Committee pauses PUD amendment for former Under Armour site after concerns about limiting use to private high school

The Land Use and Transportation Committee recessed consideration Thursday of Council Bill 25,082, a proposed planned-unit-development (PUD) amendment to permit a private high school at part of the former Under Armour/Tide Point site in Locust Point, after members and community representatives raised questions about the bill text and a sponsor-proposed amendment.

Sponsor Councilman Zach Blanchard described the proposal as a relocation of Cristo Rey High School — which he said would leave its Patterson Park site and is being offered a portion of the Cure Building/Under Armour campus — and said the Locust Point Civic Association supported the specific proposal by a 36–22 vote. He told the committee the PUD change must allow a high school use on the parcel and noted the applicant planned to narrow allowable uses. Blanchard said the amendment was intended “to allow a private high school as a land use on that parcel” and to tighten the PUD so the community’s support applied only to the specific site and use.

Representatives for the applicant said Cristo Rey has about 350 students, would be a lower-intensity use than previously contemplated office development, and that the PUD as drafted prohibited schools — “we realized we were going to have to amend the PUD,” said Caroline Hecker Rosenberg, attorney for the applicant. The development team presented a revised development plan sheet that would show the school location and would also correct a numeric discrepancy in the PUD’s unit-count arithmetic for other portions of the site.

Council members pressed for clarity about whether the amendment would bar public schools while allowing a private high school. Councilman Mark Parker said he was concerned that the amendment could “prohibit a public school from going somewhere, that we would allow a private school,” and that this raised policy and equity questions. Blanchard and the applicant’s counsel repeatedly emphasized that the proposed change was intended to permit a private high school in a defined location and that the site’s size and context made conversion to a public school unlikely. Planning Department staff told the committee that under the city’s transition rules for older PUDs, amendments of this sort are possible and the department had no objection to the amendment in principle; the Planning Commission had recommended the PUD amendment favorable at an earlier hearing.

The Law Department told the committee it needed time to review the newly filed amendments for form and legal sufficiency. Given that outstanding legal review, Chair Ryan Dorsey recessed the matter for further work and said he would reconvene the item before an upcoming council meeting; the transcript records that the applicant has asked that the committee fit a voting session on the bill before the council meeting on Oct. 21/20 so the sponsor can report it out.

Status: hearing recessed for legal review; no final committee vote was taken. Committee members asked staff to return with the Law Department’s review and with the final amendment language and development-plan sheet tied to the site-specific use limitation.