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Aldermen receive quarterly planning update on housing, commercial redevelopments
Summary
City planners told the committee that several stalled or expired site approvals have been reheard and that multiple redevelopment projects — including Bay Village Suites, Eastport Landing and West Village — are moving toward building and grading permits, with some work expected to start in the coming months and construction timelines measured in years.
Mike Meekins, the city’s senior planner for current planning, told the Environmental Matters Committee on July 9 that several major redevelopment projects are moving through rehearings and permit reviews. “This is, more or less the quarterly update that I present to the environmental matters committee,” Meekins said as he walked members through a project spreadsheet used for quarterly reports.
Meekins said Bay Village Suites — a proposed 105-unit independent-living facility near Bay Ridge Road and Edgewood Road — was reheard and approved by the planning commission after its prior approval had expired. He said the resubmission included an updated arborist assessment and a traffic recheck; an approval opinion is being drafted. “They did a refresh on a couple of the documents…one being the assessment of the tree,” Meekins said. Alderman Savage said he was “glad that the large tree is protected,” and suggested staff check the tree’s long-term health.
The Eastport Landing redevelopment — a multistory residential project with ground-floor commercial at the end of Eastport Shopping Center — submitted both building and grading permit applications at the end of June. Meekins told members building permit review was due July 20 and grading permit review was due July 30, and warned that grading reviews often take longer. He estimated final occupancy could be “easily a year and a half, maybe…maybe two years” after permits are issued, and noted the site-design approval has an expiration that requires permits to be in hand by Oct. 16.
Meekins also updated the committee on West Village, a three-story mixed-use project at 161 West Street that was reheard and approved in December; the primary change from the earlier approval was a relocated sewer connection. He described the Thomas Somerville property, a plumbing warehouse/showroom bisected by the city–county line whose owner plans a smaller new building entirely inside city limits, and said the Robinwood tract and other work-session projects remain under review.
The former Annapolis Seafood site drew discussion after Meekins said the owner is pursuing a new Royal Farms concept that would place fuel pumps and canopy behind the building and include EV charging stations. Several members voiced concern about adding another gas station at a potentially contaminated site and discussed longer-term planning objectives for retail and fueling infrastructure.
No formal committee votes on the development projects were taken at the meeting; the committee’s formal actions were limited to approving the agenda, approving the June 11 minutes and adjourning.
