$900M Baltimore Harbor Redevelopment to Break Ground Next Year
Stakeholders are seeking to revive a neglected part of the city’s waterfront.
The complete redevelopment of Baltimore’s Harborplace mixed-use district is set to begin in the fall of 2026, according to Citybiz. MCB Real Estate is leading the $900 million project, which is expected to be completed by 2031.
The mixed-use project will span 20 acres and include four buildings comprising 900 apartments and more than 200,000 square feet of commercial space. Gensler Baltimore is the project’s architect, with STV leading site design.
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The residential units will be housed in two mixed-use towers, with one totaling 32 stories and the other totaling 25 stories, according to the project’s master plan. The apartments buildings will also include retail space, along with a total of 19,000 square feet of public space. Delivery of the 900 units will come in several phases.
MCB said it will create a “mixed-income environment” for the project’s residences, indicating some form of affordable component. While new parking will not be added, the developer said that there are more than 6,000 parking spaces within a 1-block radius of the site.
A tumultuous history
MCB Real Estate purchased Harborplace in 2022 after it had been placed in a receivership by a judge in 2019, according to The Daily Record. Ashkenazy Acquisitions Corp., the previous owner of the site had defaulted on a $76 million mortgage loan.
Because part of the Inner Harbor had been classified by Baltimore’s city charter as a park, Baltimore voters had to approve a measure that would eliminate the sub-district and allow development of the mixed-use project. That measure passed in November 2024 with 60 percent of the vote, according to CBS Baltimore. This development came after several court challenges that concluded with the Maryland Supreme Court ruling that the measure was indeed allowed on the ballot.
Baltimore had 6,044 residential units under construction as of January, according to Yardi Matrix, with an additional 42,000 units in the planning and permitting stages. Average asking rents were up 2.5 percent year-over-year, placing Baltimore ninth among the top 30 metros tracked by the same data provider.
