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Elected officials and community leaders in Towson said they were stunned on July 12 by the announcement that Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart plans to sell its 4.5-acre property on West Joppa Road in Towson. Fifth District Councilman David Marks said he had been taken by surprise by the announcement, and in fact hadn't been contacted by anyone from Mission Helpers as of Monday, July 16, to discuss the matter. "They have a right to develop the property," said Marks, whose district includes Towson, "but my experience generally has been that development proceeds much more smoothly when you involve the community or County Council member who is impacted.

A federal judge on Friday stopped Baltimore's housing agency from terminating an agreement with a private developer that wants to revitalize 14 acres of West Baltimore. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett issued a preliminary injunction that prevents Baltimore Housing from ending its relationship with La Cite Development LLC, a New York-based developer that contracted with the city in 2006 to build residences and commercial space in run-down blocks of the Poppleton neighborhood.

Drug addicts sit on the front steps of Anthony Williams' West Baltimore home and use. The only homeowner left on his block of North Schroeder Street in the Poppleton neighborhood, Williams fears transients living in the vacant rowhouse next door will drop their cigarettes and send his place up in a blaze. He is an island amid debris, he said, the victim of the city government buying up the surrounding properties — demolishing some and leaving others boarded up — as part of a 14-acre redevelopment plan that has cost the city millions and pushed people out of homes.

Boy Scouts from around the Baltimore area gathered in Annapolis last week to witness a historic event involving the state's transfer of ownership to part of the Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation in northern Harford County. At a Board of Public Works meeting in the Governor's Reception Room in the State House, under a portrait of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, Gov. Martin O'Malley signed an actual sheepskin land patent, granting 19.014 acres of previously state-owned land at Broad Creek to the Baltimore Area Council, Boy Scouts of America.

A seven-alarm fire swept through about 40 acres of timber farmland on the southern end of Kent Island on Sunday, burning for nearly 12 hours before firefighters from across Maryland and Delaware contained the flames, according to aQueen Anne's Countyfire spokesman. At its height, the fire forced about 25 homes to be evacuated and brought fire personnel from at least 10 agencies to the small island on the eastern end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, said Chief Kevin Aftung, the spokesman for the county's all-volunteer fire department.

The Baltimore Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America has won approval from state officials to buy 19 acres in Harford County to expand the Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation through an unusual method known as a land patent. After conducting a public hearing this spring, the state's Commissioner of Land Patents Edward Papenfuse ruled that the land had never been deeded to a private owner and that the scouts had the right to purchase it. His decision marks the first time since 2002 that a private entity has received approval to secure a land patent from the state, after proving that no one else owns the land it wants.

A large waterfront parcel in Port Covington sold for $2 million at foreclosure auction Thursday to an investor who declined to identify himself. The site contains 5.2 acres of land and about five additional acres on two piers that jut into Winan's Cove. It is assessed for tax pursposes at $521,000. The site's previous owner, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, defaulted on a multimillion-dollar mortgage, resulting in the trustee-ordered sale. The now-defunct developer owed more than $10.7 million for the land in South Baltimore off East Cromwell Street.

Eastpoint Mall, in southeast Baltimore County, was sold at auction Tuesday for $30.3 million, according to the auctioneer. A real estate investment firm based in southern Florida, LNR Property LLC, purchased the mall on the behalf of the lender who foreclosed on the property, said Alexander Forbes, of Tidewater Auctions LLC in Towson. One other bidder actively competed with LNR during the auction process, Forbes said. The auction stemmed from a lender's lawsuit against Thor Equities LLC, the New York-based investment firm that bought the mall in 2006.

There's the 15-foot orange tree with its menacing 11/2-inch-long thorns, a bushy affair that sprouted from small seeds like those most of us just spit out. Nearby is a kiwi plant, its aggressive tendrils snaking vertically up a nearby tree. And then there's the ramrod-straight, 100-foot-tall sequoia that appears happily unaware that its natural home is in California. Welcome to the Ellicott City property of Donald Dunn, where the uncommon is commonplace and unusual species thrive in blissful ignorance of the fact that they're spectacular misfits beating long odds.

Just about the only excitement in the semi-rural residential neighborhood near the intersection of Oklahoma and Bennett roads, in Eldersburg, is provided by occasional errant motorists who misjudge the sharp downhill curve on Oklahoma where it approaches Bennett from the northeast and either end up in a ditch or in somebody's yard. But the billboard-sized banner that one homeowner recently put in his front yard - along with dozens of smaller signs that pepper Oklahoma Road - reveal that this neighborhood, where old and new residential subdivisions abut a few remaining farms and a stretch of the Liberty Reservoir watershed, is in the midst of a controversy.