Fresh PowderPre-development brand strategy
Fractional CMO
All work Work / Port Covington
Aerial rendering of Port Covington: the first blocks at the point, two restored warehouses with red roofs on the waterfront green, apartment and office buildings behind, the Baltimore skyline beyond
Selected work

Port Covington

Baltimore, MD Residential, office, retail, waterfront green 235-acre waterfront peninsula

The Idea

A walled-off peninsula, reframed as a neighborhood with a name.

A 235-acre industrial point on the Patapsco, fenced off from the city for the better part of a century, repositioned as a mixed-income waterfront district. The work started from a simple premise: a place this big needs an identity before it needs a leasing brochure.

Location
Baltimore, MD
Size
235 ac · 14M SF
Developer
MAG Partners + MacFarlane
Architect
Morris Adjmi
Broke ground
2019
Investment
$5.5B
What we did

Named and positioned a vast, unfamiliar peninsula so it read as a real neighborhood with a future, well ahead of vertical build-out. The master narrative, the identity, the messaging and the launch that introduced the place to Baltimore and to the capital it needed to rise.

StrategyNamingBrand identityMessaging toolkitLaunchLeasing tools
Success

A coherent identity gave a 235-acre, 14M SF plan a single story, and an investment-grade one, before most of it was built.

  • A 235-acre peninsula given one identity and an investment narrative spanning roughly 14M SF of planned office, residential, retail and civic space.
  • CFG Bank committed its headquarters, about 97,000 SF, anchoring the early office phase on the point.
  • Positioned as a waterfront innovation district, drawing first-phase office, apartments and ground-floor retail to a site the city had written off.
  • The identity carried the district through its formative years; it has since matured and rebranded as Baltimore Peninsula.
The place
Aerial rendering of Port Covington: two restored warehouses with red roofs on the waterfront green, new apartment and office blocks behind, the Baltimore skyline beyond
The point from above. The first blocks around the restored warehouses, the skyline beyond.
Photograph of the built Rye Street Market block: a glass and steel office building with a brick parking structure behind, young trees and planters on a paved plaza
Built. Rye Street Market, photographed from the corner.
Rendering of the plaza in front of Rye Street Market, a glass-fronted market hall with a brick-paved square, cafe tables and shoppers
Rye Street Market. The market hall and its square, the front door of the district.
Rendering of the green beside the Rye Street Market with the diamond-pattern water tower, cafe seating under a tree and families on the lawn
The green and the water tower, the landmark the neighborhood kept.
Brand Imagery

The identity.

Port Covington wordmark: tall condensed white capitals on orange, the O a solid white disc

The wordmark. The O is a port: a window, a disc, a place to look through.

Construction hoarding on orange reading WHOA, the O repeated six times as windows holding a flag, a smile, a basketball, a scribble, an interior and a pizza, with Welcome to the Port

The hoarding · Whoa. Welcome to the Port.

Collateral
Three phone screens: the Port Covington site reading OPPORTUNITY with a window in the O, and two Instagram posts, More Music and a sunset gathering
Mobile and social · the O as a window, every time.
Two orange street banners on a lamp post by the harbor: Open Your Experience and Discover the Port, each with a circular window
Street banners · Open your experience. Discover the Port.
Highway billboard reading PORTAL with a photograph set into the O and a mural beside it: Engage. Innovate. Thrive.
Billboard · Portal. Engage. Innovate. Thrive.
Tablet showing a Port Covington report cover reading PORTRAIT in green with a leopard in the O, beside a photograph of an artist at work
Report · Portrait, 2018 to 2040.
The thesis
The fence came down in a day. The welcome took a name.
Fresh Powder, on Port Covington
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