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City not sure what happens next in Westport
City officials say they are monitoring the fate of a planned mega-development at Westport after a foreclosure lawsuit was filed against developer Patrick Turner last week in Baltimore City Circuit Court claiming he owed a bank $31.8 million in delinquent payments and interest for the project.
City Councilman Edward Reisinger, whose district includes the 50-acre parcel along the waterfront on the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, said Wednesday that he and the city’s deputy chief of economic development, Kaliope Parthemos, had held meetings with officials of Citigroup Global Markets Realty Corp. this month to discuss the lawsuit and its impact on the proposed $1.4 billion development.
“He is trying to get another group together,” Reisinger said of Turner’s attempts to add new partners and financing to the Westport development in the wake of the foreclosure filing.
Reisinger said the proposed multi-use development of residential units, commercial space, a hotel and retail could collapse if the bank took back the property and could not find another developer.
“Anything is possible,” he said. “I’m trying to be optimistic … he is trying to find somebody to help keep it alive.”
Turner did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Earlier this week, he told a reporter for the Baltimore Business Journal that he was in negotiations to find new partners for Westport and buy the property back from the bank at a lower price. He also said he planned to begin construction on the project next year.
Turner’s vision to redevelop the waterfront property on the city’s West Side just off Interstate 95 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway has been stalled for years despite its eligibility for multiple tax breaks. Those incentives include state enterprise zone tax credits, designation of the property as a military base realignment and consolidation, or BRAC, zone, and City Council approval of the potential sale of $160 million in tax increment financing, or TIF, bonds to fund infrastructure development.
Turner’s website says he has had a partnership for the development with the Carlyle Group.
Besides the commercial and residential development at Westport, Turner has lobbied owners of the D.C. United soccer club to move the team from its present home field at RFK Stadium in Washington into a new facility he would build at the site that could hold up to 25,000 seats.
Officials of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city’s quasi-public development arm that spearheaded the drive to gain approval of the $160 million TIF district for Turner at Westport about four years ago, responded to an email Wednesday that they had no comment on the foreclosure filing.
