Auction

The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development said Thursday that it had selected a Pittsburgh-based software company to build a website for auctioning state tax credits to insurance companies as part of a $70 million economic development initiative to support technology startups. DBED chose Grant Street Group to build the tax-credit auction site for the InvestMaryland program, which is a cornerstone of Gov. Martin O'Malley's economic development efforts. The goal of the auction, which will take place in March, is to raise a minimum of $70 million or up to $100 million.

Pending the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the publisher of the Baltimore Jewish Times and Style Magazine could be sold at auction next week. Zvi Guttman, the trustee in the case, asked the court Wednesday to approve a sale schedule, which calls for all bids for Alter Communications Inc. to be submitted to him by Tuesday afternoon and for the sale to be conducted on the morning of Wednesday, March 28. Objections to the proposed schedule are to be filed with the court by 10 a.m. Thursday.

More than $242,000 was raised Sunday during Center Stage's 27th annual auction, marking a new high for the decades-old radio event. Auction coordinator Sydney Wilner said the total from this year's program edged out the previous record, set in 2003. "It just exceeded by a little bit our record breaking year last year," Wilner said. The big results are good news for the Calvert Street theater, she added, because proceeds from the 16-hour event will benefit its artistic and educational programs.

The former residence of Maryland artist Grace Turnbull was withdrawn from a scheduled auction yesterday, but the auctioneers said representatives for Turnbull's estate would still entertain private offers for the property at 223 Chancery Road in Guilford. A sale of Turnbull's personal property, including sculptures, paintings, books and furniture, will proceed during an auction that is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. today at Alex Cooper Auctioneers, 908 York Road in Towson. Turnbull died in 1976 and left her Spanish Colonial-style house and much of her artwork to the Maryland Historical Society, which has maintained them for more than 30 years.

While others heard the roar of a commercial real estate crash, auctioneer Bill Fox heard virtual silence yesterday as he asked for a $10 million bid on Baltimore Travel Plaza. It amounted to the same thing.Maryland National Bank bought the East Baltimore combination of 10-story hotel, dinner theater, restaurant, nightclub, fast-food emporium, truck stop and bus station for $2.85 million, far less than the $11.9 million a development team led by now-bankrupt Lawrence Rachuba owed the bank.

Topping the $200,000 mark for the first time, Sunday's annual radio auction for Center Stage raised a record $204,000. "I secretly hoped for this, but it's never there until it's there," said auction coordinator Sydney Wilner. Biggest money-makers were a 10-day Caribbean cruise for two, donated by Holland America Line Westours, which fetched $3,850, and the chance to serve as an honorary pre-game batboy or girl at an Orioles game, which went for $3,100, the highest ever for this perennially popular item.

MEMORABLE LOCAL items from almost a century ago brought an unceasing crowd to an auction at Hampstead Movie House Mall in Hampstead. Bidders and onlookers gathered around furniture along Main Street for the sale Oct. 13. They eventually took shelter from the rain in the greenhouse area, where seats were filled well into the night. So many items remained and the enthusiasm was so strong that auctioneer Bucky Harmon decided to halt the auction around 10 p.m. and resume it next month. "We had items with such great history from Hampstead, Westminster and Manchester.

If you've had a "For Sale" sign in front of your house for months, you want something to happen and you want it to happen yesterday. William Z. Fox suggests an auction. He would - he's chairman and chief executive of Fox Residential Auctions LLC in Pikesville - but some homeowners heartily agree. As sales and prices dropped nationwide last year, auctioneers' revenue for home sales rose 5.3 percent to almost $17 billion, according to the National Auctioneers Association. Sales revenue has declined since, but not to the extent that you see on multiple-listing services, the more common way that sellers and buyers find each other.

Fourteen unsold residences and adjacent land at the Villages at Homeland, a 9-acre town-house community in North Baltimore, will go on the auction block Feb. 22 in a foreclosure sale on behalf of Loyola Federal Savings and Loan Association.U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge James Schneider ruled this month that the auction could proceed, despite a request by the developers that they be allowed to retain control of the property.Homeland Acres Limited Partnership, a group headed by builder Jack Steffey, filed last summer for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, after Loyola Federal initiated foreclosure proceedings.

Hampstead's mayor is asking Carroll County for an administrative appeals hearing on the commissioners' decision to auction the old Hampstead Elementary School. The school is a property that the town wanted to develop on its terms. Commissioners Donald I. Dell and Robin Bartlett Frazier have dismissed Mayor Christopher Nevin's pleas against the auction. In a letter dated yesterday, Nevin said the town would pursue legal action against the county if an appeals hearing isn't granted. Nevin and the Town Council call the 91-year-old building the centerpiece of their downtown redevelopment efforts and say the auction, scheduled for next month, will unfairly remove its fate from their control.