayers Saint Gross / KPF Associated Architects. 

Kara Brook hasn’t got time for the pain — of bee stings, that is.
 
It happens every time she checks on the 18 hives at her Eastern Shore farm. But that hasn’t stopped her from harvesting the honey to create honey-made products sold in her Owings Mills shop Honey House.
 
Brook opened a 2,200-square-foot production facility and retail outlet in the Pleasant Hill Center at 10989 Red Run Blvd. last month.
 
About 700 square feet is set aside as a retail showroom called the Honey House, where Brook showcases her all-natural candles, honey lollipops, body butter and scrub, and other beauty products. She also features a wide selection of different types of honey in jars.
 
The bulk of the facility is dedicated to honey processing equipment, including centrifuge tanks that spin the honey out of the hive, gravity pumps to send the honey through filters, and two honey storage tanks. Brook hopes to add new honey-based products every year.
 
Brook is the owner and has one employee. She used her savings to finance the operation, though she declined to say how much she invested.
 
“I really pride myself on the handcrafted nature of everything that’s involved in this product line.”
 
Brook started her honey and honey-based products business in her kitchen in 2010. Also an artist, Brook says she initially wanted the beeswax so she could make a special paint. In the process, she discovered the potential of honey. She produced 70 pounds of honey from her one hive that first year. She now has 18 hives and produced 500 pounds this year.
 
She also carries honey from other beekeepers, mostly from the Eastern Shore, but extending up and down the coast from Florida to New Jersey.
 
Brook hopes kids will visit the Honey House, and if she has time she’ll show them around. “I hope that I can inspire kids too, because we need future beekeepers,” she says.
 
Reporter: Amy Landsman
Source: Kara Brook, owner, The Honey House

The National Aquarium may have shuttered its D.C. location last month, but the nonprofit wants to continue its mission of conservation in the nation’s capital.

Though it lacks the funds to construct another facility just like the old one in the Department of Commerce building, the aquarium has hired a Chicago architect and a research firm to determine whether it can build an attraction in D.C. sometime in the future, the aquarium's Senior Vice President Eric Schwaab says.  

“Do we have the capital resources to turn around and build a new aquarium there? In the short term, the answer is no. But we’re committed to a presence in D.C.,” says Schwaab, who is also the aquarium's chief conservation officer, a position that the aquarium created recently as it seeks to emphasize its role in sustaining marine life. 

Whether that presence is an actual aquarium or more of an ocean conservation center will be determined after the companies that it hired, Studio Gangs Architects and Impacts Research & Development, prepare a report in the spring.

“The sets of questions we’re asking are ‘What kind of facility is most valuable? How does it fit into our mission? And how do we articulate a vision that is compelling enough to garner the resources to make it work?” Schwaab says. 

The aquarium closed its D.C. facility to make way for renovations in the Commerce building. About 1,700 animals were moved from the D.C. aquarium to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, including a giant Pacific octopus. 

Writer: Julekha Dash
Source: Eric Schwaab, National Aquarium 

Famous Dave’s Legendary Pit Bar-B-Que will open its new Timonium location Nov. 4, the restaurant's 10th location in Maryland.

The restaurant began construction just north of the Maryland State Fairgrounds in April, at 2301 York Road.

It will serve its ribs, chicken wings, beef brisket and the Texas Manhandler sandwich. a 6,000-square -foot pad site where site work is being done and a parking lot is under construction.

The restaurant has leased space at 2301 York Road in Timonium, according to Eugene Lipman, CFO of property owner A&A Global Industries. Famous Dave’s will go in 

It will be the restaurant’s 10^th in Maryland. Other Greater Baltimore locations include Owings Mills, Bel Air and Columbia. Its Texas Manhandler sandwich consists of beef brisket and hot-link sausages topped with “hell-fire” pickles.

Beyond Famous Dave's, the property contains 37,700 square feet of space that developer York Road 2301 Inc. is renovating for retail space. In that retail center, 20,000 square feet has been leased to the Tile Shop, which has locations in Columbia and Rockville. The Tile Shop will probably start renovating their space in April and could open this summer, Lipman says. A highlight of the Tile Shop will be kitchen and bath displays designed to inspire do-it-yourself home remodelers.

The York Road property under development has been vacant since 2003, when A&A Global Industries, the world’s leading manufacturer and distributor of gumballs, key chains, plush toys and dozens of other vending machine novelties, moved to larger quarters in Cockeysville.

“We looked at that property and tried to rent it and tried to rent it and tried to do a lot of things and finally got to the point where we said ‘It was suited for retail,’ says A&A CFO Eugene Lipman, who says A&A continues to own the property through the York Road 2301 Inc. subsidiary.

Today, the most visible feature of the site are pulverized remains of one of the old buildings on the lot. “The original 40,000-square-foot building that was in the front is going to be a parking lot now.”

Lipman says there will probably be two additional tenants in the retail center, though that space has not yet been leased

This story is an updated version of a news story first published in BmoreMedia December 2012. 
 
Writer: Amy Landsman, [email protected]
Source: Eugene Lipman, A&A Global Industries 

Spike Gjerde, a James Beard-nominated chef and one of Baltimore’s most celebrated restaurateurs, opened his latest venture Oct. 11 in the former Crush space in Belvedere Square. Shoo-Fly Diner is the name of the 5,000-square-foot combination “farmhouse diner” and canning operation.

Former Roy's Restaurant Chef Patrick “Opie” Crooks is the chef de cuisine of the 75-seat restaurant, serving regional comfort foods and classic diner fare. Sourdough pancakes with maple syrup, fried oyster and creamed chipped beef sandwich with toasted butterbread are among the menu items. The menu is divided into various sections: snacks, jars, griddle, eggs, open faced, biscuits and large plates. Menu items cost between $4 and $15 and entrees between $12 and $20. A serpentine-shaped counter that seats 22 is the diner's hallmark.
 
“It’s a diner, but with a heavy dose of Woodberry [Kitchen's] rusticity,” Gjerde says of the new restaurant.
 
The diner is open at 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and stay open until 1 a.m. It serves three meals a day on the weekends. 
 
Gjerde says he will also use part of the kitchen to can, preserve, dry, pickle and freeze vegetables for the enormous quantities of produce he goes through at Woodberry Kitchen. The canning and preserving operation at Belvedere Square is the intermediate step until Gjerde gets his own building for this sort of operation when the Food Hub in East Baltimore opens next year.
 
Gjerde also owns Artifact Coffee, which recently added a liquor license. He is also opening a butcher shop with Seawall Development Co.’s new development in Remington. 

Writer: Julekha Dash
Source: Spike Gjerde, Woodberry Kitchen and Artifact Coffee 

Under Armour wrapped up a seven-month construction of a visitor center this month, the latest expansion of the sportswear giant’s Tide Point campus in Locust Point.

Designed by Ziger/Snead, the glass-enclosed 4,260-square-foot building incorporates dark gray metal panel and red steel-plate railings. It is located on the site of the former Harvest Table café.

The building is a welcome area where every Under Armour employee will greet guests, according to a spokeswoman for the company. It’s also a place where school groups and athletic teams visiting the campus can gather, according to Ziger/Snead’s description of the project. The visitor center does not include a retail store. 

In February, the company opened an 8,000-square-foot Brand House retail store in Harbor East. It expects to eventually expand its Locust Point campus by 400,000 square feet. 

Writer: Julekha Dash

Baltimore’s Hard Rock Café is ramping up for more live music and a new menu following a multimillion-dollar renovation.

Located in a converted power plant building, the 16-year-old restaurant features a 65-foot-high lighted guitar that has become an iconic symbol of the Inner Harbor’s transformation from an industrial waterfront to an entertainment destination. But as longstanding Baltimore restaurants faced more competition, many have refreshed their properties and reinvented their brands. Morton’s the Steakhouse, the 13^th Floor  and Mt. Washington's Pepe Pizza are among some of the restaurants that have been renovated in the past year.

The 200-seat Hard Rock received a spruced up patio, new terrazzo and wood floors, rock memorabilia and sound system as part of its makeover.

“It has more of a sleek, contemporary look to it with a lot of lights hanging down at different levels,” says David Miller, director of operations for Hard Rock International. “It’s got a lot of life to it with a lot of vibrant colors that pop and make a great statement.”

The remodeled stage is also now the focal point of the café, featuring a red wall lined with speakers and the Hard Rock Cafe logo in the middle.

“The intent is to have ongoing live music,” both inside the restaurant and on the pier, Miller says.

The Hard Rock Café celebrated its new look Oct. 1 with a private concert featuring Las Vegas indie rock band Imagine Dragons. The band smashed 16 guitars, representing each year that the Hard Rock has been open.

Kitchen managers and corporate chefs at the Orlando, Fla., chain's headquarters are in the process of tweaking its menu and will unveil its new offerings in February.

Writer: Julekha Dash
Source: David Miller, Hard Rock