Baltimore County, MD BCUpFront, 19 May 2011

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From YouTube: Towson City Center

Description

Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz took a hard hat tour of the construction of Towson City Center currently underway in downtown Towson . This major $27 million redevelopment of a 12-story building will create a vibrant signature location that is expected to bring some 500 workers into the heart of Towson 's commercial district.

A

County Executive cabinets we're here on the 12th floor of the newly redeveloped Towson city center you're here on a hardhat tour. Obviously what are your impressions? My.

B

Impressions are that we better not walk too far off to the edge here, because it's a long way down, but it's a it's a great opportunity to see a new building arising from an old building which is fantastic and just turning this into a modern building that will really serve the Towson community and the county so well.

B

This is a 27 million dollar investment, so I'm grateful for the owners to come in here who are local owners and are investing in their home county and making this building work again, and this is also symbolic of really a half a billion dollars that has been invested in downtown Towson over the past five years, with creation of 1,200, new luxury rental units and apartment dwellings, as well as expanded retail opportunities and office, and now we're also going to have new new opportunities once this building opens, but also future projects in stores, so I'm very upbeat about Towson, even in this down economy, and as you can see, we're pretty high up right now.

B

But things are up in towson. Well,.

A

Thank you very much and arsh murmuring with k, valleys partners. You are the developer of this. This exciting new building. How are things going, and can you kind of describe your vision for what will be here sure.

C

Well, we've we've. We started work on the on the building several months ago and, as you can see, we've we've pretty much taken everything that was here out of the building.

C

With the exception of the concrete, the steel and some of the core elements like the elevators, we are sort of methodically taking the building apart, we're patching any any portions of concrete that are either getting reconfigured or that needed just a little bit of TLC, given the fact that they have been here for so long we're, bracing the structure and then sometime this summer, we're going to start putting the new skin back on the building.

C

The new the new building is going to be in entirely glass curtain wall building, so it'll be glass from the bottom up. We are expecting a number of different companies and institutions to be tenants in the building. Towson University is leasing. A portion of the building the corporate headquarters of mile one and caves Valley partners will be in the building. We have a deal with.

C

The restaurant tenant is going to be building an approximately 8,000 square foot restaurant on the plaza level of the building, there's another retail space that we are actively marketing, and then we have a specialty retailer that we are in discussions with. That I think will be an exciting addition to the mix. Generally, things are going well, we haven't encountered any sort of major problems at this point, knock on wood and and the process seems to be moving along pretty smoothly. This, as the county executive said, is a great example of a public-private partnership.

C

We view it as not just the caves alley partners, development, but really a partnership between the county, the state and caves alley partners to take what was a an eyesore in the middle of downtown Towson and really turning it into what is going to be a very cutting-edge state-of-the-art new office. Building. This.

A

Is very exciting Nancy hafford executive director for the Towson Chamber of Commerce? What does a redevelopment like this mean right here in the heart of the commercial downtown district of Towson? Well,.

D

I'll tell you it's been the talk of the town now and they've, been ever since a case came in the group that community's been so excited. This vacant building has been vacant for over seven years and when the previous tenants moved out, that was hundreds and hundreds of people that moved out of the area that aren't shopping and dining here anymore.

D

So all the restaurants and the little shops and Towson are gearing up and so excited for not just all the tenants that are coming in, but the university coming in, because that really will close the gap between the Towson University and the business community. There really an important part of our business community and so we're glad that they're moving into our town well.

A

Thank you all very much. This is certainly good news for downtown Towson.