Can something OTHER than a hotel be done with the Broadway Rec Pier please?

Since Fells Point – and really it would seem every square inch of waterfront property in Baltimore City – is undergoing yet another phase of redevelopment what with Harbor East, Harbor Point, Harbor Harbor, Inner Harbor 2 and Under Harbor all hottening up the scene, we come to the tried and true tradition of trying yet again to revive the question as to what to do with the crumbling Broadway Rec Pier. With a charming history from its opening in 1914, it’s been a lot of things commercial as well as recreational: from ballroom soirees to tugboat homebases, to fake police stations on hit television shows, the City Pier now becomes the project that developers slather over.

But the only idea they seem to continue to put on the table is – a hotel. A boutique hotel with 150 rooms. Since H&S and JJ Clarke purchased the pier in a sweetheart deal ($2 million, $350,000 up front, the rest of which doesn’t need to be paid for 15 years), we’ve occasionally seen the gates underneath the massive building open up for the Fells Point Fun Festival in which artists display their works for sale, but other than that the entire pier is closed off to the public – due to a myriad of safety issues in addition to it being private property I’m sure – and the building remains something of a place for Leaners to hang out on the front steps. So obviously, something should be done here. But a hotel?

How many time, year over year, have we heard the numbers regarding room bookings in this town? Always down, right? Not exactly sold out all over the place, yes? I mean Harbor East alone has five hotels, downtown and surrounding areas have at least say, “a shitload” of hotels, does this pier need to be some boutique hotel when Harbor Point will inevitably get one crammed into its space as well?

How about this. Fix up the pier, tear out the elevated “landing pad” on the end there and convert the whole thing to what it should be, what Baltimore could really use: an actual Recreation Pier. Vendors could set up shop on the pier, the building could be used for any number of things (offices, more stores, day care center, who the fuck cares, it’s a huge building), citizens could enjoy the wonderful view atop a carousel or something (getting crazy here), essentially making it a part of Fells Point rather than yet another place where you’d need a cardkey to access the water in Baltimore. This could be a brilliant opportunity to preserve the historic nature of the pier while simultaneously solidifying it as an attraction that people would want to come see, like the Santa Monica Pier but only about 45% as awesome. Just imagine it! Walkin’ along the pier, eating a corndog or something, the whole thing lit up all nice and pretty at night – positively Rockwell, it could be. But nah, hotel – gotta keep cramming those hotels in there.

Actually you know what, fine. Convert the building to some boutique hotel but just do the rest of what I said with the pier. THIS IS A REALLY GOOD IDEA YOU GUYS. I WANT MY CORNDOG AND MY CAROUSEL.