New apartments in Poppleton get underway
Baltimore leaders are scheduled to gather Thursday to celebrate the start of construction of a new multimillion-dollar apartment building in Poppleton near the University of Maryland BioPark.
The project, part of a planned $460 million, 33-acre redevelopment, has been in the works for more than a decade, as the city acquired hundreds of properties for the site and the developer weathered the recession to secure financing. At one point, the two sides sparred in court over delays to the project, which is supposed to rebuild the area as the University of Maryland, Baltimore spreads.
The first phase is a six-story complex on Schroeder Street with about 260 apartments, 19,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, a dog park and a plaza in front of the historic Poe House. Most of the building’s units will be market-rate, but about 20 percent are expected to be subsidized.
Two New York firms, La Cite Development and BRP Development Corp., are the developers for this part of the project, which was estimated in 2015 at more than $70 million. KeyBank Real Estate Capital provided $56.1 million in FHA-insured financing for the first phase. Baltimore also agreed in November to issue $12 million in bonds for infrastructure. Those bonds are to be repaid through new revenue generated on the property.