Wendi Mosteiko is used to getting pushback and spurring debate as a vocal opponent of MCB Real Estate’s high-rise apartment building proposal for Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

But the response she got last week from a top MCB official felt like something darker.

It came after Mosteiko, a frequent commenter on the 1,200+ member Harborplace Forum Facebook page, questioned whether the Baltimore-based company is more of a real estate investment firm than a developer.

“It would be interesting to do a deep dive of the projects that MCB shows on their website and see how many they developed and how many they bought as investments,” Mosteiko wrote, implying that MCB might not be the best choice to undertake the proposed $900 million reimagining of the city’s cherished waterfront.

“I think you know some of them since your company is working on them” was the first comment she got back.

It came from Amy Bonitz, managing director of community development for MCB, posting from her personal Facebook account as Amy Bonitz Palmer.

Mosteiko was stunned to be, as she puts it, “kind of outed or doxxed” by an MCB official who was making clear that Mosteiko was critiquing a company doing business with her employer.

“I personally felt intimidated,” said Mosteiko.

A lifelong city resident and administrator for an area architectural firm who never referenced her work or employer on that Facebook page, Mosteiko told The Brew, “I felt that crossed a line.”

In the online reply she composed to Bonitz, Mosteiko said she has been “very careful that what I say in this forum reflects my position as a taxpayer of the city and not as an employee of a company that has contracts with MCB.”

“But with that detail now disclosed by you,” she continued, “I feel that I can speak more broadly about that as long as I do not run afoul of the confidential information clauses in the contracts.”

Bonitz’ comment disappeared, apparently quickly deleted. She has not responded to a request from The Brew to clarify her statement.

Later on Facebook, Mosteiko noted that this apparent warning shot from Bonitz came after she had toned down and “reframed” her rhetoric about the issue “after comments about my earlier posts resulted in conversation with my employer.”

“I still feel like MCB decided to try and intimidate me,” she wrote. “What does that say about them?”

O’Malley: “Terrible Developer Grab”

The incident comes ahead of Election Day on Tuesday when voters will be able to weigh in on a ballot measure, Question F.

Question F changes a City Charter provision that sets aside city-owned waterfront land as a park “in perpetuity,” allowing only restaurants and retail on the Harborplace pavilion sites.

A “yes” vote on Question F will permit private residences and parking facilities there, and expand by 40%, from 3.2 acres to 4.5 acres, the parkland leased by whoever owns Harborplace.

As the current owner, MCB wants to knock down the Harborplace pavilions along Light and Pratt streets and replace them with twin 25- and 32-story apartment towers, plus a sail-shaped restaurant/retail structure and midrise office building.

The company says $400 million in public funds will be needed to reconfigure nearby roadways and to raise and rebuild the waterfront promenade.

With strong support coming from Mayor Brandon Scott and Governor Wes Moore as well as MCB’s own $240,000 pre-election media campaign, Question F has big momentum.

O’Malley’s opposition to the MCB plan followed three former mayors announcing their support of Question F.

But grassroots opposition has been pushing hard with its “Vote F No!” campaign, and on Saturday their efforts were boosted by former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.

“Speaking in my personal capacity as Citizen and former Mayor of Baltimore, I am voting AGAINST the Inner Harbor referendum Question F – it’s a terrible developer grab of public waterfront parkland,” O’Malley tweeted.

“The Inner Harbor should be for all. #greatestcity in America. Let’s act like it.”

The thumbs down from O’Malley follows a thumbs-up from three other former Baltimore mayors on Friday – Kurt L. Schmoke, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Bernard C. “Jack” Young.

“We can’t allow nostalgia for what once was to stand in the way of us building the Baltimore that our children deserve,” Rawlings-Blake is quoted saying in a press release issued by “Baltimore for a New Harborplace,” the MCB-backed political committee.

“Doing nothing is just criminal,” Young told The Brew in a phone interview yesterday. “Look how dormant it has been for years.”

“Doing nothing is just criminal”  – Former Mayor Jack Young.

Young said while in office he had tried to take action against the mismanagement of Harborplace by its previous owner, Ashkenazy Acquisitions, but the [city] Law Department advised against that.”

“Covid hit. Ransomware hit. All kinds of stuff hit, so I didn’t get a chance to focus on that,” Young said.

Since beginning his term in office in late 2020, Mayor Scott said he actively worked with MCB to get Harborplace out of court receivership and to designate the Baltimore-based company as the exclusive developer of the site.

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