After listening to speaker after speaker denounce Baltimore Councilman Ryan Dorsey’s Harford Road overlay bill, his committee advanced it by a 5-0 vote, sending the opponents out of the room muttering in disgust.

“Performance art,” declared Wayne Carlson, a plaintiff in the successful lawsuit seven residents filed to have an earlier version of the bill thrown out  for failure to inform property owners about legislation that could significantly change their zoning.

“A railroad job,” said former councilman and Lauraville resident Jody Landers, noting a petition he helped start days ago has 320 signatures,

“A whole community of individuals showed up to oppose this,” added Jasmin Alston outside of council chambers. “They’re not looking at the impacts on the community. Changing the zoning on this scale requires full community input, of which there was none.”

Dorsey held two “listening sessions” in recent weeks about the bill, which opens up a three-mile stretch of single-family properties along the Harford Road corridor to apartment conversions and new construction.

But Dorsey was not there to listen, Alston asserted.

“When you attended the two town halls, there was, just like today, mass opposition to the bill,” she said. “We felt like we were being ignored. And that happened again here today.”

Some of the critics’ rallying points apparently did make an impression on the three-term councilman.

Noting that opposition fliers depicted how “a six-story building could go up next to your house,” Dorsey described a bill amendment he crafted to “allay some concerns.”

The amendment strikes the provision imposing the city’s most permissive multi-family zoning designation, R-10, on Harford Road between Argonne Drive and the city-county line.

(As originally introduced, construction of six-story, multi-family buildings and intense lot coverage were permitted everywhere by right.)

The amendment “sets a maximum height of 45 feet” for new apartment construction, Dorsey said, pointing out that this is “only one story, or 10 feet taller, than what is allowed right now.”

It also mandates 60% lot coverage rather than the more intense R-10 coverage, and leaves in place the setback restrictions of the underlying zoning designations.

That and other amendments were swiftly approved by a voice vote as Landers protested from his seat.

“We haven’t seen these amendments, Mr. Chairman! None of the members of the public have seen them!” Landers shouted.

Tenth District Councilwoman Phylicia Porter appeared to be concerned as well.

She abstained, while Dorsey, Zac Blanchard, Paris Gray, Sharon Green Middleton and Mark Parker approved. (Councilman John Bullock was not present in the chamber.)

The bill now moves for consideration by the full council at the September 28 meeting.

Consultant’s 2008 Study

Yesterday’s testimony ahead of the vote was, except for two supporters, hostile to the measure.

First came an introduction to the bill by Dorsey, during which he briefly relinquished his role as chair and allowed Vice ChairMiddleton to take over.

(Landers had pushed for Council President Zeke Cohen to have Middleton chair the entire hearing, arguing that Dorsey, as bill sponsor, had a conflict.)

Dorsey began by talking about a 2008 study that recommended ways to stimulate growth in the vacancy-ridden corridor south of the Baltimore County line.

“I’m here to make the hard change that nobody else would make 20 years ago”  – Councilman Ryan Dorsey.

The idea of enhancing “nodes” of attractive development was tried and failed, Dorsey said, while the report’s recommendation to encourage greater density was never followed through.

“I’m here to steward better outcomes for the Harford Road commercial corridor, which has been struggling for essentially half a century at this point,” he said. “I’m here to make the hard change that nobody else would make 20 years ago.”

He put this position this way at another point in the hearing:

“We are either a city struggling to be a suburb. Or a suburb struggling to be a city.”

Packed Like Sardines

Residents at the hearing said they enjoy being both city and suburb.

“We used to call Lauraville ‘the country in the city’ because we enjoy the relaxed environment. We don’t want all this density,” Georgia Corso said.

“You need density downtown in Little Italy and other neighborhoods, where they now have huge apartment buildings that can’t fill the vacancies and they’re going up on the auction block,” she continued.

Jasmin Alston hit on the same theme:

“We are not against renters.  We want diversity in housing across the city. We realize that there are things that make each of the neighborhoods that have been mentioned today unique,” she said. “We have less than 1% vacancy. That means we’re doing something right!”

She and others said they feared an influx of multi-family development will overburden a neighborhood already dealing with sewer, water and road maintenance issues as well as trash, parking and traffic congestion.

“When my wife and I first moved to this neighborhood five years ago, we were attracted to the quiet streets of single-family houses, large yards and easy parking,” said John Eckenrode. “Passage of this bill would jeopardize the very qualities that attracted us and our neighbors to this area.”

Calling the bill “a wholesale override of the zoning protections we bought our homes under,” Chelsea Calabrese called on the committee to reject the bill.

“I’m against a bill that hands enormous one-sided power to developers over the people who already live here,” Calabrese said.

David Richardson questioned the theory that “packing people in like sardines” would create retail vibrancy along Harford Road where the real reasons for the corridor’s failure might lie in economic conditions or changing consumer tastes.

“I didn’t buy a house to make Harford Road a better business district,” Hamilton resident Jeff Miles stated.

And attorney John C. Murphy, who represented residents who sued successfully to have the first version of the bill nullified, reiterated his argument that the bill is illegal because it conflicts with the city zoning code’s provision which states that an overlay zone “maintains the general character and purpose of the underlying zoning district.”

It was the only testimony that drew a response from Dorsey, who argued that the struggles of the commercial corridor make for a “unique circumstance” and further argued that, because the overlay represents less than 10% of the affected neighborhoods, it can be said to maintain their general character.

Already Diverse

Another area resident, Jacqueline Robarge, pointed out that the overlay bill has no provisions to ensure that the new housing would be affordable.

“This bill does nothing to serve my clients,” Robarge said, explaining that she works “with people who can’t find rental housing,”

Pushing back on the argument that the bill is needed to increase diversity in the area, Robarge noted that the nine neighborhoods impacted by the overlay bill already “are 60% Black, indigenous and people of color.”

“I moved to Lauraville because it’s racially diverse, it’s gay-friendly and it’s got some trees,” she said. “Where I live it’s my first yard, my very first yard.”

Bill supporter Chris Warman, meanwhile, chided those who resist the idea of making the corridor more urban.

“A few of my most vocal neighbors wish to live in some sort of suburban quietude, despite the abundant options for that lifestyle in every other county in the state,” Warman said. “I choose to live in Baltimore and I choose to live in Hamilton Hills because I want to live in a city.”