News / Press - Corridor Reznick - Baltimore Commercial Real Estate

The storefronts are dark inside many of the historic buildings lining Baltimore’s Charles Street, which many consider the city’s grandest thoroughfare.

There are now 10 vacancies in the four blocks between Saratoga Street and the GeorgeWashingtonMonument, the central corridor linking Mount Vernon with the city’s Central Business District.

Merchants and officials acknowledge the vacancies but say the area is in transition, not decline.

“There’s a lot going on behind the scenes,” assured Robin Budish, executive director of the Historic Charles Street Association. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

A number of businesses have closed in the last year. The Blimpie’s sandwich shop at 100 N. Charles St. closed a few months back. Chef’s Express, the café inside the Women’s Industrial Exchange, closed in February. The Kawasaki sushi restaurant shut down last year after its owners were arrested for employing illegal immigrants and remains unoccupied.

But new retailers have apparently been vying to fill the gaps, which Budish describes as signs of change rather than a poor business climate. She pointed to the January opening of a Superfresh supermarket at the corner of Charles and Saratoga streets as a strong indication that retailers have confidence in downtown.

“I haven’t seen this much life in these blocks of Charles Street in the last 15 years,” said J. Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore Inc.

Vince Alimo, owner of 403 N. Charles St., a three-story office and apartment building with ground-level retail, agrees. He has been looking for five months to find a tenant to lease his storefront, from which Paris West Optical relocated to a larger space up the street. But the wait has not been for a lack of interest.

“It’s not just renting it to somebody; I could have done that months ago,” Alimo said. “We need to get the right mix on the street. To me, that’s important.”

Alimo said he has received “plenty of calls” about the building, mainly from restaurants, which he thinks are overrepresented on Charles Street. One woman wanted to use the space for a cosmetics store. But Alimo said he is in no rush to lease the space. He lives and works above the store and rents to other office tenants.

“I have to take my feelings into it, my other tenants’ into it, and whether it’s going to work for the street,” Alimo said. “I really want whatever business comes in to be a success.”

CharmCity Cupcakes in November moved its bakery and opened a gourmet “cupcake-to-go” counter in the Brown’s Arcade building. The company, which began across the street in the basement of the Women’s Industrial Exchange, bakes 2,500 cupcakes a week.

Owner Sandra Long said the shop got an extra boost from Sunday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which marched south down Charles Street and lured a large crowd. CharmCity Cupcakes also draws hungry patrons on lunch breaks from their jobs in the surrounding business district.

“I do think that we are still in the middle of the renaissance. You see the transition,” Long said. “I think in a year to 18 months … Charles Street will be completely revitalized.”

Marketing company Engine Performance will soon turn on the lights of 407 N. Charles St. The company bought the now-vacant building and plans to move there from 301 N. Charles St., which is too small for the growing business.

“We like Charles Street a lot,” said Scott Robertson, Engine Performance’s owner. “We think it’s a great area and an area that’s really coming back, too.”

Rather than move to a new neighborhood, the company decided to stay on Charles Street because Robertson feels the area is up-and-coming.

“You can just feel a new vibe on Charles Street,” Robertson said. “There are more people out carrying shopping bags, and that’s been a huge boost.”

At 318 N. Charles St., the J. Brown Jewelers building, a sign in the darkened window announces, “London’s Boutique Coming Soon.” Budish described the store as an upscale boutique for men, women and children that she expects to open before the end of the year.

The owner of the Kawasaki building at 413 N. Charles St. is also negotiating with another restaurant tenant, Budish said.

A national retailer is eyeing a spot at 300 N. Charles St., said Richard “Dicky” Darrell, who handles leasing for the building with Manekin LLC, a Columbia-based real estate firm.

The formerly blighted building at the corner of Charles and Saratoga streets was redeveloped in 2000 by Savannah Development Corp. Since then, 1st Mariner Bank opened a branch inside and apartments have opened on the upper levels.

“Finding the right tenants has been difficult simply because Baltimore historically did not attract these kinds of tenants,” Darrell said. “Now that the city is attracting a lot of residential … that’s what’s turning Baltimore into a more desirable urban location.”

Brown’s Arcade, which in February sold for $2.8 million, has two vacant store spaces. The new owner is currently negotiating leases with tenants who could fill the vacancies in the months ahead, said Leo M. McDermott, a senior vice president with Corridor Reznick LLC, which acted as a broker in the sale.

“There’s still a lot going on along Charles Street, both north and south of Brown’s Arcade,” he said. “I think in a couple of years that will be a very vibrant retail corridor.”

Empty space at the southwest corner of Charles and Franklin streets disappeared altogether last year when the Archdiocese of Baltimore demolished the old Rochambeau apartments. In a move that was condemned by historical preservationists, the Archdiocese destroyed the building to construct a prayer garden for tourists visiting the nearby Basilica of the Assumption cathedral.

The controversial project, which some think will destroy the continuity of retail on Charles Street, could have positive side effects said Owen Rouse, vice president of Manekin LLC. He thinks the prayer garden could help retailers by bringing a new population of tourists to the street.

“There’s a big business in religious tourism,” he said. “That will ultimately be good for merchants.”

While most look forward to a prosperous future, retailers admit that Charles Street is far from perfect.

Alimo thinks building owners should have higher standards for their tenants, many of whom do not carefully plan for businesses they open. That leads to high turnover, which causes more street-level vacancies.

“Most [new businesses] don’t have a good idea of what they’re doing, how they’re going to do it, and don’t have a whole lot of money,” Alimo said. “Turnover is never a good thing.”

Many merchants tend to shut down after business hours and refuse to open on the weekends, which Alimo thinks keeps tourists away from Charles Street. Those merchants have the mentality that downtown stops breathing after 5 p.m., but that is no longer the case, he said.

“In the springtime, when people walk from the InnerHarbor … there’s nowhere to go because there’s nothing open,” Alimo said. “To get more business, people have to visit and shop and go home and tell people what they bought.”