Two Vacant Reservoir Hill Landmarks Are Finally Reopening, Just Not on the Same Clock

Reservoir Hill has two buildings that have sat empty long enough to become part of the scenery. One is the boarded corner at Park and North Avenue, a stretch of the 600 block that's been vacant and blighted for so long most people stopped noticing it. The other sits up on the hill above the old reservoir: the Mount Royal Mansion, built in 1792, sixteen thousand square feet of Georgian Revival stone that's outlasted a Head Start program, a sailors' inn, and at least one failed high-rise proposal.

Both are being redeveloped right now. Neither is opening this year. And if you've heard about one project and assumed it explains the timeline for the other, it's worth untangling which is which, because they're running on completely different clocks, funded by completely different kinds of money.

The Corner With a Grocery Store and a Deadline

The Park and North corner is Phase II of Reservoir Square, an eight-acre, $170 million mixed-use project spanning the 600 to 850 block of West North Avenue. MCB Real Estate is leading it, with Baltimore-based Blank Slate Development, founded by Alex Aaron, brought on as the project moved into its next stage. Phase I is already under construction: 120 townhouse lots built by Ryan Homes, half of them already sold to future residents. Phase II is the part most people will actually feel day to day. It's anchored by a 12,000-square-foot Streets Market, the regional grocery chain's fourth Baltimore location, sitting inside a 20,000-square-foot retail strip with roughly 75 rear-accessed parking spaces. A 63,000-square-foot headquarters for the city's Mayor's Office of Employment Development is slated to open in the same phase in 2026, and the retail center itself is targeted for completion sometime in 2027.

At the announcement, state Sen. Antonio Hayes recalled a childhood when there were two full groceries within a mile of each other on North Avenue. Right now there's one option within that radius for Reservoir Hill residents, and it sits across one of the city's busier arterials. That's the actual daily friction the grocery store is meant to solve. Rep. Kweisi Mfume called it the close of another food desert, though longtime residents will note there's already a Bolton Hill Grocery, an improved Save-A-Lot, and a Safeway within a short walk or ride, so the honest read is that Streets Market adds real, closer options rather than filling total absence.

The point that matters for anyone tracking the corner: this phase has a funder, a named grocery tenant, and a year attached to it. Watch for visible construction progress toward 2027, not a ribbon-cutting next spring.

The Mansion Doesn't Have a Grocery Chain Behind It

Up the hill, Mount Royal Mansion is a different kind of project entirely. Also known as the Birckhead-Bond house, it's the oldest structure in both the Reservoir Hill and Mount Royal historic districts, built by Dr. Soloman Birckhead as a country estate before the neighborhood around it existed. It spent the 1920s as a Quaker home for older adults, the 1950s as an inn for Norwegian sailors passing through the Port of Baltimore, and later stints as a library and a Head Start site. Orioles owner Peter Angelos bought it in the 1960s with plans for a high-rise apartment building, but preservationists got it onto the National Register of Historic Places before that happened, and the city bought and renovated it in the 1970s. It's been vacant for years since.

The team now working to change that is local in a way Reservoir Square isn't. April Richardson, who owns Baked in Baltimore and grew up walking past the mansion without knowing what it was, teamed up with real estate investor Robyn Marbray to pitch the city and the community on turning it into a food hall. They were selected in December 2023, and their plan calls for a $10 million, three-year buildout: seven to ten food vendors, a maker space for artisans, and a multipurpose room for community use. As of the last public reporting, the team was still working to finalize a land disposition agreement with the city. No construction start date or opening year has been reported since.

That's the actual insight worth sitting with. The mansion story broke a year before the grocery store did, and it's the more emotionally resonant of the two projects for a lot of longtime residents. But it's still waiting on a land deal, while the institutionally backed corner two blocks away already has a named tenant and a target year. Community-led revitalization and developer-financed retail don't move at the same speed, even when they start on the same block of North Avenue.

The Debate Over How You'll Get There

There's a third piece of this that isn't about either building directly. It's about the street between them. The Reservoir Hill Association has been vocal in opposing Baltimore City Council Bill 26-0150, which would grant Blank Slate additional curb cuts along North Avenue tied to the retail center's parking. The association's public position is blunt about what's at stake:

"Protected bike lanes end at Reservoir Hill."

Their argument is that the neighborhood already lost ground on connected, protected cycling infrastructure, and that a handful of additional curb cuts for six parking spots isn't worth reopening that gap again. It's not a fight about whether the grocery store should exist. It's a fight about whether getting to it safely on a bike stays possible once the retail center opens. That question hasn't been resolved as of this writing, and it's worth knowing about if you're the kind of resident who bikes down Eutaw Place or through Druid Hill Park regularly.

What Keeps Running No Matter Which Corner Finishes First

None of this construction timeline touches the parts of Reservoir Hill that don't wait on developers or land deals:

• The 30th annual Historic Reservoir Hill Garden & Home Tour ran June 6 and 7 this year, offered on a joint ticket with the Charles Village Garden Walk on June 14.
• Whitelock Community Farm keeps its Saturday morning farm stand going at Whitelock Street and Brookfield Avenue from June through November, the same corner it's occupied for years regardless of what's happening a few blocks over.
• The Druid Hill Farmers Market sets up Wednesday afternoons from June through September at the Rawlings Conservatory, with yoga sessions and produce from city farms alongside the vendor stalls.
• Beth Am Synagogue marked its 50th anniversary in the neighborhood with a free concert featuring Lafayette Gilchrist and the New Volcanoes, with Baltimore rapper Eze Jackson as a guest.

These aren't placeholders until the mansion or the grocery store opens. They're the actual social infrastructure of the neighborhood right now, running on their own thirty-year and decade-long traditions, independent of anyone's construction schedule.

If you live near either project, the useful thing to track this year isn't a single grand opening. It's two separate timelines moving at two separate speeds, plus an unresolved argument about the street connecting them. Reservoir Square has a tenant and a year. Mount Royal Mansion has a team and a plan still waiting on paperwork. Both are worth watching, and neither should be mistaken for the other.

For residents thinking about what any of this means for their own home's value or timing, Jessica Dailey has been tracking Reservoir Hill and the neighborhoods around it closely enough to help make sense of it. If you're curious what a corner like this one does to your own property's position in the market, request a home valuation and Concierge consultation and get a read that's specific to your block, not just the headline.