Auction Block

A large chunk of waterfront property in Port Covington is set to go on the auction block in June after its previous owner, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, defaulted on a multimillion-dollar mortgage. The now-defunct developer owed BB&T Bank more than $10.7 million for the roughly 10-acre parcel in South Baltimore off East Cromwell Street. A trustee-ordered sale is scheduled June 14. The foreclosure sale brings new hope to an area filled with weedy lots — an area where developers have struggled for decades to get a foothold.

A large chunk of waterfront property in Port Covington is set to go on the auction block in June after its previous owner, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, defaulted on a multimillion-dollar mortgage. The now-defunct developer owed BB&T Bank more than $10.7 million for the roughly 10-acre parcel in South Baltimore off East Cromwell Street. A trustee-ordered sale is scheduled June 14. The foreclosure sale brings new hope to an area filled with weedy lots — an area where developers have struggled for decades to get a foothold.

Two office buildings in downtown Baltimore, both of which had been undergoing conversion to hotels, are scheduled to be sold at back-to-back foreclosure auctions next month. According to the website for Alex Cooper auctioneers, which is handling both sales, the first involves the former Keyser Building at 201-207 E. Redwood St., a 10-story structure that was being renovated to reopen as a 130-room Hotel Indigo. It will be offered for sale at an auction on the premises at 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 12. The Hotel Indigo was expected to open by early fall of 2009, but the work was never completed.

A former downtown Baltimore office building that was being converted to a Staybridge Suites Hotel is scheduled to go on the auction block Nov. 30. The foreclosure sale will be held on the site of the 11-story Jefferson Building at 101 N. Charles St., according to auctioneers GoIndustry DoveBid. In August, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge cleared the way for lender RL BB Financial LLC to foreclose. Work on the hotel stalled during the financial downturn, but the lender was prevented from foreclosing after the developer, 101 Charles Street LLC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2010.

Washington.--The only thing more aggravating than a good idea completely ignored is a good idea taken to a foolish extreme. Take, for example, campus recruitment of minorities.Energized by the noble goal of diversity, some colleges have taken the easy and reckless road, creaming off the brightest black high school graduates in a wild competition that increasingly brings to mind another grim moment in African-American history: the auction block.A recent report by Fox Butterfield in the New York Times describes major colleges and universities exerting the sort of wild bribing and cajoling that give athletic scouting a bad name.

It's the typo that gives it away. The two 13-by-9.5-inch pieces of paper that will go up for auction at Christie's on Friday spell out in big, bold, black letters, "The Star Spangled Banner. " Underneath this heading is written, much smaller, these words of explanation: "A Pariotic Song. " Thomas Carr, a 19th century music publisher who operated a store at 36 Baltimore St., intended to print "A Patriotic Song. " But he was rushing to capitalize on the popularity of the little ditty that Francis Scott Key penned while watching the bombing of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, and lacked the modern-day luxury of spell-check.

TANEYTOWN - Come Nov. 26, Joseph E. Fitzgerald may be raising a glass to toast the new owner of his restaurant and bar."May you live long and prosper with this business my family and I have built over the past 15 years," Fitzgerald might say in his best Irish way to the new owner of Fitzgerald's Havilah Inn.The inn, on Route 140 outside this North Carroll town, will go on the auction block at 11 a.m. that Monday, because Fitzgerald is plagued by health problems...

The on-again, off-again plans for the historic Southern Hotel have changed once more, with the downtown property being scheduled to return to the auction block next month.The latest attempt to purchase the 14-story building at the corner of Light and Redwood streets had been made by the Trammell Crow Co. as part of its plan to build the tallest office tower in Baltimore on the site.But after trying for nearly 2 1/2 years to line up enough tenants to lease more than half the planned 750,000-square-foot building, Trammell Crow was unable to meet the latest deadline set by Signet Bank/Maryland, the property's mortgage holder, for closing on the purchase.

One of Baltimore County's oldest "country estates" will go on the auction block this week, when James Keelty & Co. offers the former Henry Gwynn House at 6909 Bellona Ave. in Rodgers Forge. The large Italianate villa occupies a prominent corner of the tract where Keelty is building Rodgers Choice, a community of luxury town houses. It dates from 1864 and is one of 17 Towson-area properties that were added this fall to Baltimore County's preliminary landmarks list. The Gwynn house is one of the few remaining regional examples of the "great estates" built by prosperous 19th-century merchants.

NEW YORK -- Once it was shiny and new, the fine, black alligator briefcase that a father bought for his son to symbolize the launch of a promising career.The son and the briefcase fulfilled those dreams of ambition: Together they went, through the halls of Congress, to the Senate and, triumphantly, to the White House. Along the way, the handle had to be repaired and the edges frayed a bit, but the owner would not replace the trusty carrier.How the briefcase of John F. Kennedy ended here, on an auction block in New York -- even though JFK's children had staked their own claim to this particular piece of Camelot -- is an emblematic tale of the '90s.

Most of the artwork that will be displayed Sunday on the grounds of a restored 18th-century mansion on Back River began as debris retrieved from that beleaguered waterway. Students from Maryland Institute College of Art and several Baltimore County schools gave a second life to detritus that volunteers have pulled from the river. The blend of recycling and creativity produced some truly abstract results that will be auctioned at the first Trash Art show at Ballestone-Stansbury House in Essex.

On a late Tuesday morning this week, about two dozen mostly longtime residents of the South Baltimore area peered through the darkened rooms of Club 4100, its wood-paneled walls lit only by daylight streaming in from outside. The longtime Baltimore Colts hangout, frequented in its heyday by Johnny Unitas and other local sports stars as well as Brooklyn Park's middle-class families, was once again on the auction block, its most recent owners now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Clement Kusiak, a former president of the Brooklyn Lions Club, which held its meetings at Club 4100 for decades, said there were few bidders that day. The auction started at 11 a.m., and most people left by 11:30, Kusiak said.

The former McCormick spice plant property, one of the last major undeveloped parcels near Baltimore's Inner Harbor, is headed back to the auction block. The 1.9-acre parcel at Light and Conway streets will be up for sale Jan. 11 in a foreclosure auction on the premises handled by GoIndustry DoveBid's offices in Owings Mills. An auction scheduled for Nov. 5 was canceled after the property owner, an affiliate of Philadelphia-based ARC Wheeler Equities, sought bankruptcy protection the day before.

Tuesday's article, "'Star-Spangled Banner' rare edition goes on the auction block" begins by stating that "It's the typo that gives it away. " How true because later the reader is told that the proof of the authenticity of the sheet music was the misspelling of the word "patriotic. " The Sun tells us that during the war of 1812, Francis Scott Key lacked the modern-day luxury of spell-check so that, when the "first edition of the four famous verses that later became the national nnthem [sic]

I read with great interest the article "Rare copy of the 'Star Spangled Banner' goes on the auction block" (Nov. 30), but I feel that the publisher of the item to be auctioned, Thomas Carr, continues to not get the recognition he deserves. Carr not only ran a music store but was also the organist at Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church. While Chris Coover, a senior book and manuscript specialist at Christie's auction house says that "[Carr] may not have known that Francis Scott Key was the author," Key most certainly did know him since Key was a strong Episcopalian and a good friend of the Old St. Paul's rector at that time, Bishop Kemp.

It's the typo that gives it away. The two 13-by-9.5-inch pieces of paper that will go up for auction at Christie's on Friday spell out in big, bold, black letters, "The Star Spangled Banner. " Underneath this heading is written, much smaller, these words of explanation: "A Pariotic Song. " Thomas Carr, a 19th century music publisher who operated a store at 36 Baltimore St., intended to print "A Patriotic Song. " But he was rushing to capitalize on the popularity of the little ditty that Francis Scott Key penned while watching the bombing of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, and lacked the modern-day luxury of spell-check.

The Belvedere Hotel moved closer to the auction block today after Florida developer Judah Hertz failed to meet a court-ordered deadline to complete his purchase of the historic midtown landmark.U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James F. Schneider ordered Hertz a week ago to settle on the hotel by 10 a.m. today by posting the approximately $5 million needed to complete the sale.A Baltimore City Circuit Court judge granted a request from Meritor Bank of Philadelphia, which holds the first mortgage on the Belvedere, to schedule a foreclosure sale of the hotel at 1 p.m. today.

It's deja vu all over again on York Road. The Cockey homestead, sold at auction almost five months ago to a descendant of the original owner, goes back on the auction block Saturday. Same auction house, Alex Cooper Auctioneers Inc. Same starting price, $200,000. Same terms, a nonrefundable deposit of $20,000. Even some of the same bidders, based on the calls that broker Paul Cooper said he has received since the sale was advertised. But this time, it's doubtful that Joshua F. Cockey, great-great-grandson of the Joshua F. Cockey who built the house, will have a representative among the bidders.

One of the last major empty parcels in Baltimore's Inner Harbor is headed for the auction block, attracting strong interest from potential bidders while renewing hope that one of the city's most valuable properties will be developed. The former McCormick & Co. spice factory site, a 1.9-acre tract at Light and Conway streets, has been used as a surface parking lot ever since the aromatic factory was razed in the late 1980s. It was to have been the location of a 59-story skyscraper that would have been Baltimore's tallest building, containing luxury housing, a hotel, shops and parking.

From the Dining@Large blog: It looks like Timothy Dean has pulled a rabbit out of his toque. Hours before Prime Steakhouse was to go on the auction block, the foreclosure sale has been called off. A lawyer for the former "Top Chef" contestant told me yesterday afternoon that the auction of Dean's Prime Steakhouse wasn't going to happen. But it was still listed on the auctioneer's website, and no one there was calling back to say some last-minute deal was being worked out. I checked the Jonathan Melnick Auctioneers site again just now, and it says the foreclosure sale has been canceled.