Hunt Valley changes (Baltimore, Rosedale: section 8, sales, foreclosures)

[trickymost]

Originally Posted by rudy_d

For duckpin bowling there's also Taylor's on York Road just north of the city/county lane. The City Paper just gave it a Best of Baltimore award.

@ trickymost: I think you're right that the location is at risk. Malls in general are dead other than the large regional malls like Towson and Columbia that are near heavily populated, affluent areas and have a diverse enough offering to attract people from far away. "Big box" stores and the "fake Main Street" concept have been successful in replacing troubled malls, but who knows how long that can last. Consumers are tapped out as jobs disappear and home equity declines. I think retail in the suburbs is particularly vulnerable as it's so overbuilt. I recently drove my the strip mall north of Towson where the 3 former tenants--Comp USA, Linens n Things, and Tweeter--have all gone bankrupt, and the entire large, ugly complex sits vacant.

I don't think it's fair to blame the light rail for Hunt Valley's problems--if anything, it's a competitive benefit over other locations. Similar parking lot crimes have been occurring with increasing frequency at locations like Arundel Mills that are nowhere near public transportation. The light rail, which has a reputation for being slow, doesn't make a great getaway vehicle.

The mall in Towson is in trouble too. It's owned by General Growth Properties, and despite their bankruptcy restructuring, it's not clear there are any buyers for their properties, and they haven't really been hit by retail closings yet, but should be beginning in 2010.

I am not exclusively blaming the light rail, but it's a mixed blessing, IMO. It's not used for general transit the way the Metro system in DC is. In Baltimore, near as I can tell, it's a way for the poor, the afflicted, and a few greenies living in the city to get out into the county, and a way to bring suburbanites from the county into Camden Yards and M&T stadium and other special events on the weekends.

There is little security on the lightrail or at its stations, and there definitely is a higher incident rate of burglary and robberies (of the "how can you be so dumb as to walk into Burger King with a gun and expect to walk out with more than a few hundred bucks") close to the light rail stations in the county.

[April000]

Tricky- I am at the Hunt Valley Center very frequently (all times of the day and night). I would be interested in seeing some of the crime stats that your friends shared with you. Not to say that nothing bad has ever happened there, but it seems hard to believe that there has been an increase. I do not see so much as teenagers hanging around or causing trouble. I go there frequently because it feels like the safest shopping area in all of Baltimore County. If there are documented cases I would definitly like to know as I may be more careful going at night.

[barante]

I venture to state that light rail has little or nothing to do with anything at the Hunt Valley retail center. The old mall was in trouble before light rail was constructed. Since the mall was demolished and a Main Street-type strip center constructed instead, Hunt Valley is exceeding all expectations. Yet the light rail stop now is even closer.
As far as I can tell, very few people use light rail to reach the revamped center. One reason is that light rail is so slow that people don't want to take it unless they need to -- or work in the various businesses near Hunt Valley and don't have a car. For that reason I think all this talk about the light rail bringing in criminals is bunk. At the very least, if they are smart, they would need a faster getaway vehicle.
Let's talk about the real fears. Baltimore’s original 1966 transit plan envisioned six rapid transit lines radiating out from the city center. By 1983, only a single line had been built, a Metro subway that runs midway between the Liberty Road and Reisterstown Road corridors. That alignment in the middle of an area changing from white to black was chosen after fierce battles. The public’s fear of crime and undesirables was strong. So were the racial overtones of their arguments.
To placate anxious residents and businesses, politicians and transit officials made intriguing decisions. Even though Owings Mills is the line’s northwestern terminus, the Metro stops well short of the shopping mall, the centerpiece of the planned town center.
A subsequent light rail line stirred even more opposition. Completed in 1992, it runs through mostly white neighborhoods from the airport to downtown, then follows the Jones Falls stream bed to Hunt Valley, an important employment center in the county. Though Ruxton is on the line, trains skip the wealthy county village because its influential residents vetoed a stop. They did not want outsiders. In Linthicum, Anne Arundel County, residents accepted a light rail station but only on the condition that no parking was provided.
Since mass transit never (to my knowledge) has produced a major controversy in any of the European countries I am familiar with, the inescapable conclusion I have to draw is that racial fears are a main concern in the United States.

[carthell]

Originally Posted by rudy_d

I recently drove my the strip mall north of Towson where the 3 former tenants--Comp USA, Linens n Things, and Tweeter--have all gone bankrupt, and the entire large, ugly complex sits vacant.

I was up there yesterday at the CVS, York & Fairmount. A Hallowe'en shop facing York opened there recently, and there were people parked and buying stuff. It is very easy to miss if you're going the speed limit.

[trickymost]

Originally Posted by April000

Tricky- I am at the Hunt Valley Center very frequently (all times of the day and night). I would be interested in seeing some of the crime stats that your friends shared with you. Not to say that nothing bad has ever happened there, but it seems hard to believe that there has been an increase. I do not see so much as teenagers hanging around or causing trouble. I go there frequently because it feels like the safest shopping area in all of Baltimore County. If there are documented cases I would definitly like to know as I may be more careful going at night.

Check out Welcome To CrimeReports.com

I can't pull a link, but if you search by wegman's address and then zoom in, you'll see quite a lot of activity at the town center and immediate surrounding area.

[BikesareBetter]

Originally Posted by trickymost

Check out Welcome To CrimeReports.com

I can't pull a link, but if you search by wegman's address and then zoom in, you'll see quite a lot of activity at the town center and immediate surrounding area.

Yo boss That's not very helpful! It just lists Theft, Theft, Theft, Assault. But it doesn't say the places! It could be from Dicks, Sears, Wegmans. Where are the names of the actual places these Thefts and Assaults are occurings?? (I mean christ are we talking someone swiping some Fried Chicken at the Wegmans Buffet or someone walking out of Sears with some Levis & a buncha Dooney and Bourke Pocket Books??)

Your link is not very helpful at all...

[trickymost]

Originally Posted by BikesareBetter

Yo boss That's not very helpful! It just lists Theft, Theft, Theft, Assault. But it doesn't say the places! It could be from Dicks, Sears, Wegmans. Where are the names of the actual places these Thefts and Assaults are occurings?? (I mean christ are we talking someone swiping some Fried Chicken at the Wegmans Buffet or someone walking out of Sears with some Levis & a buncha Dooney and Bourke Pocket Books??)

Your link is not very helpful at all...

Aside from the anecdotal stories I've heard, I am unaware of any place which aggregates crime data for Baltimore County any better.

If you have a better source of data, by all means please post it.

And regardless, a trend is a trend. Even if there were 20 people arrested for stealing baby formula from Wegmans last month, there probably were not as as many this time in 2008 or 2007. And that says a lot about the problems with the US economy.

[jonjj]

Originally Posted by trickymost

Aside from the anecdotal stories I've heard, I am unaware of any place which aggregates crime data for Baltimore County any better.

If you have a better source of data, by all means please post it.

And regardless, a trend is a trend. Even if there were 20 people arrested for stealing baby formula from Wegmans last month, there probably were not as as many this time in 2008 or 2007. And that says a lot about the problems with the US economy.

hysteria--get over it.

[Woodlands]

About a year or so ago.. there used to be signs on the Light Rail warning teens of an escort policy that was in effect at the Hunt Valley town center.. I think back then they may have been having problems with teens hanging or idling about. The signs are gone now so maybe the teens moved on.. probably to the Inner Harbor or Arundel Mills? I think most shopping centers now have teen escort policies or atleast during the summer....

I do not know what to say about Owings Mills Mall (Town Center)...seen alot of redevelopment plans for fixing up the mall and making more mixed use with residential,commercial, and retail while connecting it more with the train station. Just seems to be too much competition out there with Towson, White Marsh, and Arundel Mills nearby.. not to mention DC or Philly on a day trip.

[trickymost]

Originally Posted by jonjj

hysteria--get over it.

? Not sure why you say hysteria.

In my community in Lutherville, we've had two meetings with the Baltimore County Police THIS YEAR for them to let us know crime is skyrocketing, and there are common sense things we can do as a community to help protect ourselves, as the police force is stretched thin and probably will not be able to increase their resources to keep up with the escalating crime rate.

To be fair this isn't a Baltimore thing, it's everywhere. Economy down, crime up.

A more interesting take on the unintended consequences of anti-poverty programs was this story from the Atlantic Monthly last year:

American Murder Mystery - The Atlantic (July/August 2008)

Here's what is relevant to the discussion about the Hunt Valley Mall:

"About five years ago, Janikowski embarked on a more ambitious project. He’d built up enough trust with the police to get them to send him daily crime and arrest reports, including addresses and types of crime. He began mapping all violent and property crimes, block by block, across the city. “These cops on the streets were saying that crime patterns are changing,” he said, so he wanted to look into it.

When his map was complete, a clear if strangely shaped pattern emerged: Wait a minute, he recalled thinking. I see this bunny rabbit coming up. People are going to accuse me of being on shrooms! The inner city, where crime used to be concentrated, was now clean. But everywhere else looked much worse: arrests had skyrocketed along two corridors north and west of the central city (the bunny rabbit’s ears) and along one in the southeast (the tail). Hot spots had proliferated since the mid-1990s, and little islands of crime had sprung up where none had existed before, dotting the map all around the city.

Janikowski might not have managed to pinpoint the cause of this pattern if he hadn’t been married to Phyllis Betts, a housing expert at the University of Memphis. Betts and Janikowski have two dogs, three cats, and no kids; they both tend to bring their work home with them. Betts had been evaluating the impact of one of the city government’s most ambitious initiatives: the demolition of the city’s public-housing projects, as part of a nationwide experiment to free the poor from the destructive effects of concentrated poverty. Memphis demolished its first project in 1997. The city gave former residents federal “Section8” rent-subsidy vouchers and encouraged them to move out to new neighborhoods. Two more waves of demolition followed over the next nine years, dispersing tens of thousands of poor people into the wider metro community. "