The owner of the commercial shopping center next to the Lutherville light rail stop in Baltimore County is pledging to continue to work to add housing there, digging in his heels despite intense community opposition and resistance from the County Council.
Mark Renbaum, principal at the Pikesville-based MLR Partners, first began working to acquire and revitalize the aging Lutherville Station shopping center around seven years ago. Early on, he pitched tearing it down and building a mixed-use complex with more than 500 apartments and ground-level retail. But the proposal generated fierce pushback from nearby homeowners, some of them even planting black signs in their yards with a clear message for him in response: “NO APARTMENTS, NO COMPROMISE.”
“SAVE SUBURBIA.”
Then Baltimore County Councilman Wade Kach changed the property’s zoning last summer to make it more difficult for Renbaum to move forward, limiting how much he could build there. But Renbaum said he’s undeterred and would continue to try to generate support for the vision, which MLR scaled back to address some of the concerns.
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“We’re not going anywhere, at all,” he said Monday at an event held at the site by the Urban Land Institute - Baltimore, the local arm of a national academic think tank.
Renbaum said he envisions producing something unseen in Baltimore County today: a hybrid “campus” that would add park space, housing and retailers beside a public transit stop.
He’s applied for the site to be designated by the state as a “transit-oriented development,” giving it more latitude for housing development and state funding. But first he needs the County Council’s approval, which he said he’s unlikely to get.
Renbaum said he reduced the number of planned apartments by about 200 in response to community concerns about congestion and possible crowding at the nearby schools. He also said Monday that he would be open to working with neighbors and county government leaders to contribute a portion of the project’s new net revenues to the schools, for example, or to the surrounding streetscape.
So long as the property lies dormant, though, the county will lose out on potentially millions of dollars in new taxes and fees over time, he said.
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“Your taxes are going to go up when the state doesn’t grow and it’s not generating additional revenue,” he said. “And you don’t have projects like this paying for it.”
State and county government leaders have long considered Lutherville Station a case study in how housing and transit policy could be implemented for the rest of Maryland. It accomplishes, they say, several key priorities at once, including building more homes near transportation lines, reusing dilapidated commercial hubs and potentially adding more riders to a struggling transit system that has not fully rebounded since the coronavirus pandemic.


Many blame the state’s lack of investment in Baltimore’s light rail as the catalyst behind its decline.
But David Zaidain, Maryland’s chief of transit-oriented development, said at Monday’s event that it “doesn’t really make sense” for the state to reinvest in light rail and other aging transit lines if such work isn’t accompanied by development around stations.
Maryland faces a housing shortfall of at least 96,000 units, according to state government estimates. Baltimore County, obligated by the federal government to increase its supply of affordable housing, has not yet met the target of 1,000 new units by 2028. Meanwhile, rent prices throughout the region have soared.
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Maryland Housing Secretary Jake Day, the state’s highest-ranking housing official, said at Monday’s event that the shortage can be traced back to more than a decade of outdated permitting, policy and planning processes.
In Baltimore County, he said, “it may be more broken here than anywhere else.”
At the state level, lawmakers are considering a bill this year, endorsed by Day and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, that would compel local governments to “expeditiously approve” housing development in certain areas unless there is a clear reason for denying it, such as a public health threat or an environmental hazard.

In an interview, Day said he hopes to change the “basis of denial” for projects such as Lutherville Station.
“We’re trying to ... put them in a position where they’re having to look at ‘yes’ as the answer we’re trying to get to,” he said. “It would incentivize a local jurisdiction coming to the table, including the council, trying to solve it.”
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Marylanders largely support building more housing, according to public opinion polls, and have even urged local and state government leaders to remove barriers, such as zoning and policy, that help keep costs high.
But on the ground, resistance to new housing remains well fortified.
Kach, the councilman who changed Lutherville Station’s zoning to limit its growth, said Monday night that he hopes Renbaum and project neighbors can reach a compromise.
“I’ve offered to sit down with the community associations, and they won’t do it,” Kach said. “I really think it’s a good idea for everybody to sit down and try to work out the issues. The building sits there deteriorating. I don’t think it’s a positive thing for the community at all.”
Kach did not attend Monday afternoon’s event.
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Pamela Shaw, president of the Lutherville Community Association, which has opposed the project, did attend. She declined to comment.
Baltimore Banner reporter Danny Zawodny contributed to this article.
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