BALTIMORE — For the last 7 years, developers for the Lutherville Station have been working to push the redevelopment project forward, now state leaders are gathering to help make that happen despite a setback from the Baltimore County Council.
The Lutherville Station was Originally Timonium Mall, but things changed in the early 2000s, and the mall shut its doors for good.
Since then the space has been vacant.
In December 2020, MLR Partners purchased the property in hopes of making it a mixed-use space housing both businesses and multi-family apartment homes.
But for the last several years there has been little momentum for the project.
Now Maryland state leaders hope to push the project forward.
"We need to be looking big picture, you know if you step outside of this building what you will see is an empty mall, an empty parking lot, you'll look at a property that is not giving back to this community. Not culturally not economically, not in terms of tax revenue and what could be done better," says Jake Day.
The proposed development would include 560 apartments, a mix of retail and office space, restaurants, and gathering space.
"The vision of this project is such a no-brainer and to say no to this vision would be doing an injustice, we think to the future of what this should be," says Mark Renbaum, developer.
But many people in the county think the number of apartments is too high.
The county council agreed so it changed the zoning to DR16 which only allows for 16 units per acre.
It also only allows for single-family homes instead of multi-family homes.
Mark Renbaum, principal at MLR Partners, says despite the zoning restrictions he is still optimistic about redeveloping the space.
"When you have one council person who wants a specific thing typically the rest of the council will vote accordingly so the question is does the entire county council necessarily feel that way about downzoning, I don't know," says Renbaum.
Jake Day says this project is vital because there simply aren't enough places for families to live, not only in the county but in the entire state.
"In many ways, this is ground zero for transit-oriented development which makes it ground zero for conversations about the housing shortage that we have in the state of Maryland, it's not just Baltimore County that is affected the entire state is short 96,000 housing units and we've got a long way to go to catch up which means we need to speed up," says Jake Day.
Now developers are waiting to see what new legislation comes out of the Maryland General Assembly.
