With a focus on “green” design, joint venture partners Turner Development Group and The Carlyle Group are in the process of turning 50 acres along Baltimore’s Patapsco River into the $1.5 billion transit-oriented Westport Waterfront, billed as the city’s “next downtown.”

The eight to ten year development plan includes 2 million square feet of office space, 2,000 residental units, 300,000 square feet of retail, 500 hotel rooms, and a 27-acre park.  Developers plan to start infrastructure development on the site in Auguestm according to Pat Turner, president of Turner Development Group.

“We took down the old BGE power plant that had been built in 1909,” Turner says.  “Now the site is cleared.”

Westport Waterfront is currently the only neighborhood development on the East Coast seeking LEED for Neighborhood Development platinum designation, according to Turner.  Its soft-edge waterfront design includes restoration of wetlands and marshes, with 8 acres of land designated at perminant forest and habitat conservation areas.  Dryswales, bioretention, rain basins, green roods and recreated wetlands are designed mitigate storm water runoff in to the Chesapeake Bay.

“With the re-creation of the wetlands and expansion of the parts, you are creating a wildlife migratory on Middle Branch,” Turner says.  “It’s tough to live in the city and really enjoy nature, so to walk out on your balcony and watch the osprey land in front of you – not many places in the city afford that.  We have 40,000 feet of waterfront, and the EPA is touting the project as an example of how do to a large scale waterfront project.”

Residents and visitors will benefit from pedestrian and bike trails, urban plazas, a waterfront esplanade, and two piers for kayak and Olympic-style crew launch.  The site connects to the 15-mile Gwynns Falls Trail, an urban bike trial that links Westport to 30 neighborhoods including the Inner Harbor.

“It is a very natural park,” Turner says.  “Our whole site was designed not to encourage power boats, but row boats and kayaks and canoes.  We see the Middle Branch as mort of a soft serene area – leave the power boats for the Inner Harbor and Fells Point and Canton.”

To “green and clean” the neighborhood, Turner Development has partnered with local non-profits including the Parks and People Foundation, the National Aquarium, the Chesapeake Bay Trust and the Living Classrooms Foundation.  Baltimore City has committed to $160 million in Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to fund infrastructure, public spaces and streetscape improvements.

“We have fill city and state and federal support, and all the environmental groups supported us,” Turner says.  “We partnered with the neighborhood of Westport to unite them back with the waterfront.  The industrial buildings have separated them from the waterfront.  Over the next 10 years, we will add $45 million to the tax base, not counting the adjacent properties and the return of jobs to the area.”

With its close proximity to I-95, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and the light rail, bus and bike networks Westport Waterfronts is well situated for office and residential use.  The site is located in both a HUB and BRAC zone, conferring extra benefits for companies to locate there.

“For companies that work with Aberdeen and Fort Meade, we are central to both those facilities, so companies that do business with the military bases have access to them,” Turner says.  “You really have a neighborhood that is center of attention on the city’s part to have it developed out fully because not only the tax benefits, but the draw to bring people back into the city.”