Basu Nina Citizens For issued the following announcement on July 26.
Mayor Catherine Pugh said her focus is keeping state government jobs in Baltimore regardless the outcome of a contentious battle over who should redevelop the aging State Center complex in the city.
That stance is at odds with state legislators in her own party who recently urged Republican Gov. Larry Hogan to move ahead with developer State Center LLC to complete a $1.5 billion overhaul of the decaying state office complex that’s been planned for more than a decade.
“There’s still a great need for a first-class supermarket in that community, there is an opportunity to create a senior living community there, there’s also an opportunity to extend office space there. My concern is that we keep the employees who are working in that building in in the city,” Pugh said during her regular briefing Wednesday with reporters at City Hall.
The Hogan administration last week followed through on a pledge made last month to start searching for a new master developer for State Center. But in a letter Monday, first reported by the Baltimore Sun, Democrats Del. Maggie McIntosh and Del. Tawanna P. Gaines, chair and vice-chair of the House Appropriations Committee, and Del. Adrienne A. Jones objecting to that move.
“To start from scratch at this point would delay any redevelopment for years to come – an outright disservice to the community,” the legislators wrote in the letter.
The Hogan administration and the developer State Center LLC remain locked in a contentious legal dispute. Following the Board of Public Works decision in late 2016 to terminate leases at the site, the Hogan administration sued the developer in an attempt to prevent the firm from seeking damages for alleged breach on contract.
State Center LLC, which maintains it still wants to build the massive project, responded with a lawsuit seeking damages. Caroline Moore, CEO of Ekistics LLC and co-managing member of State Center LLC, previously estimated they’d spent $26 million trying to bring the project to fruition.
Pugh expressed sympathy for the residents living around State Center, who she previously represented in the General Assembly, waiting for the project to happen.
“I think I have a picture (from) back in 2010, maybe it was, when we first broke ground, or at least had the conversation, and everybody was lined out out in front of State Center. We were getting ready to get this project underway and here we are eight years later and there’s no project,” she said. “I know that the people who live in Bolton Hill, and Reservoir Hill, and around State Center have waited a long time for a project to move forward.”
Original source can be found here.
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