Sale of air rights seen as a step forward for long-awaited Madison Park North project | Baltimore Brew

“The Board of Estimates today approved the sale of air rights to developers MCB Real Estate and MLR Partners…The air rights, to be sold for a nominal $40,000, stemmed from the city’s worry, some 50 years ago, that private developers would place high-rise apartments along this stretch of North Avenue between Park and Linden avenues.
Bramble, his partner Peter M. Pinkard and MLR’s Mark Renbaum came forward with a plan unlike any proposed for West Baltimore in the wake of the Uprising following Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. In effect, the developers wanted to plop down a middle-class, amenity-rich enclave in a resource-poor district.
What few knew then, however, was that in addition to air rights and other urban renewal hindrances, the property was encumbered by underground property rights secured years before by the Pennsylvania Railroad and inherited by Amtrak.”