(rshsdepot) Baltimore, Md. seeks tenant for President Street Station

["Alexander D. Mitchell IV" <lner4472_@_verizon.net>]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/bal-md.president26may26,0,2341236.story

Baltimore is set to designate President Street Station, an 1850s train 
depot with chapters in the histories of both the Underground Railroad 
and the Civil War, as a city landmark. But the city's plan to also seek 
a long-term tenant to revitalize the vacant building has a group of 
history buffs fearful that the building's past will get swallowed up in 
any future use.

This summer, the Planning Department expects to issue a request for 
proposals on how to reuse what is believed to be the oldest surviving 
urban train station in the country. The small, red-brick structure at 
601 President St. stands out among the gleaming and still-growing Inner 
Harbor East 
<http://www.baltimoresun.com/topic/us/maryland/baltimore-county/baltimore/harbor-east-PLGEO100100603011700.topic> 
hotel and retail district.

"We want to be able to more effectively share this treasure with the 
public, and we want the building itself to be cared for," said Kathleen 
Kotarba, director of Baltimore's Commission for Historical and 
Architectural Preservation, which will review the proposals. "We feel 
that by proceeding with the RFP, we're going to be so much more 
effective in both areas."

But the Friends of President Street Station, a group that helped save 
the building decades ago, wants the city to hold off on finding a new 
tenant. It says the only appropriate use of the building is as a museum, 
and it's frantically trying to attract the interest of National Park 
Service.

The storied site was part of the Underground Railroad, a passage to 
freedom for slaves from the South. Then, in April 1861, Massachusetts 
troops arriving at the station were greeted by angry Southern 
sympathizers - the several soldiers and residents killed marked the 
first bloodshed of the Civil War.

City-owned for decades, the station has several times come close to its 
demise.

In the 1980s, it sat crumbling and vacant amid blighted warehouses. In 
the 1990s, it was reborn as a Civil War museum but, hard up for visitors 
and money, closed in late 2007.

Soon after, the city announced it would seek a new tenant. 
Preservationists and the Friends halted the process, worried that a 
developer would snatch it up and raze or radically renovate the structure.

[More at the link---from the Baltimore Sun]

Alexander D. Mitchell IV


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