One of Baltimore’s last empty waterfront parcels sat unused and largely inaccessible for years as owners came and went, redevelopment plans fizzled and the property survived an eminent domain challenge.

But on Monday, plans to revitalize the 43 acres between Kloman Street and the Patapsco River’s Middle Branch in Westport appeared on track. As equipment operators cleared the way for townhouses expected to go on sale this spring, community members gathered with developers and elected officials to usher in ONE Westport, a mixed-use community with a public shoreline park and access to a light rail station.

“It’s been 20 years in the making,” Ray Jackson, principal of Stonewall Capital, the project’s developer, told a crowd gathered for the event. “The message from me today is about resiliency, and it’s about a collaborative effort” that also can help to stabilize the existing Westport neighborhood.

Stonewall’s plans call for for-sale townhouses and condominiums, senior housing, affordable housing and a mix of commercial uses. Builders will carve out space for the new Westport Waterfront Community Park, while a neighborhood community development corporation is exploring plans for a community center.

Stonewall’s years of ownership have been fraught with challenges, including a land dispute with the operator of a proposed high-speed rail linking Baltimore and Washington.

Stonewall agreed in November to grant an easement to Baltimore Washington Rapid Rail LLC to allow for the continued planning of a $10 billion superconducting magnetic levitation rail system.

After living through years of false starts, unkept promises and in many cases, views of a waterfront with limited access, Westport community members said Monday that they’re confident in plans they’ve helped to craft. Redevelopment of the once-industrial parcel is expected to have a spillover effect on a neighborhood that has struggled with vacant homes and absentee landlords.

Keisha Allen, a Westport resident and president of the Westport Neighborhood Association, said she sees ONE Westport as a catalyst for revitalizing the existing neighborhood. Already, the neighborhood’s community development corporation has acquired 17 properties through a land trust and is working to rehabilitate the first of them. And a $1.4 million federal grant is expected to help fund construction of a community center on the ONE Westport site.

“South Baltimore is where it is,” said Allen, also the co-founder of the Westport Community Economic Development Corp. “This has been a long time coming. I always imagined this day. “

Allen said the ONE Westport name was inspired by inclusion of the existing neighborhood.

“We’re already here,” Allen said. “I don’t want this to be us over there and them over here. We’re one neighborhood.”

Baltimore City Council member Phylicia Porter praised the developers’ “community-centered” approach to development, of taking input from the community while supporting economic development in an existing community where many residents have lived for generations.

“They deserve a vibrant neighborhood,” Porter said. “I feel as though now we are able to see the end product and will be able to replicate it all across the city.”

Stonewall purchased the site in 2021 from Under Armour founder Kevin Plank. Before Plank’s Weller Development owned the property, it had been controlled by developer Patrick Turner, whose longtime vision for an upscale waterfront community potentially anchored by a soccer stadium there never came to fruition.

The developer plans to create Westport Waterfront Community Park as part of agreements Stonewall reached with South Baltimore Gateway Partnership, Westport Community Economic Development Corp. and the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks.

The partnership, which is working on a plan to re-imagine the Middle Branch with 11 miles of parks, trails and economic development, has been an adviser on the Westport park, which will include a central park area and trail system around the water.

“Look at the huge potential happening right here,” said Brad Rogers, the group’s executive director. “We’re going to create for the first time in Westport’s history genuine access to the waterfront. For generations people have looked out their bedroom windows and have seen the water but couldn’t get there,” because of rail lines and industry

Westport and other neighborhoods in need of revitalization are facing “systemic challenges,” Maryland Housing Secretary Jacob Day said during Monday’s event.

Day noted that he and other officials met with community members Sunday to discuss a $3 billion-dollar effort to acquire and repurpose thousands of vacant homes across the city, when, just hours later, firefighters were called to Westport to battle a two-alarm fire of vacant rowhouses.

“With the renaissance of this waterfront, we’re going to get there,” Day said. “Not just for this vacant site, but also for the neighborhood across the street.”

For a few years, the future of the site appeared uncertain.

Rapid Rail, a private company that eventually plans to build the 311-mph rail line between Washington to New York, filed an eminent domain lawsuit against Stonewall and Westport Capital Development in June 2021, shortly after they acquired the property from Plank. The rail operator argued it had the right to take the Westport parcel through condemnation, which stemmed from its acquisition in 2015 of the former Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railroad Co. franchise.

The proposed high-speed rail promises to cut travel times to 15 minutes between Baltimore and Washington and one hour between D.C. and New York, the rail operator said.

The long-simmering legal dispute between the two parties had been headed to trial in Baltimore Circuit Court more than a year ago. A jury trial was to determine the value of the formerly industrial property and set a deadline by which the railroad would need to acquire it.

But in November, Stonewall and Rapid Rail reached an agreement in which the rail operator will be granted an easement for its northbound route into Baltimore.

Now, the 246 townhouses being built by Ryan Homes are slated to go on sale by spring, Jackson said Monday. Work also has begun to relocate and upgrade Kloman Street farther east along the ONEWestport property, both for safety and to better connect to the existing neighborhood.

The next phase of development likely will include a redesign to build more townhouses and condominiums, instead of the apartment buildings as initially planned. That’s because of cost increases and a saturation of apartment building construction in the city, Jackson said.

The community, approved for 1,500 residential units, eventually will likely have less than 1,000, he said.

“Instead of letting this ground just sit, we want to develop it, and that’s why we’re looking at redesigning it,” Jackson said.

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6672 and @lmirabella on X.