Apartments

Residents of eight apartments in Aberdeen were displaced Tuesday afternoon following a fire in their building. The fire, reported around 3 p.m. in a building in the 300 block of South Parke Street, was determined to be accidental, started by contractors who were working in the building, Rich Gardiner, a spokesman for the Harford County Volunteer Fire and EMS Association, said Tuesday evening. The residents displaced are being helped by Red Cross Disaster Assistance, he said. Gardiner said it took about 65 firefighters from Aberdeen Fire Department, Aberdeen Proving Ground Fire Department, Susquehanna Hose Company and Level Volunteer Fire Company about 20 minutes to control the fire, which affected the eight units in the building.

The master developer of Columbia's Town Center aims to begin construction by early next year on a $100 million apartment and retail complex, the area's first new housing in a decade. The Metropolitan Downtown Columbia will be a six-story, 380-unit development that the Howard Hughes Corp. plans to build in a joint venture with Kettler of McLean, Va., and Orchard Development of Ellicott City, on land next to The Mall in Columbia. Rents are expected to range from $1,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment to $2,800 for a three-bedroom unit — making them among the highest in the region.

The owner of a vacant nine-story office building at 11 E. Chase St. in Midtown-Belvedere is seeking city approval to convert the property to 56 apartments. A group called Daejan 11 E. Chase LLC, represented by Samuel Monderer, has applied to Baltimore's Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals to convert the historic Algonquin building to residential use. Monderer also controls the neighboring apartment building at 1010 St. Paul St. and a parking lot between the two buildings. A zoning board hearing has been set for Tuesday.

Howard County firefighters took 15 minutes to extinguish a fire in a garden-style apartment in Columbia on Saturday afternoon, according to authorities. The fire was reported about 12:40 p.m. in a third story apartment in the 6000 block of Majors Lane. Several occupants got out safely before firefighters arrived, a department spokesman said. No one was injured the cause of the fire remains under investigation. peter.hermann@baltsun.com Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

The Algonquin was known as one of Baltimore's finest apartment buildings when it opened around 1914, with fluted columns, parquet floors, oak paneling and fireplaces in many of the residences. The renowned architect William Nolting, of Wyatt and Nolting, designed the building at 11 E. Chase St. and lived in apartment E-8 for nearly 20 years. In the 1940s, the nine-story building was converted to doctors' offices and became known as the Medical Arts Building. Now it's set to go back to its original use and name, under a $5 million plan to turn it back to "high-end" apartments.

Westminster Church Homes Foundation Inc. is host for a Celebration of Progress at 2 p.m. Sunday for 79 new apartments at Ridge Residences, 101 Timber Ridge Drive.The new residences will provide apartments for low-income and frail elderly citizens and include kitchen and dining room.The building is being built by Hostetter Construction Corp. of Hanover, Pa. Money for the $4.6 million project have come primarily from Housing and Urban Development and Community Development Administration. Local funds of $100,000 have been contributed, but $200,000 moreis needed to cover expenses not included in the mortgage.

The owner of a vacant nine-story office building at 11 E. Chase Street in Midtown-Belvedere is seeking city approval to convert the property to 56 apartments. A group called Daejan 11 E. Chase LLC, represented by Samuel Monderer, has applied to Baltimore's Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals to convert the historic Algonquin building to residential use. Monderer also controls the neighboring apartment building at 1010 St. Paul St. and a parking lot between the two buildings. A zoning board hearing has been set for Tuesday.

Despite protests from some community groups, the Baltimore County Council is scheduled to vote Monday on an ordinance that would offer guidelines for add-on apartments which frequently serve as temporary, separate living quarters for relatives. The issue arose, in part, over a Cockeysville couple's decision to convert their garage into an apartment for their adult son. A growing number of residents are using such spaces, known as "in-law apartments," to care for elderly or disabled relatives.

The Carroll County commissioners have approved an ordinance that allows developers to have second-floor apartments above shopping center retail outlets. The ordinance, approved Thursday, limits the mixing of residential and retail uses to shopping centers with two stories. Each apartment must be on the upper level and between 600 and 1,000 square feet in size.

A two-alarm fire early yesterday destroyed a four-unit apartment building in Westminster, but its eight residents, including two children, escaped without injuries, fire officials said. The fire started at 5:25 a.m. in the 200 block of Schaeffer Ave., and badly damaged all of the apartments in the one-story wood-frame structure, officials said. The cause of the fire was being investigated.

I looked once, then twice at a Light Street building across from the Cross Street Market in Federal Hill. Was the old Epstein's department store returning to Baltimore? The answer came from its developer, Arsh Mirmiran. His new 93-unit apartment complex totally fills the site of the institution where so many South Baltimoreans shopped for decades until it closed in 1991. The apartment project so replicates the old store's facade that I was fooled. That is where the comparison ends.

Prosecutors alleged Friday that the 28-year-old man charged with murdering Phylicia Barnes asphyxiated the teenager in her sister's Northwest Baltimore apartment, and then moved her body using a 35-gallon plastic tub. Michael Maurice Johnson, the ex-boyfriend of Phylicia's older half-sister, was seen by a neighbor sweating and struggling to move a container from the apartment, Assistant State's Attorney Lisa Goldberg said at a hearing while arguing...

Developers have proposed building a $19 million apartment tower in an area slated for revitalization on downtown's west side that would include 92 affordable and market-rate rentals but would require city and state tax subsidies. The board of the Baltimore Development Corp. on Thursday planned to send a recommendation on the proposed Liberty Park project to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. In a closed-door session, the board combined what are typically separate discussions about whether to award development rights and grant a property tax subsidy request, an attempt by board members to move the project forward as housing demand has surged in the area.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's administration is asking Baltimore's City Council to award a hefty tax break to a long-stalled west-side development project. Under legislation introduced by the administration, apartments to be built as part of the "Superblock" project near Lexington and Howard streets would receive a deep discount on property taxes for 20 years. City officials said it would not be feasible for the developers to build the 269-unit apartment building and 650-space underground garage without a tax incentive.

"You must be rich. " A grandfather who asked where I lived told me this, straight out. We were at the B&O Railroad Museum playground in Baltimore with our preschoolers, mine a grandnephew. I had unwisely confessed to living in Manhattan. After leaving Baltimore in my early 20s, I gradually, by incremental steps, rose from a one-room furnished basement apartment in ungentrified Brooklyn to one room in a "luxury," "pet friendly" high rise 10 minutes from Lincoln Center. It's across from a public housing project.

A two-alarm fire early Friday morning at an apartment complex in Reisterstown displaced residents of 11 units, Baltimore County fire officials said. Firefighters responded to an apartment building at The Preserve at Owings Crossing, located in the unit block of Caraway Road, shortly after 2 a.m. Friday and observed flames going through the roof, according to officials. The fire was brought under control around 5:30 a.m., officials said. Two people required medical attention at the scene and were transported to Northwest Hospital - one by ambulance and one by a family member, officials said.

The mostly abandoned, vandalized remnants of 543 Middle River apartments that once bustled with the energy of young World War II defense workers appear destined for the wrecker's ball.Foreclosure proceedings on the properties making up nearly half of the 1,200-unit Riverdale Village apartments began yesterday with a letter of notification from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to Richard Schlesinger, a New York developer whose company owns the decaying complex.If HUD succeeds in taking control of the affected apartments through the foreclosure procedure, which could take a year, it is prepared to sell its portion to the county for $1.The county wants to demolish the buildings if it can find the estimated $1.5 million for the job. County officials also are pondering what to do with a small strip shopping center included in the property, along Eastern Boulevard, and the land after the buildings are cleared.

A four-alarm fire swept through the Woodside Apartments in Glen Burnie yesterday morning, causing $1 million in property damage but injuring no one, fire officials said.Lt. Robert Kornmann, a spokesman for the Anne Arundel County fire department, said 16 apartments were damaged, a dozen so heavily that their occupants were left homeless.The Red Cross placed six families in a hotel for the night, Annette Mooney, a spokeswoman, said. The other families evacuated made arrangements to stay with families or relatives, Ms. Mooney said.

Are you paying too much for rent? Getting a steal? Check out what the average renter pays. New data in from Delta Associates, an Alexandria, Va.-based real estate research firm, shows the average rental price for higher-end apartment complexes in the Baltimore region is $1,497, up 3.2 percent from this time last year. The data was described in the firm's quarterly Mid-Atlantic “Class A” Apartment Market Report.  Newer apartments with amenities in common areas make up the Class A category.