The Maplewood Apartments are home to over 200 Marylanders and their families in the Pen Lucy neighborhood of Baltimore City. Their steepest costs? Utility bills.
In the winter of 2019, many Maplewood Apartments tenants were faced with hefty heating bills. The apartment complex relied on electric resistance heating, and upgrades seemed far from reach. In prior seasons, ventilation and air conditioning also came with costly burdens for both residents and project owners – not including the cost of lighting and electricity needs. The entire community was desperate for a way to bring down costs and expand access to efficient energy, yet the capital costs of replacing lighting, HVAC and water heating equipment presented an overwhelming obstacle.
The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s Multifamily Energy Efficiency and Housing Affordability (MEEHA) EmPOWER program, designed to provide energy efficiency and housing affordability in multifamily rental housing developments, presented an opportunity to overcome this obstacle. With the goal of making the Maplewood Apartments more comfortable and affordable for the families that live there, Atlantic Realty Group applied for DHCD’s EmPOWER program and received $2,121,781 in funding to install energy efficient measures in the Maplewood Apartments.
Over the course of a year, this project replaced outdated electric resistance heating with high-efficiency mini split heat pumps that are over 300% more efficient. Taking care to ensure all community needs were met, this project also upgraded lighting to LEDs, improved air sealing and insulation for all 33 Maplewood Apartments buildings, and replaced outdated water heaters with efficient heat pump water heaters.
“Atlantic Realty Group experienced a smooth process when it came to inspections and payments to ensure our energy efficient upgrades stayed on time with our project timeline,” said Rick Briemann, Vice President of Atlantic Realty.
In 2025, the results speak for themselves. On average, unit energy use was reduced by 40%. Since implementing all upgrades, the Maplewood Apartments has saved over 1,100 megawatt-hours of electricity each year and curbed over 3,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. As the Maplewood Apartments’ EmPOWER project makes certain, a greener future can and must be achieved while lowering costs and improving comfort for all Marylanders.
“The MEEHA program had very positive resident experience for the renters that we serve in Baltimore City and we hope to do more projects with MEEHA,” said Briemann.
For more information about EmPOWER Maryland and other energy efficiency programs administered by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, visit https://dhcd.maryland.gov/Pages/EnergyEfficiency.
