A couple of weeks before the mini press tour of the Maritime Applied Physics plant and guided water-taxi voyage (the taxis are branded with a names paying homage to Baltimore history: “Key’s Anthem,” “Cal’s Streak,” “Thurgood’s Justice”), I visited Sagamore’s headquarters in Locust Point for a daylong expedition to all the Plank initiatives already up and running in Port Covington.

The morning began with a slideshow highlighting Under Armour’s success. Baltimoreans know the story by now: From selling perspiration-wicking apparel out of the trunk of his car in 1996, Plank built a juggernaut with nearly $5 billion in annual sales and 15,000 employees around the world, including at its global headquarters here. (Not included in the presentation: Under Armour suffered back-to-back quarterly losses in 2017, and watched its stock price fall 50 percent as Adidas reclaimed the No. 2 spot in athletic shoe and apparel sales behind Nike.)

Taking a coach bus over Hanover Street with Sagamore Development vice president Steve Siegel and Max Oglesbee of the New York-based digital/urban design company Intersection, I got a peek inside three other Port Covington “prologue” pieces—City Garage, The Foundery, and Under Armour’s R&D center, Lighthouse.

“There will be ubiquitous connectivity at every interface in Port Covington.

Data is everything.”

The Foundery makerspace, which offers metalworking, blacksmithing, woodworking, laser engraving, and textile classes, is impressive, but was quiet on this morning. The incubator complex at City Garage bustled, however. A company called Ready Robotics, spun out of The Johns Hopkins University’s commercial tech-development center, demonstrated a flexible-task robot, which has been trumpeted as the “Swiss army knife of robots.” At the end of the corridor, a Balti Virtual creative team was busy perfecting a Stephen Curry hologram that pops up and starts draining three-pointers when you hold his shoe in your hand. Nearby, another Baltimore company, Bustin Boards, was churning out custom skateboards.

The Foundery Makerspace building in West Port Covington.

Over at Lighthouse, Under Armour’s Batcave of research—no cameras, a waiver agreement, the entire staff in white lab coats—UA employees were digging deep into the science of molded plastics, color reproduction, synthetic fabrics, body scanning, and 3-D printing. These folks picture, for example, a day when the midsole of your running shoe is custom tailored from a scan of your foot, 3-D printed, assembled into a complete sneaker, and then same-day delivered by drone to your rowhouse doorstep.

It is all compelling stuff, except it is not the thing really animating Siegel and Oglesbee. They are each obsessed with hatching a new kind of built environment on the empty slab of Port Covington bordered by McComas Street and I-95 to the north, the Hanover Street Bridge to the west, and the middle branch of the Patapsco everywhere else. Like Stephens, Paff, and others at Sagamore, they have been chasing the latest technological trends around the world, hoping to deliver them to Port Covington.

First, Siegel, a 40-something former D.C. developer who worked in economic development for former Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, talks about the big picture. He references the 42 million cars that pass Port Covington every year on I-95. Those are not just potential targets of Under Armour billboards, but potential Port Covington tourists, visitors, residents, clients—and even employees.

That access to I-95, as well as BWI Airport, Light Rail, Amtrak, MARC, an educated Maryland workforce, and acres of open space, is central to the Port Covington pitch to Amazon, which Sagamore pulled together on behalf of the city. Equally critical, Siegel says, is the allure of other corporate offices, high-end retail, waterfront views, and the ability to attract apartment- and condo-dwelling creative-class millennials—even more so than the (potential) billions in subsidies and tax incentives thrown Amazon’s away. Add to that the hype around 300-mile-per-hour superconducting Maglev trains promoted by Gov. Larry Hogan or, less likely, Elon Musk’s 700-mile-per-hour, vacuum-tube fantasy, also promoted by Hogan, and Port Covington starts to generate genuine buzz.

Inside the Foundery Makerspace.

“Acquiring the land at Port Covington gave Under Armour control of its own destiny beyond the chance to build its own campus,” Siegel says. “Developing a waterfront neighborhood is a bigger opportunity that couldn’t be passed up—and is needed to attract and retain talent in the 21st century.”

If Siegel is obsessed with the macro, Oglesbee keeps his attention focused on more sidewalk-size modernizations. He heralds the digital kiosks in New York City (check LinkNYC) that have replaced telephone booths, offering free gigabyte WiFi, high-speed phone charging, interactive maps, and embedded Andriod tablets, and is anxious to import something similar to Port Covington. He mentions the possibility of a Port Covington-specific “concierge bot”—“like Siri”—that can answer questions about local events, restaurants, shopping, recreation, and transportation options. Like Stephens, he talks about integrated digital-recognition tools that can track a person’s devices, security codes, and preferences as they rent movies in their living room, download music, grab a Zipcar, unlock their front door, or search for take-out pizza or NBA Combine tickets (Under Armour expects to host the combine at Port Covington soon).

“Think about rolling Verizon, Comcast, Apple, and Google into one,” Oglesbee says.

A lot of this stuff is still pie (or rather cloud computing) in the sky. Here is one thing that seems realistic: Utilizing dual-mode, Light Rail car/circulator buses to enhance Port Covington access. A hybrid that can run on rail and road, the vehicle has been used in Japan and could complement the proposed light rail spur. Glow-in-the-dark bike lane technology, first put to use in Amsterdam, is also under consideration, and recently, Sagamore went in front of the city design panel to present their intention to introduce embedded, changeable, high-definition Times Square-type signage to Port Covington.

Siegel, in particular, is a dreamer. He anticipates a transportation future straight out of The Jetsons with Baltimoreans flying in pilotless mini-helicopters to Port Covington. “It is being developed in China,” he says with a smile, looking up from his smartphone. “Look online. Whether it happens or not, we have got to be thinking ahead and make sure we leave room for the innovation from the next generation.”