Suburban developments in recent years have the form of islands, with spaces for shops, restaurants and offices along with homes in the middle of corn fields.

Barry J. Baldwin's island is different. It's in the city, but no less an island, he said.

Baldwin sees his Urban Place as a stand-alone project.

He envisions it as a place to live, dine, work, shop and learn.

With the opening of the first luxury apartments by the end of this month, the project is nearly half-way there.

Commercial offices have been located in renovated buildings of the former Kerr Glass factory, 461 New Holland Ave., for two years. And with the opening of the Science Factory museum in January, the development, located around the corner from McCaskey High School, will take another step forward.

Major plans — for an event facility, 50-to-60-room hotel, one or more restaurants, retail and commercial space and more apartments — remain to be completed.

"It's coming out pretty good. It's coming out real good. You just have to be patient," said Baldwin.

Patience doesn't seem to come easily to the commercial electrician from Narvon.

During a tour of the facility this week, the president and founder of electrician and mechanical contractor B.J. Baldwin Inc., moved quickly and almost relentlessly. The cell phone on his hip rang often, sometimes in the middle of the night, his wife, Linda, said.

A meeting with government officials about securing tax credits for his project "lasted about 30 seconds," Baldwin said. They tried to tell him what to do with his project, he contended.

Urban Place is the largest privately funded development being done in the state, Baldwin said he has been told. By not seeking public economic development grants or other incentives, Baldwin avoids the strings attached to that funding.

He wouldn't put a price on the project. The ultimate cost will depend on the desires of prospective tenants, as Baldwin builds to suit. The starting cost was the $1.2 million he paid for the complex in January 2005.

It's all being funded "by the family," said Baldwin, listing his wife, Linda, son Ned and his wife Jennifer, daughter April Wilkinson and her husband Ryan and his daughter Jill Fanning as being part of a partnership involved in the project. Son-in-law Tom Fanning is the family's corporate attorney, he said.

"Everybody is in the business."

About 40 workers are busy at the site most days. Those workers are employees of Baldwin's mechanical, electrical or excavating companies. He has hired a few carpenters and masons for the project, but has saved money by only contracting outside help for the roofing, drywall and paving, he said.

Baldwin said he employs nearly 500 people with his three companies. "This is my second job," he said of the project.

Workers this week were finishing a dozen loft apartments on the upper floors of one of the complex's nine buildings. Those apartments range in size from 1,000 to 1,550 square feet. Most are the size of a small house. Each one features large windows, exposed wooden beams and corner fireplaces. All but one are on two floors.

The apartments will rent for $1,250 to $1,400 per month, which is at the top end of Lancaster City's emerging luxury apartment market and double or triple the rent of most city units.

Jill Baldwin Fanning, the project's facilities director, doesn't expect to have any problem renting them. One has been rented already. A banner advertising the units was hung Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning Fanning said she had eight new messages on her answering machine.

Work on another 37 units will begin soon. Those are due to be completed by summer, Baldwin said.

Work also will begin soon on a 10,000-square-foot event space in another building. The space will be rented for corporate meetings, luncheons, wedding receptions and other functions of as many as 400 people, he said. The event facility, with its own kitchen, should be completed by spring, he said.

"You rent this a year ahead of time, so you've got to finish it to show it," he said.

Below the third-floor event facility is the space where he hopes attendees will stay. The second floor of the 1860s-era building will be divided into hotel rooms. Baldwin said he doesn't know if his family will operate the hotel, or whether a hotel management company will contract for the space. With exposed brick and beams, large rooms and opulent furnishings, the hotel will be comparable to the Lancaster Arts Hotel, which opened a year ago, Baldwin said.

The first floors of three buildings comprise 55,000 square feet of retail space. The center building, a 1860s-era stable, is designated as a restaurant space. A large brick wall in the lofty building was shored up with a large fireplace made from bricks preserved from the complex.

The first year and a half of the project involved selective demolition, said Baldwin. When he bought the property, much of the site was under roof.

Original buildings of the Lancaster Cork Works were joined to later buildings, from the 1880s to 1940s, built by Armstrong Cork Co. Kerr had the office building, which is now home to Securus Group.

Kerr made plastic bottle caps for the pharmaceutical industry on the property until it closed in 2000, idling its last 48 workers. The company once had 700 workers there.

The Science Factory, an interactive museum, is slated to open the first of the year in first floor space below Securus' offices.

Without having to apply for bank or government financing for the project, Baldwin said he did none of the formal studies required by lenders.

He did no marketing study and does not see the success of the project tied to other city revitalization projects, such as Clipper Magazine Stadium across town or the downtown convention center.

Rather, Baldwin believes, it will stand alone. He compared it to the baseball movie "Field of Dreams."

"If you build it, they will come," he said.

CONTACT US: bharris@LNPnews.com or 481-6022