Baltimore Convention Center

If you go The American Craft Show will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow at the Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Tickets are $14-$20. Call 800-836-3470 or visit craftcouncil.org.

A veteran Hilton hotel manager has been named general manager of the publicly financed convention hotel now under construction near Oriole Park. Linda Norman has been selected by the Baltimore Hotel Corp. to head the 757-room Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel, the Baltimore Development Corp. announced yesterday. Norman, who begins her new job in mid-August, is charged with overseeing the construction of the $230 million hotel, which is scheduled to open a year later. Norman, who has worked for Hilton for 20 years, has been general manager of the Hilton Los Angeles/Glendale Hotel for the past three years.

Thefts of ATMs net 3-year sentence Charles E. Harrison, 48, who was charged with cracking into or stealing more than 30 automatic teller machines, was sentenced to 33 months in prison. Park plan submitted for review Swann Park, which was closed in April after officials discovered high levels of arsenic in the soil, would be covered with clean dirt under a plan submitted to the state. Lull in city homicides broken Baltimore's weeklong stretch without a homicide was shattered when a man was found fatally shot Friday inside a house on Eutaw Place.

Two days after Magdalena Sudnik installed her sundial sculpture at the Inner Harbor, she drove by the site and noticed something most unpleasant. "I glanced over," Sudnik recalled, "And it's gone. The Baltimore sundial is gone." The piece, titled Time is Now, is a metal circular rim that is propped 4 feet off the ground by two legs. The rim encircles a trio of dinner plate-sized sundials -- each calibrated to show the time in a different city: Timbuktu, Geneva and Baltimore. "I kind of wanted to show people that we're all connected though time," she said.

Flowers and craftsHave a bloomin' good time at the Maryland Home & Flower Show tomorrow through Sunday and March 12-14 at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium. The show will feature landscaped plots, a plant marketplace and vendors. It runs in conjunction with the Maryland Spring Craft Show, whose wares range from ceramic art to children's clothing. Hours tomorrow are 4 p.m.-10 p.m.; 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday and March 12-13; and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday and March 14 (the craft building closes at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays)

In Baltimore CityCity to celebrate New Year's Eve with parade Friday nightGiant papier-mache puppets, drummers and bands will parade through the streets of downtown Baltimore on Friday as part of the city's New Year's Eve Millennium Celebration.The parade will begin at 10 p.m. at the Charles Street entrance of the Baltimore Convention Center, head north on Charles, east on Pratt Street, make a U-turn at Concord Street near the Columbus Center, continue west on Pratt, then south on Charles until disbanding at the Convention Center.

In Baltimore CityToday is deadline to register to vote in Baltimore primaryToday is the last day to register to vote in the Sept. 14 primary elections.Voters will be selecting candidates for the offices of mayor, comptroller, City Council president and City Council. The mayor's race has attracted a field of 26 candidates seeking to replace Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who will not run for a fourth term.For information on where and how to register, and registration hours, call the Board of Supervisors of Elections for Baltimore City at 410-396-5550.

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes in Baltimore City and Baltimore County.Baltimore CitySoutheastern DistrictBurglary/arrest: Police entered the Matilda Koval Medical Center in the 2300 block of Orleans St. on Tuesday after a burglar alarm sounded and arrested a man found hiding in a ceiling crawl space.Central DistrictTheft: A briefcase and its contents, all valued at $500, were stolen Wednesday from the Baltimore Convention Center in the first block of W. Pratt St.Southern DistrictTheft from auto: A generator valued at $1,000 was stolen from a truck parked in the 1300 block of W. Hamburg St. between July 23 and July 28.Eastern DistrictCarjacking: A woman, 36, had stopped her car Wednesday afternoon in the 1200 block of Bonaparte Ave. when a gunman ordered her out of the 1986 Chevrolet Cavalier with Pennsylvania tags and drove away.

In Baltimore CityThree-day convention devoted to Africa gets under way todayMore than 1,000 politicians, academics and others will launch a three-day convention devoted to Africa at the Baltimore Convention Center today.Trade, security and human rights will dominate seminars and speeches of the meeting organized by the National Summit on Africa, a Washington-based institute."We are trying to mobilize and energize an activist pool to be more supportive of Africa," said Leonard H. Robinson, National Summit director.

The Baltimore man arrested in the killing of a New Jersey conventioneer in June in Fells Point was indicted by a grand jury yesterday on charges of first-degree murder and robbery with a deadly weapon, the Baltimore state's attorney said.Gary William Mick, 25, will be arraigned Dec. 9 on charges of bludgeoning to death Christopher Jones, 37, of Metuchen, N.J.Mick was arrested last month at his mother's home in Anne Arundel County and charged.Jones had been attending a pharmaceutical conference at the Baltimore Convention Center and was staying at the Admiral Fell Inn. A manager found his body.

COMICS Baltimore Comic-Con: Call it what you want (nerd Christmas, nerd prom or even geek heaven), it's coming to the Inner Harbor next weekend. Millions of back issues, thousands of fans and dozens of top comic book artists and writers (including George Perez and Tim Sale) will be invading the floor of the Baltimore Convention Center. Starts 10 a.m. Saturday. Web: comicon.com/baltimore TV 'The Next Iron Chef 2009': The Food Network's cheeky answer to "Top Chef" is back, giving another upstart cook a chance to join the ranks of Mario Batali and Masaharu Morimoto.

Yes, that was a pack of Samurai strolling down Howard Street near the Baltimore Convention Center. But that giant marshmallow? That was actually "Happi Paper," a giant dancing roll of toilet paper "with a simple heart and a kind soul." Such characters convene each year in Baltimore for Otakon, the largest anime and Asian culture convention in the country, which ended Sunday. More than 25,000 people - many dressed in full cartoon costume or sporting punky hairdos or wielding enormous cardboard swords - attended this year.

Come this weekend, mild-mannered Harford Community College student Brad Brooks will transform. He'll slip on a black and silver outfit, complete with a black vest, big collar and silver belt. He'll don a turquoise blue wig "that's supposed to be really spiky." And then he'll slip down to the Baltimore Convention Center, and he'll fit right in. For this is Otakon weekend, when fans of Japanese pop culture gather from all over the world. They'll attend concerts by Japanese performers rarely seen on these shores, watch the latest in Japanese animation (called anime, by those in the know)

Downtown Baltimore has always been a work in progress. From the days of the Baltimore clipper ships lined up at the docks to the shiny Legg Mason headquarters towering above Inner Harbor East today, change is the only constant - without it, whatever economic ambitions the city may harbor are doomed to failure. And while it's understandable that many of us fret over worrisome matters that arise from time to time, such as whether there's an adequate police presence around the waterfront to counter visitors' concerns over unruly teens, the hopeful signs of growth and new development are too often minimized or even overlooked.

Hotel bookings by convention or business groups rose nearly 16 percent in the past fiscal year, Baltimore's convention and tourism agency said Monday. The Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association said the 522,541 room nights booked for group business meetings between this year and 2019 beat the tourism agency's goal of 500,000 room nights. The number exceeded the 451,608 hotel nights booked in fiscal 2008 for future years, BACVA said. "One of the major initiatives and goals is long-term, citywide convention sales" - or sales to groups that might require as many as 4,000 to 5,000 rooms on peak nights, said Tom Noonan, chief executive and president of BACVA.

A development boom that revitalized huge swaths of downtown Baltimore this decade slowed last year, with plans scaled back or delayed amid the recession and tightened credit markets. Vacancies increased 2 percent in downtown offices, and about 1,000 jobs were lost, the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore says in a report to be unveiled Thursday. Job losses are expected to continue mounting this year as layoffs continue in the financial services sector. But even as 2009 promises to be a tougher year, the State of Downtown Baltimore report makes the case that downtown is better positioned now than it was in the early 1990s to weather a recession and likely to fare better than some harder hit parts of the country.

Just as Inner Harbor redevelopment transformed Baltimore's derelict port of rotting wharves and abandoned warehouses, Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration believes that a slot machine casino could revive a moribund industrial district while reducing city property taxes. But critics contend that a gambling venue in the shadow of M&T Bank Stadium would worsen the poverty and crime that plague neighborhoods just beyond the city's center. They doubt that such a project would bring meaningful tax relief.

The 28th annual Baltimore Summer Antiques Show continues this weekend at the Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. The show features items from the collections of more than 550 international dealers, including many from Baltimore. American folk art, decorative accessories, furniture, glass and textiles dating from ancient times to the 20th century will be on display. The show also includes a 60-dealer Antiquarian Book Fair, offering rare and first-edition books, manuscripts and autographs.

Tourism and government leaders lauded yesterday's opening of the $301 million city-owned downtown convention headquarters hotel, promising that a project that survived years of controversy over its taxpayer-backed funding and its Camden Yards location will provide Baltimore with newfound commerce. The 757-room Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel, the city's largest-ever public investment, opened to its first guests yesterday morning, nearly six years after Baltimore officials first proposed the West Pratt Street hotel.

Firefighters assembled yesterday, some in antique firetrucks, for the annual firefighters' convention parade. The procession began on Key Highway, headed to Light Street and ended at the Baltimore Convention Center, where there was a Firehouse Expo flea market.