EPA Region 3 Thriving Communities

Planning for Baltimore Modular · Awarded 2025 · Complete

Impact · Design · Make · Develop · Work

This project gave us the opportunity to conceptually test a systems-based approach. An EPA Region 3 Thriving Communities planning grant funded ecosystem convening, existing-conditions process taxonomy, a conceptual product platform and rowhouse pilot, microfactory feasibility, and workforce research.*

The work is complete. Its final reports have been submitted to the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, the grant’s administrator. This page reports what the work did and what it found.

Photogrammetry model of a long row of vacant three-story rowhouses in brick, formstone and red paint, many with boarded windows and failing roofs, divided house by house by pale section planes.

Credit: Brent Sturlaugson

What the planning covered

The work plan had three parts:

  • The BMOD Hub. Feasibility and funding pathways for a green factory and community space: the building program, space needs, green standards, possible locations and operations.

  • Workforce. Credentialing, pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship pathways, and the support services that help people finish them.

  • Products and delivery. Modular products and services, designed around a rowhouse pilot, as models for accessible, affordable and sustainable homes.

Throughout, the team brought together industry, community and nonprofit groups, education and government.

Where: South Baltimore

The planning focused first on South Baltimore: Brooklyn, Cherry Hill, Curtis Bay, Lakeland, Mount Winans, Pigtown, Saint Paul and Westport. These neighborhoods are cut off from one another by industrial land, highways and rail lines, and they face deep needs in housing, health and jobs.

  • Across Baltimore, 65% of vacant properties are chronically vacant, up from 30% in 1980. Source: ReBUILD Metro, Whole Blocks, Whole City: Reclaiming Vacant Property Throughout Baltimore, January 2023.

The planning answered three needs:

  • Affordable, safe and healthy housing

  • Local, safe and healthy workplaces with low or zero emissions

  • Career paths people can reach, with training matched to residents’ education levels

Three all-stakeholder workshops

  • Workshop 01: EPA Thriving Communities Stakeholder Kick-Off Meeting. Wednesday, November 12, 2025. We invited stakeholders to help shape the story of a future Baltimore that is a hub for industrialized offsite construction at every level. Watch Workshop 01 on its event page.

  • Workshop 02: Context for Offsite Construction in the Baltimore Region. Thursday, February 19, 2026. We explored the barriers, incentives and opportunities for offsite construction in the region, in a discussion led by MOD X with an industry response from Reframe Systems. Watch Workshop 02 on its event page.

  • Workshop 03: Conceptualizing a Baltimore Microfactory. Thursday, March 19, 2026. Reframe Systems shared insights from its operations in Andover, Massachusetts, and discussed what it would take to establish a comparable microfactory in Baltimore. Watch Workshop 03 on its event page.

MOD X led the stakeholder engagement sessions and report for the EPA planning grant.

What we found

Retrofit is Maryland’s edge. MOD X concluded that “Maryland’s highest-rated offsite value proposition is neighborhood revitalization through retrofit / adaptive reuse.” Baltimore’s rowhouses and its vacancy crisis make retrofit both urgent and achievable.

  • Maryland is pilot-capable today. The region already has an experienced core of developers, architects and community development organizations, and those new to offsite are motivated.

  • Cost and reliability decide adoption. Stakeholders named cost competitiveness and dependable delivery as the main barriers.

  • The pipeline needs work. Demand aggregation has to go hand in hand with simpler, faster processes across Maryland.

  • Employers are the workforce bottleneck. Interest in the construction trades is rising. The limit is how many employers will sponsor apprentices, not the supply of training. Attendance and soft skills are bigger hiring barriers than technical skills.

  • Some roles are hardest to fill. Licensed mechanical, electrical and plumbing trades are the hardest to fill, and digital coordination (VDC and BIM) was the most-cited new role in modular construction.

  • Support services open doors. Reliable transportation and childcare would let more people consider factory work. A hub should connect with the community organizations already at work nearby, not duplicate them.

What comes next

With the planning complete, BMOD is now exploring how to build on this research and publish it in academic journals.

MOD X’s stakeholder engagement report recommends organizing next steps around five goals:

  • Procurement as a demand signal

  • Technical assistance to build competency

  • Regulatory reform and implementation

  • Demand aggregation

  • Retrofit as a parallel strategy

These goals now shape BMOD’s six activities.

Watch the workshops

Recordings of all three workshops are in the BMOD Library.

* For the project titled “Baltimore Modular (BMOD)”, Christina D. Long, Ethan Cohen, Brent Sturlaugson, and Kamalesh Panthi served as subcontractors to the Maryland Center for Construction Education and Innovation (MCCEI) under the EPA Thriving Communities Grant administered through Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI). In this capacity, BMOD team members provided leadership on research, design, technology, and community and stakeholder engagement in support of the BMOD project, which focuses on offsite construction strategies for housing revitalization and workforce development in Baltimore.