Baltimore Picks Master Developer for Inner City : Cities: Former CEO at The Rouse Co. agrees to try to breathe life into decaying neighborhoods. He has $100 million in ‘empowerment zone’ seed money for the project.

Mathias DeVito’s airy corner office overlooks Lake Kittamaqundi and the choicest real estate in Columbia, the suburban “new city” his development company carved out of pasture in 1968.

The experiment in meticulously planned development worked--some say too well. As the number of residents in Columbia has risen to 90,000, Baltimore’s population plunged, from 906,000 in 1970 to 703,000 this year.

The growth of Columbia and suburbs like it present DeVito with an ironic task: trying to lure residents and businesses back to the inner city they abandoned.

Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke has asked DeVito to turn boarded-up buildings into businesses and jobless workers into taxpayers using a $100-million federal “empowerment zone” grant the Clinton Administration has offered as seed money.

Can a builder of suburbs and shopping malls breathe life into decaying inner city neighborhoods?

DeVito, the recently retired CEO of The Rouse Co. makes his prediction in the cautious tones of company founder James Rouse, who masterminded Columbia’s development.

“He always said you have no obligation to succeed; your only obligation is to try,” DeVito said. “If it does succeed, we would be very gratified. But if you try to tackle the right thing and it doesn’t work, it isn’t failure.”

Some urban planners say that to revive modern cities you would have to turn back the clock. Downtowns such as Baltimore’s are 19th-Century relics whose advantages have been chipped away with each innovation--the car, the highway, the computer--according to Joel Garreau, author of “Edge City: Life on the New Frontier,” a chronicle of the rise of suburban sprawl.

Cities are convenient places to drop regional anchors such as museums, art galleries and football teams, Garreau said, but they are no longer the most attractive place for families to live and work.

“The downtowns are flourishing as niche markets, but they are kind of the antiques of our urban world,” Garreau said. “We love them and we cherish them, but they’re not the everyday furniture of our lives.”

DeVito agrees, but bristles at the suggestion that by developing thriving suburbs his company created the urban problems he is now trying to help solve. He blames federal housing policies that encourage building where land is cheapest and a government-driven plan to link cities and rural hamlets via superhighways.

“Now the government is giving us money to try to solve the problems in the inner city that, really, were the product of the whole urban policy of the United States for a long time,” he said.

And $100 million, he says, “is not an enormous amount of money” for the job ahead.

“Where to use that money and how to produce jobs is going to be a very tough piece of work,” he said.

Schmoke said he picked DeVito for his ability to manage big projects.

“He was the first person I called,” Schmoke said. “I knew that the empowerment zone was far more of a business development program than a traditional urban renewal program. He’ll provide a good vision for the project that will keep it focused and make it succeed.”

DeVito, 64, was freed for the job by a retirement policy at Rouse that requires executives to step aside at age 65. He retired as chief executive officer Feb. 23, but will remain the company’s chairman.

Rouse officials say Schmoke picked the right man, a quietly confident coalition-builder who is equally at ease speaking to governors as he is talking to employees at all levels.

“I think his biggest strength over the years is being able to design a collaborative effort from disparate personalities,” said Anthony Deering, who replaced DeVito as CEO.

DeVito never planned on becoming a real estate man. He joined Rouse Co. after his law partnership helped with the Columbia development. As the company rose, so did he, becoming senior vice president in 1970, president in 1973, CEO in 1979, and chairman in 1984. Since 1978, the company’s earnings have grown from $10.6 million to $82.5 million in 1994.

Among the 77 mostly upscale shopping centers bearing DeVito’s signature over the past two decades are Quincy Market in Boston, The Gallery at Market East in Philadelphia, New Orleans’ Riverwalk center, The Shops at National Place in Washington, Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, and Union Station in St. Louis.

In Baltimore, The Rouse Co.’s Gallery at Harbor Place anchors a revitalized Inner Harbor that went from rusting former industrial site to tourist attraction. The Inner Harbor shops and restaurants spin off business to nearby Little Italy and other tourist spots whose owners had vehemently opposed the harbor development.

“Business just exploded,” DeVito said. “They were wrong. I’m very proud of all those projects because they did a lot for the cities--every one of them.”

Success hasn’t always come easy. Before building Boston’s thriving Quincy Market, The Rouse Co. tried to do the same thing in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It was an unequivocal flop.

So when Rouse officials went to Boston, they made sure the city had a stake in the project’s success. Boston sank $12 million into restoring derelict buildings before Rouse came in. The corporate-city partnership became a model for later developments.

“If a community doesn’t feel part of a project--doesn’t understand it, doesn’t own it--it won’t work,” he said.

The $100 million federal grant for Baltimore will be matched by an estimated $800 million in city, state and private funds.

Some of the money will be used for job training, literacy and other social programs. Much of it may be spent on fixing up dilapidated communities and combatting the No. 1 challenge to city businesses: crime.

“I don’t think businesses are going to want to come in there, where there isn’t public safety,” he said.

DeVito’s prescription for Baltimore’s empowerment zone is simple: Get employers into the three tax-break areas and get them to offer job opportunities to residents.

“What those opportunities are and how they would be configured is the work to be done,” DeVito said.

It’s going to be a formidable task, DeVito said. But then again, he added, look at Columbia.

“If you were to drive out there in 1960, you’d see rolling hills, cows--it was a very different place.”