Maryland Historic Complex Redevelopment Study: Challenges and Opportunities

Maryland Historic Trust

The Maryland Historic Trust engaged a multidisciplinary team with BAE as real estate advisor, to undertake a comprehensive review of the state’s historic preservation program and incentives, local market conditions, site and building conditions, and local land use policies to identify both impediments to redevelopment as well as formulate legislative and programmatic recommendations to overcome these barriers.

The Trust, a state agency serving as its State Historic Preservation Office, has over a dozen historic complexes that have encountered barrier to adaptive reuse and/or rehabilitation. Many of these complexes are former military facilities, state hospitals, or educational institutions and most have significantly deteriorated over the past several decades.

The team’s work underway in the summer of 2019 involves preparation of case studies of successfully adaptive reuse of historic complexes and an intensive review of three struggling historic complexes in Maryland. BAE will contribute to the study by focusing on how the state approaches its disposition process, pre-conveyance planning for reuse and redevelopment, existing conditions analyses and development feasibility testing, business planning, and conveyance agreements with private sector developer.