Jimmy, Jim, and the Nature of Legacy

I’ve been thinking about Jimmy Rouse’s letter to the Baltimore Sun, because: Rouse.

Jimmy Rouse: We need a new Harborplace vision in Baltimore, not destruction, of my father’s legacy , Readers Respond, Baltimore Sun

In my mind Jimmy Rouse will forever be associated with the late, great Louie’s Bookstore Café and that time I found his runaway turtle under my deck. Now he’s making a pitch to save the buildings at Harborplace that were put there by his dad. That’s only natural, I suppose.

It brings to mind the multiple occasions when we have planned for the future in Columbia - - sometimes growing, somethings changing, sometimes removing things that were put here at the beginning. Every time there has been at least a handful (if not more) of residents loudly clamoring for the preservation of Rouse’s legacy.

I find it odd that Jimmy Rouse blames the demise of Harborplace on out-of-town developers.

Harborplace fell into its present sorry condition largely because it fell into the hands of two out-of-town bottom line developers who had no feel for the city. 

His own father was an out-of-town developer. Jim Rouse grew up in Easton. He was an out-of-town developer when he created Columbia and when he re-created Boston’s Faneuil Hall into a Festival Marketplace. What is it about developers that we can praise them and revere them when it suits us and vilify them the rest of the time?

My husband and I had a talk over the dinner the other evening about what Harborplace was like when it first opened. It was truly a “happening.” It’s one of the first places I was taken when I moved to Baltimore.  Over the years, though, I came to feel that it was not truly a quintessential Baltimore place, but rather a place to lure in folks from the suburbs and draw spending from tourists and conventioneers. 

It felt “plastic” to me. It was not worth the hassle of driving and parking and walking only to be met with stores and restaurants that felt like they could be anywhere and with prices that made them prohibitively expensive for everyday folks.

If I could exert any influence over the redevelopment of Harborplace it would be that it serve the actual people of Baltimore. Under Armor’s Kevin Plank* raised some eyebrows and elicited some chuckles this week when he stated the following:

Kevin Plank on the future of Baltimore: We don’t have enough big ideas, Joseph Ilardi, Baltimore Business Journal

Well, here’s my big idea: listen to the people of Baltimore. They have ideas and nobody ever listens to them.

As to preserving the actual, physical buildings that formed the original Harborplace? I don’t know. I can imagine solutions either way. But I don’t think for one minute that Jim Rouse’s legacy would be diminished if those particular structures go. If the new Harborplace becomes something beautiful, useful, and fun his spirit will be in it. Without his original vision that piece of real estate would not have been developed for public use and enjoyment. His true legacy isn’t that puny.

Physical things don’t always last forever, even if we love them and have happy memories about them. Sometimes we outgrow things. Sometimes our needs change. Sometimes we see that there can be something better. 

Apparently even in Baltimore the spectre of “What would Rouse do?” will warrant an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun.

*In his own way, every bit an out-of-town developer.