Johns Hopkins activity at its new Mt. Washington
campus continues to gear up — and more is to come.
On April 18, the university purchased the 68-acre Mt.
Washington Corporate Campus from the St. Paul Cos. in order
to relocate administrative offices to the north Baltimore
site and provide needed expansion room for the university
and health system.
The campus is also the home of the Mt. Washington
Conference Center, a facility that is now being actively
marketed to all Johns Hopkins affiliates for use for
conferences, retreats, strategy and training sessions and
other such meetings.
In the coming months, the center's management will
continue an ongoing series of open houses for various
Hopkins divisions, centers and affiliates to show off the
sprawling, stylish facility and let them know it's open for
their use.
The conference center, which is managed by Aramark,
encompasses three buildings with 12 dedicated conference
rooms, 56 guest bedrooms, dining facilities, banquet rooms,
a gymnasium and a comprehensive fitness center, which Johns
Hopkins employees can join. It also has a 75-seat
amphitheater, soundproof breakout areas attached to some of
the conference rooms, Internet connections and the latest
audio-visual equipment. The campus's grounds feature vast
manicured lawns, a pond, gardens, fountains and tracts of
wooded areas.
The buildings that comprise the conference center are
the Training and Development Center, the Octagon and
portions of McAuley Hall. The facility, which also can be
rented by the public, caters to groups from five to 150
people.
The campus's parking lots accommodate 2,400 cars.
Tim Donovan, the conference center's general manager,
said that since the university purchased the campus there
has been a steady increase in Johns Hopkins' use of the
space. The center already has been used for conferences,
retreats and strategy meetings by the School of Nursing's
administration, the Center for Talented Youth, the Dean's
Office of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and
various departments of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
of Public Health and the School of Professional Studies in
Business and Education.
The dining room in the 1855 Octagon,
which was renovated by USF&G, a previous owner of the
property.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ARAMARK
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"We constantly get feedback that this conference
center sends the message that 'this is a place where we are
going to accomplish our objectives,' as compared to a
hotel/resort conference center that says 'this is a perk,'"
Donovan said. "There are numerous examples of networking
opportunities in the design of this center, and the
breakout rooms are a good example of that. If individuals
or groups want to swap ideas, they can just open the door
and enter the common area."
Jim Callahan, a senior director at
Johns Hopkins
Real Estate, which manages the campus, said that Mt.
Washington is viewed as a vital extension of the growing
Johns Hopkins campus portfolio.
"Johns Hopkins purchased the campus to meet the
growing demands for additional space among its various
groups and to support Hopkins' core mission," Callahan
said. "The property is strategically located to the
[nearby] Homewood campus, and, coupled with its ideal
setting and long list of amenities, [that] makes it a very
desirable spot for expansion.
"We encourage all Hopkins divisions that are planning
a conference or a retreat to consider this location, which
they should consider their own."
Callahan said that the identity of Mt. Washington as
an actual Johns Hopkins campus should further solidify when
occupancy by university and health system tenants
begins.
Next month, personnel associated with the HopkinsOne
project — an integrated Web-based system for selected
Johns Hopkins business functions — will move into
approximately 20,000 square feet of the campus's Davis
Building.
The Center for Talented Youth, currently housed at
2701 N Charles St., is scheduled to move into two floors of
McAuley Hall by spring 2005.
In addition, Johns Hopkins Real Estate is working with
several other offices and departments that could move to
the campus at some point after the St. Paul Cos. vacates
its space in September 2004. In total, the university and
health system plan to occupy about 275,000 square feet of
the site's 650,000 square feet of space.
The Mt. Washington Corporate Campus straddles the
Baltimore City-Baltimore County line just west of the Jones
Falls Expressway, off Smith Avenue. The former site of
Mount St. Agnes College, the property in recent years was
owned and used by United States Fidelity & Guarantee Co.
and then by the St. Paul Cos., which merged with USF&G in
1998.
The site includes five major buildings. On the
northern end of the campus, in Baltimore County, is the
Founders Building, a 250,000-square-foot building leased to
Piper Rudnick LLP and other tenants at least until 2010. On
the southern side of the property, within the city, are the
historic 1855 Octagon and the renovated 1925 McAuley Hall.
Also on the southern end are the conference center,
adjacent to the Octagon, and Davis Building. Before serving
as a college, the Octagon was a finishing school for young
women.
For more information about the conference center or to
arrange a site visit or schedule an event, call
410-578-7686 or go to
www.mtwashconfctr.com.
To contact Johns Hopkins Real Estate about available
office space, call Jim Callahan at 443-997-3752.