Yeah, that area is pretty oversaturated with chain restaurants and retail. Turning it into storage pays the property taxes until that shopping center can get completely redeveloped

Fun fact: that site is where Richard Padian, namesake of Padonia Rd (also my ancestor), lived back in the 1800s after emigrating from Ireland

It's a lot of chlorine and Baltimore still adds fluoride. Is it "safe"? Yes by law it pretty much has to be. Is it antique? There was a wooden main removed from under Center Street around 2012. Is it healthy? I think not.

Howard Street was DOA by the time the Light Rail began running.

On Bel Air road just outside of the beltway they just built a massive new storage facility next to a storage facility and across the street from a storage facility.

I hate this timeline.

This sucks, I hate that there's a massive one just built in Woodberry off of 83 too. The building that was there was there collapsed, and they just put a giant storage facility in a historic community where everything has to be approved. It sucks that they could do that without comforming to the community at all

I don't want public transit of any kind within a mile of where I live.

that was intentional nimbyism

Roasted over the Honda pilot. Not how I was expecting the comments to go

Is macaroni grill closing ???

Is macaroni grill closing ???

Yup. They also put pressure on regular grocery stores and can sometimes even apply enough pressure to force a grocery store to close up shop and thereby create a "food desert".

While there's certainly a place for dollar stores in a community, you know what they don't have? A produce section.

Your theory isn’t completely off. The trash liquor stores are usually fronts for drug dealing operations.

I get that the area between the dump and the quarry is awkward for most development purposes, but you'd think they could find viable, attractive businesses who would thrive right off the interstate. It feels like everything between 83 and York is slowly degrading into lower and lower use cases.

I don't doubt that at all. I'm sure there's ROI calculations that go on to see if it makes sense to go that route.

Also, I don't see the storage unit companies as evildoers or necessarily predatory here. Sure, it can be argued that they're profiting off of the misfortunes of some of their customer but they're also providing a vital service that in some cases keeps folks from losing not only their home but also losing most of their possessions. and the fact that more storage facilities are being build drives down the cost to the consumer.

I don't see the building of storage unit facilities as a problem in most cases, but I do believe that when you see so many being built so rapidly, it's a symptom and indicator of a much larger economic issue.

We had a storage unit when we moved here that held the stuff we had in our storage shed and garage at the old place. It took us a while to go through everything and downsize. I got motivated after a couple of years when the rates kept climbing like crazy. Rent for the unit went up $50-100 a year and rent on the apartment went up $100-200 a year, but salaries didn’t go up.

Kill neighborhoods? What neighborhood is right there?

What exactly do you all want to go there instead? That spot is directly next to 83, all commercially zoned, with no housing anywhere on the road nearby. There's a couple hotels, a Chili's, some businesses and a couple other storage units. A 3rd facility isn't any better or worse than if another gas station or an Applebee's popped up there instead. No way would anything else thrive in that spot.

They are also used for land investment purposes. A number of the large storage chains have restructured themselves as land holding companies. Makes sense. Buy land cheap, get steady income from storage rentals, and then sell land when/if prices go up.

Damn, I had heard it was going to be a car wash and I was so excited because we are truly missing a self service wash in the area.

Rumor is royal farms bankrolled a fake grassroots opposition to block it. The argument was “there’s no need for another gas station convenience store on York road.” Well it was successful, sheetz was blocked, and low and behold a couple years later that massive royal farms (4th in the York rd corridor) was built 4 doors down from the sheetz location with no opposition

And to think this could have been a sheetz instead. They even bought the land. But rumor is royal farms bankrolled a fake grassroots opposition to block it. The argument was “there’s no need for another gas station convenience store on York road.” Well it was successful, sheetz was blocked, and low and behold a couple years later that massive royal farms (4th in the York rd corridor) was built 4 doors down from the sheetz location with no opposition

Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. The state of the housing market and economy right now is probably putting a lot of folks in position to use a storage unit. A while back I lived with family and used one of those little sheds to store all of my stuff in. Depending on how long you intend to love with your family, one of those little sheds might be cheaper. Worth looking into!

Trains simply have other liabilities. Route permanence, high cost of implementation, single points of failure, etc.

They also have to negotiate traffic crossing, even if you plan to have light preemption that actually works.

To be clear, I am not fundamentally opposed to the red line — the argument simply seems insufficiently made so far, and bus options, both for the short and long term, and as a quick half-measure for hypothesis testing, does not seem to have been considered. Also note that the red line targets 50K riders per day. The existing light rail targeted 33K per day, never really reached that, and is currently at 9K per day (there are other issues with that light rail obviously, including the fundamental logic of its placement and route).

The red line also doesn’t address the needed last mile issues that will still only be possible through bus; red line is not a magic transportation panacea in and of itself, but that’s what it’s often portrayed as.

The dedicated bus lanes in the city are operating quite well. My understanding is that this has increased average speed from 9 miles an hour on average to about 12 miles an hour (apologies for lack of source). I suspect the relatively high frequency of stops for buses also contributes to lower speeds. Note that the red line claims a targeted 18 MPH. Unclear what this specifically means and broadly that’s achieved through the length of the route.

Bro, if I don't complain how do I get the reddit updoots? Just figure out how these storage units are actually a suburban lizard people plot and upvote to the left!

While maybe not "fun", banks are actually incredibly important. Baltimore has a large underbanked population who are statistically less likely to have access to tech based ways to alleviate the issues of not having a brick and mortar bank.