In the News: Agora Buys Two Charles Street Buildings
By: Ed Gunts, Baltimore Fishbowl
A long-dormant building on Charles Street will come back to life starting today, after a new owner renovated it and moved employees in over the weekend.
Agora Inc., a Baltimore based network of publishing, information services and real estate companies, bought the five-story office building at 1125 N. Charles Street this month from Chase Brexton Health Services, which continues to occupy three other structures on the block.
A sale price has not been disclosed, but Agora’s total investment for acquisition and renovation has been put at more than $11 million. Combined with the $25 million that Chase Brexton spent to buy and improve its headquarters at 1111 N. Charles Street, that one block received more than $35 million worth of investment in the past five years.
Agora’s expansion will add hundreds of employees to the immediate area to patronize shops, restaurants and other services.
One of Agora’s two new buildings
According to Jean Hankey, vice president of management and development, the company bought and renovated the 1125 building because it needed space to house its growing staff. It’s the 12th building that Agora now owns in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere area, which has become a virtual campus for its workforce, and it’s by far the largest.
The first employees moved into floors 3 to 5. They came from other Agora locations in Baltimore, 1217 St. Paul Street and 1117-1119 St. Paul Street.
“We are crammed into our current buildings and also leasing offices in Mount Vernon,” Hankey said in an email message before the move. “We will be moving everyone around and spreading out now that we have the additional space in our buildings. We continue to grow and have almost 900 employees in Mount Vernon.”
Agora’s newest building was constructed by the Monumental Life Insurance Company in 1967 and 1968 as part of its Charles Street headquarters and contains 104,000 square feet of office space. It has been vacant since Monumental Life, now Transamerica, moved downtown in 2011 to what is now the Transamerica Tower at 100 Light Street.
Transamerica sold its Mount Vernon properties to Chase Brexton, which moved into the company’s 1926, 1938 and 1957 buildings but mothballed the 1968 building for future use.
Chase Brexton arranged to sell the 1968 building to Agora more than a year ago. It is the second building on Charles Street that Agora has acquired in the past two years, along with a six-level parking garage just south of the Belvedere condominiums.
It is also the second building that Agora bought from Chase Brexton. In 2012, Agora purchased Chase Brexton’s previous headquarters at 1001 Cathedral Street, home of City Café.
The Charles Street building is a departure from some of Agora’s other holdings, which include some of the most architecturally significant buildings in Mount Vernon. The list includes the former Marburg mansion at 14 E. Mount Vernon Place, the former Winans mansion by Stanford White at 1217 St. Paul Street, the former Christian Science Building at 702 Cathedral Street and the former Episcopal Diocese of Maryland headquarters at 105 W. Monument Street.
Agora sought tax credits for historic preservation to renovate the 1125 building but was turned down after city officials said it was not considered a contributing structure to the Mount Vernon-Belvedere historic district and was therefore ineligible for preservation tax credits.
The company nevertheless has treated the renovation as something of a restoration project, preserving the exterior and upgrading the interior for office use. Hankey and company founder William Bonner are ardent preservationists. Jim Suttner of Rohrer Studio was the architect.
One visible change on the outside is the installation of new glass doors and windows at the 1125 entrance, which has been reopened. Suttner and Rohrer Studio also have upgraded the Charles Street façade of the Belvedere garage and are still working on the interior.
The sale of 1125 was a complex and drawn-out real estate transaction between Agora and Chase Brexton. To facilitate a transfer in ownership, the building had to be separated from the rest of the Monumental Life property through the creation of a condominium regime that enabled Agora to take title to the office space it wanted to purchase. Once the condominium regime was created, the sale could proceed.
The sale was delayed for a time by a fire in the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse, which contains the land records for city properties. Access to the land records was needed to create the condominium documents.
Set back 36 feet from both Charles Street and Biddle Street, Agora’s office building sits on a podium that conceals a 100-space parking garage. Agora and Chase Brexton share the parking area.
Agora’s new garage space
The 1125 building cost $2.5 million when it was constructed in 1967 and 1968. It was one of the first buildings to rise after former Mayor Theodore McKeldin announced plans to revitalize the Charles Street corridor, a vision that still guides Charles Street redevelopment.
Fisher and Taylor were the original architects. Seven smaller buildings were torn down to make way for it. At the time, the building was touted as the first “all-electric” office facility of its size in the Baltimore area, using heat generated by lights in the ceiling and other lighting to keep the building warm.
“The building will incorporate the finest facilities available for lighting, heating, air conditioning and air filtering,” the architects said at the time.
Founded in 1978 by Bonner, Agora and its affiliates publish books and newsletters and organize seminars, with the goal of reaching niche markets in fields such as finance, health and travel.
Agora’s first local real estate project was the renovation of an East Baltimore rowhouse under a city sponsored shop-steading program. Besides Baltimore, it has locations in London, Paris, Bonn, Melbourne, Johannesburg and Buenos Aires and reaches more than 1 million subscribers.
Though not as old as many of the properties on Charles Street, the 1125 building appears to have been well maintained and gives Agora much-needed expansion space.
Working under a right of entry granted by Chase Brexton, Agora began by renovating levels 3 to 5. Now that the first employees have moved in, Hankey said, Agora will focus on renovating the rest of the office floors, the plaza, garage and basement.
Agora may be able to expand even more at its new location. According to news reports when plans were unveiled in 1966, the 1125 building was designed to be able to support an addition of up to nine stories. That would make it one of the tallest buildings in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere area historic district.