Phillips Announces Plans for Move to Power Plant
Phillips Seafood will open a restaurant this fall at the Inner Harbor's Power Plant, in space left vacant last summer by ESPN Zone, Phillips and landlord The Cordish Cos. announced Thursday.
The establishment also will feature dining on a barge in front of the restaurant, they said.
Phillips, an original Harborplace tenant, announced last month that it would close its restaurant in the Light Street Pavilion by Sept. 30 after 31 years in that location.
The new restaurant will occupy the first floor of the former ESPN Zone space. It will include indoor and outdoor seating for more than 300 people, a raw bar, two full bars and a 200-seat deck on the barge, which will feature steamed, hard-shell crabs.
The restaurant's new location represents a marriage of two fourth-generation, family-run local businesses, representatives of Cordish and Phillips said during a press conference Thursday morning on the barge.
"This is not an ordinary, simple lease — we do hundreds of those," said David Cordish, chairman of The Cordish Cos., which redeveloped the Power Plant in the mid-1990s.
Cordish said that his company had been approached by dozens of would-be tenants for the old ESPN Zone space, but that Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had advised him to take his time finding the right tenant and to "do something special when you replace the Zone."
Signing a lease with Phillips was an "easy decision," Cordish said.
Steve Phillips, president and chief executive of Phillips Seafood restaurants, said Phillips is a natural fit for the Power Plant space.
"I travel around the world to a lot of cities with my business and I've never been to a city more beautiful than Baltimore City," Phillips said.
"My family has been very, very blessed" to have been a part of the growth of downtown Baltimore, he continued.
The new Phillips will feature a more polished design than the Harborplace restaurant, with Turkish-style ottomans in an entrance lounge and a décor of antique mirrors and stained glass, said Joanna Phillips, marketing manager for the Baltimore-based seafood company and restaurant chain.
The barge will offer a more casual dining experience, "a crab deck in the old-fashioned Baltimore way," Cordish said during the press conference.
Phillips and architecture firm Design Collective are scheduled to show exterior designs for the Power Plant restaurant to the city's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel Thursday afternoon.
Robert M. Quilter, a design planner in the city's Department of Planning, said the plans call for new windows on the East Pratt Street side of the Power Plant. The developer also has been asked to show proposed exterior improvements such as awnings and signage, he said.