With a new team and coming rebrand, Baltimore’s Port Covington developers hope to turn a page. Will it work?

The once-barren stretch of industrial wasteland has been replaced with towering structures of glass, brick and steel. Mature trees, rather than saplings, have been planted there, too. The message from the new team tasked with selling Port Covington to potential tenants and visitors: Finally, the long-promised new era has arrived, and it’s here to stay. Attached to one of the largest public subsidies in the country, the $5.5 billion, multi-phase waterfront development in South Baltimore spans more than 200 acres and will feature three direct access points to Interstate-95. Under Armour founder and executive chairman Kevin Plank and those affiliated with his Sagamore Ventures development firm began buying up the Port Covington land for more than $100 million starting about a decade ago, with the intention of building the once-dominant apparel company a new corporate headquarters surrounded by a “mini-city” akin to the existing Harbor East and Harbor Point sites.