Developer Explores Possibilities for Washington Avenue Lot

You pay for parking by the hour. The Baltimore County Revenue Authority pays by the month.

The agency actually leases the Washington Avenue parking lot on a month-to-month basis from Mid-Atlantic Properties. The authority would rather keep it that way, but Mid-Atlantic is mulling ideas for the future.

The firm, which earlier this summer moved its headquarters from Timonium to West Pennsylvania Avenue, inherited the lot from Columbia-based Corporate Office Properties Trust. The trust sold nearby Nottingham Centre and two other Towson office buildings to the company last September.

Chris Murray, Mid-Atlantic's president, said last week that his firm is talking informally with potential partners and that he expects some kind of action to take place in the next decade.

"I don't see 26 stories there," Murray said. What he does see is six to eight stories of mixed office and residential, like the Penthouse building across the street on Allegheny Avenue.

"Something will happen at that lot sometime," he said.

Wayne Mixdorf, director of parking for the revenue authority, said that  despite the influx of more than 800 more parking spots into downtown Towson as part of Towson Square, "We would like it to remain municipal parking for as long as possible. It serves the restaurants in the unit block of Allegheny very well."

So you tell us: What would you put on this site, if anything? What sort of building does that part of Towson really need?