BMC Rejects the Red Line !!!!!!!!!

[Gerald Neily]

I just HAD to type that subject line...

Baltimore Metropolitan Council and the Baltimore Region Transportation Board are moving from Boston Street to just off Fort Avenue, thus demonstrating with their actions rather than their hollow votes that they want to get away from the Red Line.

This repeats their action of ten years ago, when BMC moved from Howard Street to Boston Street to get away from the central light rail line that had a station right outside their front door, to a place with very bad transit access.

Since then, the MTA extended the #11 bus line so that BMC's transit access was not quite as bad, so with the looming spectre of the Red Line, they had to flee again.

Now they are again moving to a location with bad regional transit access, but with "ample parking" as quoted from their release below, again confirming my own observations that the biggest growth areas in the Baltimore region are those with the least transit access.

The BMC and BRTB's many votes to spend other people's money on the Red Line are drowned out by their own actions to resoundingly reject good transit.

Baltimore Metropolitan Council Moving to McHenry Row in Locust Point

BALTIMORE (September 15, 2010) - After ten years at Lighthouse Point in Canton, the Baltimore Metropolitan Council (BMC) is moving to the new McHenry Row development in the Locust Point area of South Baltimore.

"In seeking a new home for BMC, the Board was committed to finding another location in Baltimore City," said Executive Director Larry Klimovitz. "The McHenry Row project Baltimore is the kind of mixed use development that supports older, established neighborhoods."

When completed, McHenry Row will include a five-story office building, parking garage, 250 apartments over ground-level retail, and a new Harris Teeter grocery store. McHenry Row, located at Fort Avenue and Key Highway, occupies the site of the former Chesapeake Paperboard Company.

BMC will be the first tenant in the office building. Other tenants will include GKV Communications and KCI Engineering. BMC will occupy most of the third floor. The Regional Information Center will occupy the core of the BMC space.

The building is handicapped accessible with ample parking for visitors.

BMC's new mailing address is:

Baltimore Metropolitan Council
Offices @ McHenry Row
1500 Whetstone Way - Suite 300
Baltimore, MD 21230

--
Gerald Neily
www.BaltimoreInnerSpace.blogspot.com

[Richard Chambers]

No surprise. The BMC is a backward organization run by suburban interests. The next move will be to a office building in Columbia. And after that lease runs out they'll end up in a strip mall in Bel Air. They could have made a positive statement in support of our urban core by moving back downtown, but that's not the BMC way.