Bolton Hill has always been something of a place apart. About nine blocks by five blocks, it is bounded by Eutaw Place to the west, Mount Royal Avenue to the east, Dolphin Street to the south, and North Avenue to the north. Over the years, this neighborhood of stately brownstones and wide, leafy avenues has evolved into a bit of an island. During the well-storied urban exodus of the 1950s and '60s, many residents left; others hunkered down to protect their enclave from encroaching blight. Later its citizens defeated a plan to run a bypass from I-83 to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard through the community and secured the neighborhood's listing in the National Register of Historic Places.

The fruits of these continued community efforts can be seen in rising property values, falling crime, and the swift gentrification of nearby Reservoir Hill. So when Maryland's Department of Transportation (MDOT), Department of General Services (DGS), Department of Planning (MDP), and the City of Baltimore recently announced an ambitious strategy to open up Bolton Hill to the neighborhoods around it, some residents wondered if the village-like ambiance that had sustained Bolton Hill through many difficult years would survive.

Sarah Ramirez Cross is a 29-year-old mother and community activist who moved to Bolton Hill from western Howard County two years ago. "I wanted to live in a village environment and I found it here," Cross says. This cozy, slow-paced feel can be traced as far back as the period following the Civil War, when many Confederate veterans settled in Bolton Hill. "It was called ‘the little Virginia' for a long time," says Frank Shivers Jr., 80, a local historian and a resident of Bolton Hill for the last fifty-four years. "When we moved here [from Cincinnati], we were struck by how deeply Southern the atmosphere was."

Indeed, with its gracious architecture, green spaces, fountains, and statuary, Bolton Hill is reminiscent of Richmond's historic Monument Avenue and Fan District. Neighbors hail each other by name on the street and mingle at the Bolton Hill Swim and Tennis Club-a private facility with $700 annual dues.

Partly because of zoning restrictions, retail and dining options in the vicinity are limited, consisting of one café, one restaurant, one bar, a Sav-A-Lot grocery store, and a few smaller shops. "We have a really beautiful neighborhood, but we have hardly any retail within walking distance," says Tim Ingles, 46, who moved to Bolton Hill from the Denver area two and a half years ago. Bolton Hillers, like Ingles, recognize the need for more walkable amenities.

In March, the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore announced plans to remedy just that need. They released a strategy to redevelop two area parking lots as phase one in the long-term creation of the "Eutaw District," a 110-acre parcel of offices, stores, and homes that, planners hope, will rejuvenate the city's State Center district and knit together the surrounding neighborhoods of Bolton Hill, Seton Hill, Upton, Marble Hill, and Mount Vernon.

The strategy calls for an ambitious transit-oriented development, or TOD, centered on State Center, a modernist office complex where 3,500 state employees currently work. "It's one of two places in the city where Metro and Light Rail come together," says Don Halligan, the manager of the project for MDOT. (The other place is Lexington Market.) "We're trying to put people around the transit system and create pedestrian-friendly communities."

Under the plan, development would be densest around State Center Metro and the Cultural Center Light Rail station. Mid-rise residential buildings, offices, retail establishments, and possibly a cineplex would surround a "Plaza d'Art," a central square that might include a boutique hotel. Changes are set to extend all the way to the edges of the 110-acre study area: 3,200 new mixed-income housing units, new commercial buildings, and pedestrian improvements would stretch southwest to Pennsylvania Avenue and northeast almost to Penn Station.

"It's an opportunity for retail, more restaurants," Ingles says. But, he warns, "It also could be a disaster if it's not done right."

After Ingles attended a state-hosted charrette, a planning open house, in January, he expressed a concern over the lack of a comprehensive master plan for moving forward. "I'm an engineer," he explains. "It's my nature to say, how are we going to manage this?"

Ingles formed an ad hoc committee of the Mount Royal Improvement Association (MRIA) devoted to giving Bolton Hill residents a voice in the planning process. He called a neighborhood meeting this spring and, by his estimation, 100 people showed up.

Those in attendance were unhappy about two of the strategy's recommendations in particular: bringing two-way traffic and buses to Bolton Street, which is currently one-way; and routing two-way traffic from Dolphin Street up Dolphin Lane, now a one-way alley running alongside the Swim and Tennis Club.

Ingles contacted three state delegates, who wrote letters to the secretaries of MDOT and DGS, and Ingles expressed residents' concerns to planners. They were "pretty responsive," he concedes. Planners have already backtracked on routing buses and two-way traffic down Bolton Street, an idea that Halligan now says "doesn't make any sense whatsoever."

In April, the state and the city issued an RFEI, a request for expressions of development interest, inviting "experienced developers of mixed-use projects" to submit concepts for the two parking lots at State Center. The RFEI took Ingles by surprise. It seemed to him that the state and city were moving too fast, and hadn't specified their "measurables" (i.e., precisely how they would evaluate developers' concepts according to the broader strategy for the entire Eutaw District conception). If Bolton Hill is to be reconnected to the city grid, how will the entirety of that grid look?

Halligan says that the RFEI was intended to generate feedback, not necessarily a winning bid. But "that doesn't preclude us, if we get exactly what we want, from following through," he says.

"We're doing this in a very transparent way," Halligan says. "We're looking for a lot of public input, and we're working very closely with the city agencies. Obviously we would go through the public process-there'd be a whole series of hearings." Halligan would not specify how many responses to the RFEI were received by the May 6 deadline, only that it was "a handful."

" State Center is a now a divider, rather than a bridge between Bolton Hill, Upton, Penn Station, and Mount Vernon," says Otis Rolley III, Baltimore's director of planning. "This process started the conversation about how something positive and creative might come into being here."

On a recent Sunday walk through the project area, Ingles pointed out a number of spots that might be enhanced by judicious development. A descent into the State Center Metro reveals that it's yawningly empty, save three or four would-be passengers. ("I'd like to know how long they've been waiting," Ingles muses.)

Farther down Eutaw Street we arrive in Seton Hill, whose leaders, Ingles says, hope that the State Center development might reach past Maryland General Hospital into the heart of their neighborhood. "I think this could be one of the premier spots in Baltimore," Ingles says.

He now hopes to take part, with other Bolton Hill leaders, in a "supergroup" composed of key members of all the communities affected by the State Center strategy. The state and city, meanwhile, will announce their next steps regarding the parking lots in this month. But when and how the larger strategy for the "Eutaw District" might be fully realized is anyone's guess. The timeframe is "broad," says Halligan; the state of Maryland and Baltimore City have worked together to present a very preliminary concept plan to the community, and they continue to receive feedback from the community and address some of the issues with this preliminary plan.

Bolton Hillers are having mixed reactions. "If the development could bring a quality grocery store to Eutaw Street, that would be great," Cross says. But others worry that development, along with increased traffic and higher numbers of pedestrians, will threaten the neighborhood's cherished privacy. "Construction could last twenty-five years and cause … more traffic, congestion, and noise," said one respondent on the neighborhood's busy online bulletin board. "We don't need any more density."

Some residents may never be converted to the planners' goal to "reconnect the … now isolated urban islands of Bolton Hill and Seton Hill," as the strategy report states. " Baltimore's always been a city of neighborhoods, of separate units," says Shivers. "There's a lot of rivalry, don't forget. People here really like what they have, and they want to keep it."

Ingles hopes to assuage his neighbor's fears with the example of Evanston, Ill., near Chicago: Photos he took there depict a high-density development next to the elevated train station, with single-family homes standing four blocks away-proof, as Ingles sees it, that density and neighborhood integration can be made to respect limits.

-Amanda Kolson Hurley wrote "Rethinking the Rowhome" for the May issue.