Baltimore has achieved a remarkable reduction in crime, with homicides and shootings down by almost 60% since 2021 — to the lowest level in almost 50 years.
Now, the challenge facing our city and its elected leaders is to translate that historic reduction in crime into significant, widespread economic growth to lift our city. A growing economy that supports families and allows people to live dignified and fulfilling lives is our best hope to cement truly lasting, generational lifesaving change.
So how do we do that?
First, don’t make it harder by chasing counterproductive political fads, like attempting to unplug Baltimore from the fastest-growing part of America’s economy: AI and the data centers that make possible the technology that all of us rely upon.
Energy is expensive. Baltimore passing a hastily conceived data center ban, with no alternative plan for growth, is not going to change that.
Increasing generation (including renewables), conservation and additional transmission will have an impact. Additionally, federal and state governments must use incentives and regulation to steer America’s most profitable companies to invest in solutions that spare other energy consumers. Baltimore City government has no ability to impact any of these efforts.
Instead, the conversation here should be about solving problems, not creating them. So, what is possible?
St. Louis is working to redevelop empty warehouse space in industrial areas as data centers, as a catalyst for broader redevelopment and tech industry growth. Baltimore has many large empty or mostly empty candidates for a similar approach, along with hundreds of acres of vacant land, that could help rebuild our declining commercial property tax base and create thousands of high-paying jobs.
This type of economic progress is badly needed in Baltimore to continue to support our schools, our public safety and our quality of life.
According to city data, downtown area properties — which have long been the foundation of our tax base — have lost more than $1 billion in assessed value since 2020, as office building prices have plummeted with the growth of remote work in the wake of COVID.
Additionally, unlike the country as a whole, employment in our city has not recovered to pre-COVID levels.
Baltimore was on an upward trajectory during the last decade, recovering from the global recession and reaching a high of 292,287 jobs in December 2019, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Today, our city remains stalled in the mid-260,000 job range, down almost 30,000 jobs.
To reverse these declines, Baltimore must embrace the growing parts of America’s economy, like the technology sector, to harness the potential that exists in our great universities. Thankfully, to date, local leaders have seen through the misinformation that some are peddling to try to block the expansion of Johns Hopkins University’s Advanced Research Computing at Hopkins program, an academic research center that will position Baltimore to lead and grow.
Additionally, what is less discussed in the debate about the AI revolution is that it is creating enormous demand for AI-proof jobs in the skilled trades. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook projects that employment in skilled trades will grow much faster than the overall economy, 5.3% compared with 3.1%, with electrician positions growing by 9.5% and HVAC technicians growing by 8.1%.
Unions already are seeing the impact of Maryland’s fledgling data center industry. Baltimore-based IBEW Local 24 business manager Michael McHale reports that his membership has grown from 2,000 to 3,200 in four years.
Local non-union companies like mine will have an opportunity to grow, as well. We’ve started an apprenticeship program in conjunction with Living Classrooms to meet this demand.
Yes, the world is facing difficult questions as we go through a period of enormous change. But problems are made worse by government’s failure to lead in guiding change, instead, pretending it’s not happening or attempting to build a wall around Baltimore to cut ourselves off from the future.
Baltimore has led in prior periods of sharp economic change: first with transatlantic ships, then railroads, then the giant steel mill that employed 30,000 people and helped win World War II. All were accompanied by questions and danger, but Baltimore led.
Today, opportunity lies in technology and innovation that will create jobs at the top of the economic scale, as well as in blue-collar communities that have been neglected for too long. Baltimore must rise to the challenge again.
Martin Knott is president of Advanced Indoor Resources, based in Baltimore City. He is a member of the Maryland Apprenticeship and Training Council and the Maryland Center for Construction Education and Innovation Board, as well as a former chair of the Maryland Economic Development Corporation.