Study: Older cities face brighter future

Smaller, industrial communities may be revitalized by higher commute costs

The study makes recommendations to help smaller industrial cities develop policies to help them thrive again, said its author, Radhika Fox, associate director at the organization.

Two Maryland communities, Cumberland and Hagerstown, met the report’s criteria for older cities: an industrial base of at least 5,000 in the 1880 census and a population between 15,000 to 150,000 in the 2000 census, with median household incomes under $35,000.

‘‘There’s a growing amount of discussion about how rising gas prices are going to refuel a re-urbanization and this will be a good thing for cities,” Fox said. ‘‘The good news for Cumberland and Hagerstown is they are cities in a strong state economy, so the question is how do they leverage the dynamics of the economic base of Maryland and capture some of that economic vibrancy.”

Similar cities in states such as Michigan that are experiencing a severe loss of jobs and economic downturns will not fare as well as their Maryland counterparts, she said.

The communities also must plan to ensure that as people move back into the cities lower-income residents are not displaced, she said.

But overall the news is good for smaller industrial cities to be revitalized in the near future, she said.

‘‘These smaller industrial cities have tremendous assets and amenities and with the right set of investments and policies at the state and federal level these can be vital centers of prosperity,” Fox said. ‘‘So we’re optimistic about their future.”

Cumberland, which had 45,000 people in the 1970s only to see its population drop to about 21,000 now, is in the midst of a rebound, said Terri Bennett, economic development specialist with the city.

In its glory days, the city had a glass factory, tire factory and was a center for the B&0 Railroad. ‘‘We were basically the queen city of Maryland. Baltimore was the top and we were the second,” Bennett said.

As recently as 10 years ago, 60 percent of the ground-floor space of downtown buildings was vacant. The upper-story vacancies had a 90 percent vacancy rate, she said. That has changed, with new investors moving in to buy buildings and convert them into apartments, music stores and art galleries, she said.

Now the vacancy rate is down to about 15 percent for ground-floor space and 25 percent for upper-story space, Bennett said.

Residential rents range from $300 for an efficiency to $1,500 for luxury lofts.

‘‘First you have to get the people working downtown. Then you have to get them living downtown. Then you can bring in more businesses,” she said.

In addition to running public buses, the city also is building in a bikeway that will serve as a beltway around the city for cyclists, she said.

Cumberland also is seeing the benefit of more freight being shipped by rail instead of trucks. CSX now employs 925 people in Cumberland and looks to hire more.

In Hagerstown, much of the resurgence has been downtown. In the 1980s, the center of downtown included vacant buildings with boarded-up windows and a seedy adult bookstore. Today it has a branch campus of Frostburg University and thriving restaurants and specialty retail shops.

Much of the old industrial buildings have been redeveloped into residential units, said Timothy R. Troxell, executive director of the Hagerstown-Washington County Economic Development Commission.

More people are looking to move downtown instead of buying homes in the subdivisions throughout the rural parts of the county.

‘‘We’re just starting to see some of that happening,” he said. Many of the people who have moved downtown already are commuters who work in Frederick or Montgomery counties.

‘‘As gas prices get higher and higher that makes that commute cost more and there are a lot of job opportunities in our community, so there are people who could live downtown and be near where they work,” he said.