As far back as she can remember, Bonita Tillman has always felt uncomfortable at the Inner Harbor. Tillman, a Black and Puerto Rican student at Bard High School Early College, said she links the Harborplace pavilions with her feelings of being watched.
Once, as she walked into the candy shop IT’SUGAR with some of her friends, an officer followed her into the store, observing Tillman as though she was going to steal candy.
Harborplace, once a bustling attraction for tourists and city residents, has been hollowed out in recent years. National chains like H&M and Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. left the Inner Harbor one by one, blaming financial woes, pandemic pains and executive decisions.
With time, it became a ghost town of empty storefronts and minimal foot traffic.
Now, after city voters gave their approval in November’s election to rezone parts of the land that Harborplace sits on, MCB Real Estate can begin to move forward with its plans to redevelop and reimagine the waterfront destination.
But young adults in Baltimore, who are already searching for places in the city where they could safely hang out without having to spend money or feeling scrutinized, question if the Inner Harbor is for them.
Third spaces, like recreational centers, playgrounds, and churches, are places of community and socialization that are outside of home, school, and work. The Inner Harbor could be one of these gathering places.
Yet as Black youth autonomy is constantly under scrutiny, concerns of over policing and violence in the Inner Harbor area remain on the mind of young adults.
“It’s just scary, because you don’t get that type of thing in Fells Point, or Hampden, or really anywhere else, but it’s so prevalent in the Inner Harbor, and it’s really concerning,” Tillman said about her police surveillance experience.
Ahead of the November election, Baltimore Beat asked almost 200 young people around the city what they thought about a variety of city issues. One of the questions we asked was whether they felt the Inner Harbor was a welcoming place for young people.
“I personally don’t think it’s a very welcoming place,” one young person said. “It’s hard to reach with public transportation, walking takes over an hour. The amount of police is outrageous, the amount of people in need of support and help. No where to really sit down and just relax.”
“There are few places to sit, almost none of harborplace is operational, and getting to the inner harbor requires crossing several extremely dangerous roads,” another person said.
“I think when there’s events around the Harbor it feels fun and family-friendly. The skatepark also provides a great safe space that’s fun. But outside of that, there’s lots of vacant lots/storefronts, so it doesn’t seem like there’s much to do there,” another young adult wrote.
In 2023, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott reinstituted enforcement of the city’s youth summer curfew after two teenagers were shot in the Inner Harbor over spring break . He emphasized that the curfew was only one of several tools the city was using to keep young adults safe, pointing to the rollout of additional youth summer programming.
But the curfew monitoring teams were only stationed in the Inner Harbor, Fells Point, and Federal Hill — rich, white neighborhoods with the city’s best waterfront access.
“It’s been many times where I walked down the harbor late at night or near the curfew, and I’ve gotten pretty nasty looks,” said Alex Westbrook, who is also a student at Bard High School Early College. “I’ve been told and directed by police officers to leave certain areas of the harbor, and I feel like they are a pretty big factor in deciding who gets to go down and enjoy that area of the city.”
MCB Real Estate, led by West Baltimore native P. David Bramble, has proposed a revitalized Inner Harbor that combines eco-friendly design, climate change resilience, walkable spaces, high rise apartments and local businesses to attract young people and families alike. Based on feedback they received in community engagement meetings, the plans include attractions and spaces like an amphitheater, improved walkability into the Inner Harbor, and a park to memorialize the Inner Harbor’s history as a major slave port and free Black community.
“Anyone who knew how amazing the original development was and what it turned into over the last several years, knew it needed to be revamped. It was only a question of how,” Bramble said in an interview with Baltimore Beat.
He’s conscious that rehabilitating the reputation of the Inner Harbor will take work beyond just the physical redevelopment.
The key to safety without anxiety, he said, is to think beyond police-centric security.
“I don’t think that safety is just about police. It’s also about space, it’s about fostering a community that’s filled with people so that it encourages a safe and warm environment,” said Bramble. “MCB spent a lot of time talking to kids about what they want. You know what they want? A safe and welcoming environment.”
Bramble and Scott have faced pushback about the redevelopment plan, especially about the residential units and if they would limit the Inner Harbor to wealthier residents. Bramble has said that, in accordance with the city’s inclusionary housing law, 10-15% of the units will be affordably priced for lower income households.
“The Harborplace Project is about turning public land into private land,” said Samantha Master, the communications manager for grassroots activist group Organizing Black. “You cannot turn public land into private land, and then try to convince us that young people, poor people, houseless people will not be criminalized on private land.”
The biggest effort to stop MCB from their redevelopment plans came from former mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah and a group of petitioners, who initially stopped Question F from being counted on the ballot due to unclear wording of the proposal to remove the height restriction and reshape the Inner Harbor’s park space.
However, Maryland’s Supreme Court overturned the decision earlier in October, and Question F passed in the general election, allowing MCB to turn a part of the public park space into private apartments and retail, among other things.
To some young adults, the potential of a thriving, vibrant Inner Harbor means the chance to take advantage of the benefits of living in a city.
Mo Green, a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, said that they hope the new Inner Harbor has stores and opportunities for young adults and kids to exercise their autonomy. As a military kid who spent five years growing up in Japan, Green said they valued the sense of independence that was fostered there.
“It just makes me feel more human when you’re able to get your own essentials by yourself. Especially at that typical puberty age: you don’t want to be asking for every little thing,” said Green. “If you build nice spaces and empower local businesses people will for sure come.”
Green and several other young adults interviewed listed bookstores, cafes, arcades, thrift stores, and local businesses as some of the retail options they’d like to see at the Inner Harbor.
“I would want to see a lot of low cost or free experiences for teens around me, because I have noticed that my peers around me…are not employed, and money can be a very big factor on whether you want to go down to the Harbor to hang with your friends,” added Westbrook.
Some young adults would also like to see the Inner Harbor become more than a tourist attraction, but a true community space. Bea Lieblein, a Goucher College student, says that as a trans person and someone with transgender friends, they hope that the revamped Inner Harbor provides community spaces and gender affirming care.
“Being able to offer that to a whole city would be amazing, and just getting some of those healthcare opportunities in the city accessible to more than just people who have money or education about where to go,” Lieblein said.
With a lot of expectations riding on the Inner Harbor, some young people also expressed concern about if the investment would be better put towards other areas of Baltimore.
Christian Houck, a Goucher College student, questioned if the reimagined Inner Harbor will reach his home in East Baltimore.
“Unfortunately, the more commercial areas are just going to naturally get more money and especially with the Inner Harbor’s new rebranding as ‘cleaning itself up,’” said Houck. “I have family in East Baltimore that don’t really get into the Inner Harbor like that, and so they’re not really seeing the fruits of the city’s money allocation.”
A spokesperson for Scott pushed back on the characterization of the Inner Harbor money detracting from other neighborhoods, pointing to the city’s efforts to eliminate vacant housing around the city and the city-sponsored youth summer programming at Rash Field Park.
“[Scott] has frequently recounted instances of arriving downtown as a young person and being told to go back home to Park Heights because he wasn’t welcome there,” said spokesperson Bryan Doherty. “To that end, it has been a priority of the Mayor’s within the effort to revitalize Harborplace to ensure that it is a place where all Baltimoreans, no matter their age or what neighborhood they live in, feel welcome.”
While the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Recreation and Parks provided activities and outlets for young adults over the summer, that didn’t stop concerns of overpolicing within the Inner Harbor or the youth curfew.
Data shows youth curfews are not what deters youth arrests — a number that’s on the decline — or meaningfully address any root cause of late night activities.
Young adults interviewed said that above all else, they want the opportunity to hang out and occupy themselves in an environment that isn’t just the streets. Tillman, the Bard High School Early College student, has fond memories of walking through Ripley’s Believe It or Not when it was at the Inner Harbor.
“It sucks that it’s gone, but I would love to see more creative and educational spaces like that,” said Tillman. “I feel like there is such a lack of real activities to do in the city for teenagers, and that’s why so many of us resort to staying outside, hanging out at the skatepark in the harbor until like the middle of the night.”
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