Legislation that would require neighborhood participation in any effort to revive a stalled redevelopment project at State Center in midtown Baltimore is advancing in Maryland’s state legislature.

Legislation advancing in the House of Delegates would require neighborhood participation in any effort to revive the stalled redevelopment project at State Center in midtown Baltimore.

Delegates gave preliminary approval Saturday to a bill sponsored by Del. Cheryl Glenn spelling out the General Assembly’s goals for the 28-acre parcel, now occupied by a state government office complex whose more than 50-year-old buildings are in a poor state of repair.

As women across the world and around the country demonstrated to mark International Women’s Day, in Baltimore, a handful of women — and at least one man — gathered near the city’s State Center to protest.

With the state fighting to cancel its agreement with the developer of State Center, it’s not clear what will eventually replace the current 1950’s-era buildings at the 28-acre state office complex just north of downtown Baltimore. Two competing lawsuits between the state and the developer could take years to wrap up, and until they do, the project is at a standstill.

But when the fight is resolved, members of the surrounding communities want to make sure that they get a vote on what gets built.

Baltimore’s City Council is pressuring state legislators and Gov. Larry Hogan to “protect the participation and planning process” for the nixed redevelopment proposal for the State Center government complex.

The Baltimore City Council on Thursday unanimously adopted a resolution urging state lawmakers to spur the redevelopment of State Center under criteria backed by surrounding residents for more than a decade.

The master plan for Midtown’s aged State Center complex that the Hogan administration voided in 2016 is still a strong deal for Maryland, the city, state employees and surrounding neighborhoods, a new report commissioned by the developer argues.

A new report compiled largely from research performed on the behalf of the state of Maryland shows the proposal to overhaul State Center, according to the developer, isn’t the bad deal opponents of the project have portrayed.

The study considers the commercial potential for a 28 acre site at the intersection of Howard Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard as if the buildings were vacant. It doesn’t consider at all the costs and drawbacks of moving the public employees elsewhere, whether it’s to a new building the state constructs or to existing office space somewhere else. And it most certainly does not consider whether, by pledging to keep them there, the state could drastically improve the market conditions and attract investment on a scale that would otherwise be untenable.

On Tuesday, during a joint hearing of the House of Delegate’s Appropriations and Economic Matters committees, Caroline Moore, the project’s lead developer, and Michael Edney, a partner at Norton Rose Fulbright, which represents State Center LLC, addressed the study released earlier in the day.

Both were critical of it as an attempt to stall development with a proposal that is years away when State Center LLC’s proposal is essentially shovel-ready. They also contended that their experience in dealing with the state shows Hogan’s catch phrase that the state is “open for business” is nothing but an empty slogan.