Baltimore Rightsizes its Aging Facilities

6/6/2025

Like many U.S. cities — especially those in the Northeast — Baltimore faces a challenge that has been more than a century in the making. Many of its facilities are old and succumbing to the ravages of time, and more than a few of the structures are underused. 

Of course, the city still has to maintain these facilities. But two issues are working against them: The city lacks enough funds to pay for needed repair projects, and the maintenance backlog grows daily. 

In response, the city’s Department of General Services has undertaken the monumental task of doing what at one time was unthinkable — consolidating occupancies in a smaller number of buildings and disposing of unwanted facilities. In short, the city has taken important first steps toward shrinking Baltimore’s facilities footprint. 

A challenge grows 

The Department of General Services faces a daunting challenge in overseeing Baltimore’s stock of 70 or so owned or leased facilities with 3.57 million square feet of space, says Terrel Chesson, the department’s deputy director. Twelve of those are historic properties. 

“It’s a mixed bag of facilities,” Chesson says. “We manage a lot of mixed-use office space. There are a number of facilities that are one function, such as police stations, health centers and multipurpose centers.” 

As with many cities in the Northeast, many of Baltimore’s facilities are old. 

“Right now, the age range of our facilities is 15 to 150 years old, with the average age of 60 years old,” he says. “For the historic properties, the average age is 147 years. The oldest building that we have within the city’s original boundaries is the Robert Long House in Fells Point. It was constructed in 1765.” 

The city’s stock of old and aging facilities has created an all-too common problem: a backlog of maintenance and capital needs. 

“Our maintenance backlog or deferred maintenance backlog is just under $165 million, and that’s of course operational and mission-critical systems that are due now and next year,” Chesson says. “We also have roughly a $1.2 billion capital need.” 

The city has done what it can to address the shortfalls, but Chesson’s hopes of progress are dim. 

“On the capital side, we get I would say a very modest appropriation each year, and based on the deferred maintenance backlog and the capital need, we rarely scratch the surface on being able to have the funds needed to properly perform capital investment,” Chesson says. “We don’t see that that’s going to change or that there’s any light at the end of the tunnel.” 

The department’s challenges in effectively managing its existing stock of buildings go deeper than financial issues. 

“On the operational side, we fight a couple of battles,” Chesson says. “Of course, it’s recruiting — being able to attract and retain people, staff and especially quality staff. In many, many municipalities, they compete with private industry, and some neighboring cities, states and other entities that may pay a little more or may have more attractive opportunities. That’s also a challenge for us.” 

Assessing strategies 

As the facilities management challenges have piled up for Baltimore’s Department of General Services, Chesson and his team realized that business as usual no longer worked. 

“We had to figure out how to make this better, and that’s what drove us to do this,” he says of the city’s rightsizing efforts. “The lack of funding, added to the old infrastructure — This is not a new city. It’s an old city with an old infrastructure — it was a no-brainer. We had to do something different. That was the driver for us to make the decision to start.” 

The department’s rightsizing efforts actually have been a few years in the making. 

“A number of activities started roughly five to six years ago, when we really put things in gear for this rightsizing effort,” he says. “We’d been discussing it for a number of years, discussing the resources needed, how to bring everybody to the table. 

“We did a lot of studies and research on neighboring municipalities or private entities that have done a rightsizing effort of this sort. We also met with a number of other city governments that have at least started this or were successful. We took some of the lessons learned from them.” 

Chesson says the department has approached the rightsizing process with careful planning and preparation because of the number of parties involved and the complexity of the task. 

“We’re treating this as a project but more of a portfolio project,” he says. “We meet to track all the notes, all the lessons learned to determine how to time each phase, how to ensure that every activity is assigned to the right person to literally have a ticker for every single thing. We’re trying to make sure that we have the structure in place so it runs smoothly and quickly.  

“What we’ve been able to do as we go through is take notes and figure out what worked and what didn’t. We've had sessions with each one of the entities individually and together and gave them feedback on what we saw and how to make it better.” 

Candidates emerge 

Based on the information gathered, the department is getting a clearer picture of city facilities that are the most likely candidates for rightsizing, as well as the overall goals of the effort. 

“We’re closing in on identifying a reduction target, but we were focusing more on our methodology with the focus on the problem locations and the potential for savings,” Chesson says. “We evaluated our building portfolio, determined which locations weren’t on the table for possibly downsizing. For example, the historic properties that we really can’t touch and that are limited as far as being able to offload or change the function, those we set aside.” 

What are the characteristics of the facilities that have emerged as likely candidates? 

“We focused on the ones that had a really high need for capital investment, that are extremely dense as far as being occupied and that are critical in nature but not critical in a way where we can’t make changes,” he says. “Also, we evaluated the tenants that are in those particular locations to determine if possibly they could be rehoused or relocated. 

“I wouldn’t say that there’s a typical building profile. Each one is different, but usually they have some of the same characteristics. One of the common things is that it has extremely high capital needs. In many cases, the tenants can be housed somewhere else.” 

Baltimore’s rightsizing efforts also have enabled them to identify facilities that, while not in the city’s plans for redevelopment, have appeal to other parties. 

“Another one of the other keys is that the ones that we’re focusing on have a high market interest,” he says. “There’s interest in development or some type of purchase for some reason. Those are the ones that we look at as being good candidates.” 

Addressing challenges 

Along with opportunities to rightsize Baltimore’s facilities footprint have come challenges for Chesson and his team. He says one challenge has involved motivating people to be enthusiastic and highly engaged in the process. 

“You would think that considering the end goal — to be fiscally responsible, to be good stewards of city resources, to be able to allocate funding and people in the right place — you would think that would be a no-brainer,” he says. “But at times, the vision isn’t always shared. The reasoning for doing it or the end goal isn’t always a shared thing. Some people don’t necessarily always see the value, or it could be an intimidating effort to them.” 

A second challenge for Chesson has been rethinking the way he approaches discussions with various parties involved in the process. 

“It requires being able to appeal to the masses to identify how you should approach each stakeholder, how to engage them, to motivate them, and then how to keep them engaged,” he says. “That has been one of the challenging tasks for this particular effort.” 

Chesson says he also has had to be flexible and communicate clearly with stakeholders when discussing the options and opportunities the rightsizing process can present. 

“You have to be creative, and you have to always be flexible,” he says. “Using the term pivot does not mean you failed and you’re changing. It means you realize that you come to a juncture where you have to make a decision on how to improve when the initial effort or the initial thought wasn’t necessarily the right one. 

“You have to be able to know when to pivot. You have to be creative and of course flexible because those are traits you have to have when working with people in navigating through a complex process.” 

Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.