Unlocking Baltimore’s Rowhouse Revival: How Pattern Books Can Drive Change
The City of South Bend, Indiana supports neighborhood infill and economic opportunity by offering a set of pre-approved building types.
Introduction
Baltimore is home to more than 15,000 vacant rowhouses—each representing both a challenge and an opportunity. While many small or emerging developers are eager to revitalize these homes, they often face steep design costs, slow permitting, and complex review processes.
Tools like pattern books, developer toolkits, and pre-permitted plans can change that. These proven strategies simplify redevelopment, cut costs, and empower a broader range of builders to participate in Baltimore’s renewal. Here’s how other cities have used similar models—and how Baltimore can adapt them to fit its unique architectural heritage.
The Blueprint for Change: Pattern Books
A pattern book is a set of model, pre-designed building plans and specifications created to match local architectural styles and regulations. It’s like a menu of ready-to-build options that align with a city’s character and zoning rules.
- Canada – The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation recently launched a national Housing Design Catalogue offering 50 standardized, low-rise home designs across seven regional chapters. Each is tailored to local codes, climates, and construction methods, providing a national framework for faster, more consistent homebuilding.
- South Bend, Indiana – South Bend’s Pattern Book and Developer Handbook underpin a pre-approved building permit system that expedites review to just two days for compliant designs. Minor design deviations are allowed; larger changes require resubmission. The catalog includes single-family, duplex, and small multi-unit designs.
- Kalamazoo, Michigan – Kalamazoo provides CAD-based, modifiable home designs through its Pre-Approved Plans Catalog, with accompanying budget and pro forma templates. While permits are still required, the plans streamline design, budgeting, and permitting for small developers. The catalog features single-family, duplex, and four-unit buildings.
For Baltimore, this could mean detailed templates for the city’s distinctive rowhouses—complete with floor plans, elevations, and energy-efficient design options.
It’s like a menu of ready-to-build options that align with a city’s character and zoning rules.
Simplifying the Process: Developer Toolkit
While pattern books can simplify design and permitting, a developer toolkit would help fill critical gaps in capacity. Small, minority, and less experienced developers often face the greatest barriers – from access to capital to steep learning curves in budgeting, financing, and project management. Across the country a wide variety of organizations including local, regional, and national non-profits to state and local governments provide small developers with technical assistance and access to predevelopment funding.
- Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) provides predevelopment grants to developers of color while the Incremental Development Alliance offers classes, trainings and events to aspiring developers.
- In Michigan, the state’s Economic Development Corporation provides a comprehensive and well-organized series of seminars and links to tools and resources.
While these are critical resources, developer toolkits can level the playing field even more. A well-designed toolkit could include sample budgets and pro formas, project schedules, permitting checklists, and guidance on funding sources such as local grants or tax credits.
In Baltimore, ReBUILD Metro has laid the groundwork for such a toolkit with creation of a redevelopment process manual and design standards. This effort could be expanded to include templates available for use by small or emerging developers.
Saving Time: Pre-Permitted Plans
A major bottleneck in redevelopment is the permitting process, which can take months and drain capital before construction even begins. A Pre-Permitted Plans Initiative could build upon a Pattern Book program, allowing developers to choose from city-approved pattern book designs that have already cleared regulatory review.
This approach drastically shortens the permitting timeline — from months to weeks — helping projects break ground faster and at lower cost, principally by reducing the developer’s carrying costs. City staff also benefit by spending less time reviewing repetitive plan sets and more time on complex cases.
This approach is delivering results in cities across the country:
- South Bend, Indiana — Offers a free catalog of pre-approved building plan sets designed for small and mid-scale infill housing projects, with plans vetted for local zoning, lot configurations and construction techniques.
- Salt Lake City, Utah – Pre-approved accessory dwelling unit (ADU) plans have boosted small-scale housing construction by reducing red tape.
Keeping In Character: Adaptability and Flexibility
Baltimore’s rowhouses are not uniform. From the marble steps of West Baltimore to the painted brick facades of Highlandtown, each neighborhood has a unique rhythm and identity. Pattern books can reflect that diversity by offering flexible templates—allowing for small variations in façade, color palette, or roofline.
Developers could choose from design families that align with neighborhood patterns while still enjoying the efficiency of standardized plans. This balance between flexibility and structure ensures projects remain authentic without bogging down in endless customization.
Lowering Barriers, Expanding Opportunity
By cutting design and permitting costs, these tools empower a broader group of developers — especially small, minority-owned, and community development corporations — to participate in city revitalization. Gains in efficiency benefit more experienced and larger developers as well, allowing the pace of development to increase.
This democratization of development can lead to faster rehabilitation of vacant housing, greater diversity among developers, and more equitable economic outcomes for residents.
By cutting design and permitting costs, these tools empower a broader group of developers to participate in city revitalization.
Conclusion
Baltimore doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel to help solve its housing challenges. Pattern books, developer toolkits, and pre-permitted plans have already proven successful in cities across the U.S. and abroad. Together, they can create a predictable, efficient, and inclusive pathway for revitalizing vacant rowhouses—turning blight into opportunity, and isolation into investment.
By embracing these tools, Baltimore can accelerate redevelopment, preserve its architectural legacy, and empower local communities to shape their own neighborhoods.
Key Takeaways:
- Pattern books provide ready-to-use, locally inspired model building designs and specifications that save time and maintain character.
- Developer toolkits level the playing field for smaller builders with templates, guidance, and resources.
- Pre-permitted plans speed up approvals, helping projects move from concept to construction faster.
- Flexibility matters: Pattern books can adapt to different neighborhoods, different rowhouse types, and preservation needs.
- Simplified processes open the door for more local participation in redevelopment.
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