Artists made this East Baltimore industrial site cool. Can tax incentives make it cooler?

The Crown Cork & Seal factory in East Baltimore was once one of the biggest manufacturers of bottle caps in the world.

Today, about 140 artists and makers rent spaces in the mishmash of two dozen buildings that house studios, but much of the space is vacant, decaying and unsafe.

Developer Cross Street Partners says creating a special taxing district could unlock the industrial site’s potential. The quasi-governmental Baltimore Development Corp. gave preliminary approval to this idea — and two downtown tax breaks — at a meeting in August, but the City Council will have the final say.

Cross Street Partners wants to transform the 1 million-square-foot site into a mixed-use redevelopment. They say their goal is to retain the tenants already using roughly 275,000 square feet of the footprint, while spurring hundreds of millions of dollars in investment to fix up and create new spaces for retail, residential and other uses.

“This is a story of preservation of this community,” said Sam Bohmfalk, a development manager for Cross Street Partners.

But what makes the site so attractive — the industrial architecture and historic buildings densely packed onto a 16.8-acre lot — also makes it uniquely difficult to redevelop, said Chase Hoffberger, a consultant on the project. Most of the buildings are on septic tanks. There’s no stormwater management system. There’s little parking or road access.

Changing those systems is expensive, Bohmfalk said. The solution, according to Cross Street Partners, is something called tax-increment financing, or TIF bonds.

Here’s how those work: The city takes out a big loan on behalf of a development site. That money pays for infrastructure work, like new roads and sewers. A portion of future property taxes generated by the development is diverted to pay back that loan.

Baltimore has the highest property tax rate in the state, and TIF bonds have been used to help finance projects across the city, including Harbor Point, Baltimore Peninsula and, most recently, a grant program for vacant-home renovations.

City Council member Mark Parker, who represents the part of East Baltimore that includes the Cross Street Partners project, introduced legislation last month that would create a tax-increment financing district that spans the Crown Cork & Seal site and several adjoining properties. The city’s Planning Commission is expected to discuss the proposed district at its Oct. 29 meeting.

The Cambridge Iron & Metal site, a former scrapyard that Cross Street Partners does not own, would also be covered by the proposed district. Now, trucks park on a mostly empty lot there.

According to Cross Street Partners, the estimated cost of infrastructure work on an initial phase of development would be about $27.4 million. If the City Council approves the special tax district, more legislation would be needed before any bonds could be issued.

Crown Cork & Seal moved operations out of Baltimore in the mid-20th century. The Spindler family purchased the site in the 1970s, and artists and makers started renting spaces of varying sizes.

Over the years, Bohmfalk said, many developers toured the site and seriously considered its possibilities, including his boss. (According to Bohmfalk, Cross Street Partners CEO Bill Struever toured the site in the 1980s when he was still with Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse.)

Cross Street Partners had a contract to purchase it in 2022, and the deal closed in fall 2025, Bohmfalk said. Crown Cork Redevelopment LLC, a joint venture of Cross Street Partners and Philadelphia-based Shift Capital, paid $16 million for the campus and two nearby warehouses.

They’re calling the site the CROWN campus.

For the past year, Cross Street Partners has been working to preserve artist and maker space at the site, said Valerie Davis, a community manager for the development firm. The goal is to continue providing “raw” space at affordable rates, Davis said.

Davis said the median tenure of their tenants is about seven years, and some have been there for decades.

One tenant, Michael J. Walls of Wallsfilm Studio, said the ownership change has been positive.

“They’ve really invested in the community of artists,” he said.

Walls rattled off different film production companies also based at the CROWN campus. He said Pusha T recently filmed a music video there with dancers and a horse.

“There’s a lot of potential here,” he said.

One day, Bohmfalk said, he expects the CROWN campus to also have a mix of residential units, businesses and office space, but the exact mix and timeline have yet to be determined.

Hoffberger called the redevelopment a “slow burn” requiring a patient and piecemeal approach. He said these developers don’t want to make promises with firm dates this early in the process.

“Cross Street is realistic about the task ahead,” Hoffberger said.