Construction will begin on an apartment and retail complex in the open lot at the corner of St. Paul and 33rd Streets in April, the University announced Wednesday.
The complex, which the University is tentatively calling 3200 St. Paul, is expected to include 157 student apartments, a parking structure and 31,500 sq. ft. of commercial space, including a 10,500 sq. ft. pharmacy.
Although the building will be designed to house juniors and seniors, the apartments will be leased on the open market rather than incorporated into the University housing system.
Alan Fish, vice president for facilities and real estate, said this setup will benefit both the University and the students.
“We have put a package together where we ask for proposals from developers to build housing and retail and parking on this site so that Hopkins money would not have to be pertinent to building this [complex],” Fish said. “We were looking for more of a market-rate product where juniors and seniors can have Hopkins [not] directly managing the facility. Many students [have] given us a strong indication that they were looking for housing in the market rather than in dormitory rooms for their upperclass years. It’s a model that’s used throughout the country for upperclass undergraduate housing.”
According to Fish, the majority of the 157 apartments will have two bedrooms and will be designed to accommodate up to four people per unit.
In addition to creating a new option for student housing, 3200 St. Paul is also planning to meet student health and wellness needs. The complex will include a pharmacy — an addition which Fish said was inspired by student and parent feedback.
“The feedback we’ve gotten over the last few years has consistently said the number one service that people are looking for [within] walking distance to the Homewood campus and where they live in Charles Village is a pharmacy,” Fish said. “Meeting that need was another goal of this project, and our [development] team is in the process of negotiating a final contract with the pharmacy.”
Fish said the pharmacy will not be the only new retail development in Charles Village neighborhood.
“There will probably be six or seven other retail developments along both 33rd Street and St. Paul,” Fish said. “The idea is to really start building an urban food and entertainment center around Charles Village for not only the students but also for the community and [to] make it even more vibrant with this development.”
3200 St. Paul is planned to be 12 stories tall, making it marginally taller than the adjacent Blackstone Apartments at the corner of N. Charles and 33rd Streets.
Reviews have been lukewarm, particularly from older students who will not reap the benefits of the new complex. Current seniors will not see the completed construction.
“It will block my view, which will be terrible, but I do think they need more restaurants and things around here,” senior Edward Staley, a Blackstone resident, said. “You get tired of eating at the same places over and over.”
Staley has lived in the Blackstone since his junior year and believes the construction will be a nuisance. However, he said the finished complex, which will open to tenants in the fall of 2016, could be a major improvement to the Charles Village community.
“For me it’s going to be terrible because it’s just construction, and I’ll never get to eat there, but I think for everyone else, it will be good,” Staley said.
3200 St. Paul is also set to include a parking structure, but there will only be 162 parking spaces available for tenants and the public. However, Fish does not anticipate that the discrepancy between the number of tenants and the numbers of spots will be a problem.
“The actual mix between what is needed for retail and for tenants will be established by the developer. But this housing is really targeted for juniors and seniors, [and] our experience is that the large majority of [them] don’t have cars,” Fish said. “The demand for parking by undergraduate students is far lower than if we had market-rate housing for the general public. Since this is really targeted for students, the number of parking stalls is smaller.”
Although 3200 St. Paul is meant to provide a brand new housing option near campus for upperclassmen students, the University is still working to find an alternative to the current housing situation for freshman and sophomore students. Over the past three years, the University has had to make accommodations to house underclassmen students via overflow housing in the Hopkins Inn and making all dormitories exclusive for freshman and sophomore students. Fish does not anticipate that the new apartment complex will be used to house freshmen and sophomore students.
“It’s not planned to be available for overflow housing,” Fish said. “In fact, right now, there’s a study being undertaken on freshman and sophomore housing capacity and what we need in the future to make sure we can minimize overflow housing. At this time, it doesn’t look like this particular development will be needed to handle freshman and sophomores, but that is a very legitimate concern and one that we’re studying right now.”
The development team for 3200 St. Paul will disclose their designs for the building to Baltimore City’s Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel at a meeting on October 23. The team recently showed their designs to the North Charles Village Planned Unit Development’s design review committee.
Should the project be approved, Fish is looking forward to getting construction underway.
“It’s been a vacant lot for a long time, so we’re very excited to get a project going forward here.”
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