A 21st-century renovation of the Car Barn — a historic building in East Baltimore that was once a hub for the city’s cable car system — aims to help move communities forward, though this time, not by cable car.

The long-vacant Baltimore Traction Co. Car Barn, located at 130 S. Central Ave., has been cleared and is awaiting its next phase. Developers aim to transform the empty 43,000-square-foot space to offer improved access to amenities and bring jobs to nearby neighborhoods.

Pointing to past Cross Street development projects in East Baltimore, like the redevelopment of the historic A. Hoen & Co. Lithograph Campus, Katherine Phillips, a leasing and community partnerships manager with the real estate company, said that the Car Barn has the potential to become a pillar for the community and transform the neighborhoods around it. Other projects include the Lion Brothers Building in the Hollins Market area and the Phillips Packing House on the Eastern Shore.

“It’s important to remember that all of those buildings, that have such vibrant uses now, really add to the fabric of our city,” Phillips said. “They all start like this, but it really takes teams and tenants that have the vision to support getting them off the ground to have really cool, transformative projects like this one.”

The $15 million project, which has been in the works since 2021, is a collaboration between Cross Street Partners and Beatty Development. The group imagines offices, retail, restaurants, a gym and shared-working areas to fill the space.

Future tenants will be selected based on their ability to utilize the Car Bar’s space in a way that respects its history, while also contributing to the social fabric of nearby communities like Perkins, Somerset, Oldtown and Jonestown, said Sam Bohmfalk, a development manager with Cross Street Partners.

“What’s so fun about a space like this is the fact that it’s not a vanilla shell,” Bohmfalk said. “We’re trying to take a space that was very much built for one use and make it fit a different type of use.”

According to Cross Street, surrounding communities have said they have to travel well outside of the area to find retail or places to work. Bohmfalk said he wants to bring those things to residents’ doorsteps.

“What’s exciting about the neighboring PSO [Perkins-Somerset-Oldtown] transformation is the opportunity to create a mixed-income and mixed-use place in the neighborhood in a place that historically has not been,” Bohmfalk said.

One of the site’s first anchor tenants, according to Phillips, will be Café Momentum, a restaurant and professional training program that works with justice-involved youth. The nonprofit works with teens aged 15 to 19, offering job training as well as full-time case management. They already have restaurants in Dallas, Pittsburgh and Atlanta, according to their website, with new locations set to open in Nashville, Tennessee, and Denver this year.

A Café Momentum spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on their decision to open a restaurant in the Car Barn.

The Car Barn’s rehabilitation is part of larger redevelopment efforts in the Perkins-Somerset-Oldtown community, Beatty Development said when they released initial renderings of the project.

In 2018, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City was awarded a $30 million Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grant as part of the Perkins-Somerset-Oldtown community transformation plan, including Central Avenue. Nearby, aging public housing units are being torn down and replaced by more than 2,000 new mixed-income housing units.

Area residents have only known the Car Barn as a vacant building but desire to see the degrading building be repurposed, said Jonestown community president Amber Doherty. She said a coffee shop that addresses social concerns and systemic injustice through opportunity, akin to Café Momentum, would also be a great add.

“The neighbors are just excited for progress that isn’t more vacancy, but there’s mostly just cautious optimism,” Doherty said.

She added that people were “pretty excited” about the idea of a coffee shop, but said that any retail or businesses coming to the space that foster meaningful connections and offer affordable price points will “make the neighborhood stronger.”

Inside the Car Barn

The developers plan to preserve portions of the exterior face of the building, exposed brick walls, windows and skylights and a boiler, all visible during a tour of the now cleared space earlier this week.

Baltimore’s cable car system operated briefly in the 1890s, drawing power from large steam engines in powerhouses around the city, including at the Car Barn. The cable cars soon gave way to an all-electric streetcar system that operated until 1963.

Currently, the large black gate to the Car Barn is often overlooked, with graffiti and uncured grass deterring many from getting closer. Once inside, the eye is immediately drawn to the striking natural light pouring through the aged windows and skylight in the dark timbered roof.

Phillips said the Car Barn is divided into two — North and South. The North Barn features a grand 9,000-square-foot bottom floor with 50-foot high wooden ceiling, which will be restored.

“We’d really like to identify a tenant that can make use of that space,” Phillips said. ”We’re definitely considering event spaces, food, beverage. We’ve talked to a few fitness entities that could use the space for exercise concepts.”

A creaky wooden staircase connects the lower part of the North Barn to the upper level, with trusses that limit headroom and could make it difficult to move around, according to Bohmfalk, but might accommodate more office or production type tenants.

The South Barn, an adjacent one-story 8,964-square-foot building, would be more suitable for retail, he said. At the busy intersection of East Pratt Street and South Central Avenue, the Car Barn captures the constant flow of traffic coming out of downtown Baltimore.

Leasing efforts remain underway, but both Phillips and Bohmfalk aim to sign letters of intent with more tenants by early 2025 with an expectation that construction could be begin in the second half of the year. A potential opening date would be about 18 months after, in late 2026 or early 2027.