Northwest Baltimore residents and city officials oppose a proposed parking lot inside a popular park

In theory, the announcement of a $10.1 million overhaul of an aquatic center in one of Baltimore’s oldest and more popular parks should be the kind of news that residents and their elected officials would welcome with open arms. Especially since that aquatic center hasn’t received any upgrades since the 1980’s.

But the inclusion of a 79 space parking lot in the plans, and a contract procured by the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks (BCRP), have sparked opposition amongst neighborhood associations, transit and environmental advocates, and even members of the Baltimore City Council.

It also provides an example of the many challenges Baltimore faces in trying to ensure a greater commitment to more equitable, environmental, and transportation-friendly policies across its city government.

Druid Hill Park, once called the “crown jewel in the necklace” of Baltimore’s public parks, has a long and storied history. Opened in 1860, the 745-acre green space is one of Baltimore’s largest and oldest parks. It’s home to one of the largest earthen dammed lakes in the country, the largest and oldest zoo in Maryland, and one of the oldest glass botanical conservatories.

The park was also intensely segregated for most of its first century of existence. The construction of the Druid Hill and Jones Falls Expressways, in the mid-20th century, dramatically altered the park, cutting it off from most of the surrounding (largely Jewish and African-American) neighborhoods with as many as eight different lanes of traffic, and led to dramatic spikes in local residents’ asthma rates.

A revamped aquatic center could mean upgraded facilities and amenities for residents throughout the city as well as the surrounding neighborhood.

Technically, the plans to include a parking lot along with upgrades to the Druid Hill Park Aquatic Center have existed in one form or another since at least 2017 when Rec and Parks, as the Baltimore City agency is sometimes informally known, first presented them to two of the park’s adjoining neighborhood groups, the New Auchentoroly Terrace Association (ATA) and the Greater Remington Improvement Association (GRIA). But even then, ATA and GRIA officials say, most members in both groups expressed their opposition to the idea of a new parking lot and even then, BCRP officials didn’t seem very receptive to community feedback.

“My recollection was that the project was presented as more or less completely designed with no meaningful solicitation of feedback,” said Graham Coreil-Allen, ATA’s Acting Vice President and Media Specialist. In fact, Coreil-Allen said, it wasn’t until BCRP approached the Baltimore City Council’s Land Use Committee this past January and asked it to approve a land-use variance for “paving recreational green space with asphalt” that the public learned that going ahead with the rest of the Aquatic Center contract might even be an option.

Nevertheless, an upgraded aquatic center, sans the parking lot, is an option that holds a great deal of appeal for many of the residents who live near Druid Hill Park. In fact, residents had many ideas as to how to make access to the park more walkable and transit-friendly.

“Many of our neighbors use the park all the time,” said GRIA President Phong Le. “We would love a better bus route to the park, for example, or the ability to cross 29th Street safely on foot to get to the park. These are the sort of priorities our neighbors have elevated.”

As is, Remington and Auchentoroly Terrace residents who visit Druid Hill Park do so in spite of the high volumes of traffic on 29th Street, which separates Remington from the park, and the eight lanes of Druid Park Lane Drive separating Auchentoroly Terrace from Druid Hill Park.

Much of that traffic has been linked with abnormally high rates of asthma and air pollution in the area. A 2017 study by the Washington DC-based Environmental Integrity Project and the Baltimore-based Abell Foundation found that Auchentoroly Terrace’s zip code, 21217, had one of the highest asthma rates in the city, with 50% of the area’s asthma risk directly attributable to roadway pollution. And that’s not the only consequence of the area’s extremely auto-centric street layouts.

“We border the I-83 highway, which is a reason why people (both) like this neighborhood and hate this neighborhood,” Le said of Remington, though he could just as easily have been describing Auchentoroly Terrace. “I-83 makes this neighborhood accessible by car for people from (Baltimore County), which is fine, but it also makes this street incredibly dangerous for us. My neighbors who live on those streets routinely get their sideview mirrors taken out. Or worse, 29th Street comes off of a hill so you naturally accelerate there and it’s incredibly dangerous.”

Both neighborhoods, as well as other groups along the Druid Hill Park corridor, have incorporated these concerns into their master plans for the area for years now. But when BCRP announced its intention to go ahead with its plans for the Aquatic Center renovations, including the parking lot, both Coreil-Allen and Le said the agency failed to take any of those concerns into account and initially didn’t reach out to set up a meeting with GRIA at all.

“We’re mostly a volunteer organization,” Le said. “We live and die by responding to emails.”

And when BCRP finally did announce a community feedback night, it scheduled it for February 19, the same night GRIA had already scheduled a Baltimore City Council forum for candidates running in the 12th and 14th Districts (Two of the city’s more competitive races this year).

Most of GRIA’s members attended the candidates’ forum instead of the informational meeting but according to Le, the handful who did said the atmosphere at the meeting was “very tense”.

“I got the sense that they already had their conclusions in mind and this was just going through the motions,”Le said.

That sense was further confirmed by Coreil-Allen, who noted that BCRP’s presenters did try to argue against alternative solutions to the parking lot proposed by residents but who in turn disputed most of those claims.

For example, when community members raised the idea of a bus shuttle from the nearby Mondawmin MetroLink Station, BCRP officials said they didn’t have the funds necessary for such a shuttle, according to Coreil-Allen.

But Coreil-Allen, in turn, noted that the city’s Circulator bus system already runs at a loss serving downtown neighborhoods and suggested the department work with the city’s Planning and Transportation Departments. BCRP officials said during the presentation that angled parking on Druid Lake Drive wasn’t possible but Coreil-Allen said Baltimore City DOT engineers have told him in the past that it was possible, though they weren’t invited to the meeting either.

Residents noted the presence of two underutilized parking lots nearby but BCRP officials dismissed those as “private property”, though it remains unclear whether or not the lot owners were ever approached about the possibility of using the spaces for pool parking. The proposed parking lot’s location in the middle of the city’s popular Jones Falls Trail didn’t come up at all.

I reached out to BCRP for comment. Whitney Brown, public relations officer for BCRP said: “Baltimore City Recreation and Parks hopes to see better connectivity throughout the entire citywide park system via alternative transit options. We would like to leverage the help and expertise of local and state transportation agencies as well as community input to provide a sustainable solution.”

Those complaints of poor community engagement by BCRP from GRIA, ATA, and other neighborhood organizations have, interestingly enough, proved to be one of the few things to slow down the parking lot proposal so far. The meeting on Feb. 19 was scheduled in part because when the City Council’s Land Use Committee was originally asked to approve the zoning variance for the lot a week earlier, Council President Brandon Scott, Councilmember Ryan Dorsey, and Councilmember Mary Pat Clarke, who represents part of Remington, objected to the lack of community consultation.

And exactly one week after the meeting, the contract for the pool renovations (including the parking lot) was approved by the city’s Board of Estimates, the body which approves all of the city’s contracts. But while Mayor Jack Young and his two appointees on the Board voted for the deal, Scott voted against it and the deal would still need to be fully approved by the City Council to go forward. City Council Land Use Committee Chair Ed Reisinger has signaled the committee will not vote to approve the parking lot section of the contract.

What happens next is unclear. But for Coreil-Allen there is a lesson he hopes BCRP and its fellow city agencies should take from this controversy: “All Baltimore City agencies need to better coordinate on their overlapping plans to achieve the values of equity and sustainability that our city so badly needs and deserves.”