Buildings In Baltimore

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon is expected to announce today that the city is giving $100,000 to the Herring Run Watershed Association for its new environmental center on Belair Road. The center, which is scheduled to open in the fall, will be one of the greenest buildings in Baltimore - complete with composting toilets, a tankless hot water heater and a roof that recycles storm water. The city's grant marks the end of Herring Run's two-year drive to raise the $600,000 needed for the building, which they hope will brighten up Belair Road and be an inspiration for those seeking to improve the neighborhood.

After a year that dealt Baltimore's preservationists some painful hits, the city is stepping up its effort to protect historic properties - and sites that include a noted African-American church, a South Baltimore park and an old brewery are poised to become "city landmarks." Though the owner of the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre has put off landmark consideration for that downtown site until next month, Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation will consider granting protected status tomorrow to five new locations, after creating only 17 landmarks over the past decade.

NEARLY A CENTURY after it opened as one of Baltimore's most elegant residences, the old Cecil Apartments building on Eutaw Place is about to be reborn for a new generation of urbanites.Silver Spring-based developer Richard Brinker is planning to acquire the vacant, eight-level building at 1123 Eutaw Place and renovate it to contain 64 apartments by early 2001.Brinker wants to attract employees of the nearby state office buildings and other professionals who work in downtown Baltimore and want to live near their offices.

ONE OF BALTIMORE'S oldest bank buildings will soon be transformed into the city's newest, first-class office center.The former home of National Mechanics' Bank, a 1904 building at 222 E. Redwood St., has been acquired by a Maryland partnership that plans to invest $3 million over the next seven months to restore its exterior and upgrade its interior to attract new tenants.The renovation is planned by Southwood Holdings Corp. of Baltimore County, headed by Harold T. Rubin and Alvin W. Shevitz.

A second growth of tiny new industries turning out goods you'll never see in a suburban mall is sprouting from the stubble of Baltimore's sooty old factories and foundries.A stone building at 330 W. 23rd St., off Howard Street, has become a banging and humming beehive dedicated to the work of artisans. It is a prime example of the creative reuse of buildings in Baltimore's smoke-stained industrial districts, where the rent is cheap and studios are large.The specialized customer list of the inhabitants is often downright amazing.

The proposal has been floated to tear down the old financial district building at 131 E. Redwood St., the former home of USF&G Corp. and Baker Watts stock brokerage, to turn it into a parking garage.This building will take its place with many other buildings in Baltimore that, over the years, have been knocked down and turned into parking garages (or lots), losing their battle with the insatiable maw of the automobile culture.We leveled the old Sports Center ice rink at 6 E. North Ave. (between St. Paul Street and Charles Street)

Concerned that Baltimore is losing much of its vaunted quirkiness, a group of local architects is launching a last-ditch effort to save two of South Baltimore's giant gas holders as a permanent gateway to the city.The would-be preservationists say the cylindrical structures, the last three of which Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. wants to take down over the next several years, could be reborn as the setting for a skating rink, a relocated farmers' market or even tailgate parties for the football stadium under construction in Camden Yards.

A Rhode Island-based developer would spend $28.6 million t buy and renovate three historic apartment buildings in Baltimore's Reservoir Hill neighborhood for low- and moderate-income housing, under a plan recommended by a state-appointed receiver.Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan will hold a hearing at 11:30 a.m. Monday to consider the recommendation.The receiver, Financial Conservators Inc. of Baltimore, sought proposals last year for the 311-unit Renaissance Plaza complex. FCI received 11 bids and narrowed the field to three finalists.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke plans to appoint a task force to study converting Class B office buildings to residential use, hoping to spur downtown living while using some of Baltimore's empty office space in the face of weak prospects for an economic recovery."

Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke plans to appoint a task force to study converting Class B office buildings to residential use, hoping to spur downtown living while using some of the city's empty office space in the face of weak prospects for an economic recovery."

The Maryland Board of Public Works approved on Wednesday a transfer to the federal government of state-owned land in Northwest Baltimore where U.S. officials plan to build an office building to house some Social Security Administration operations. The new structure, which federal and state officials say is needed by 2012, is planned near the Reisterstown Road Plaza Metro station. It would be one of the largest and most expensive federal office buildings in Baltimore in years. About 1,600 federal workers now at the federal agency's Metro West complex on Greene Street would move there.

After a year that dealt Baltimore's preservationists some painful hits, the city is stepping up its effort to protect historic properties - and sites that include a noted African-American church, a South Baltimore park and an old brewery are poised to become "city landmarks." Though the owner of the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre has put off landmark consideration for that downtown site until next month, Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation will consider granting protected status tomorrow to five new locations, after creating only 17 landmarks over the past decade.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon is expected to announce today that the city is giving $100,000 to the Herring Run Watershed Association for its new environmental center on Belair Road. The center, which is scheduled to open in the fall, will be one of the greenest buildings in Baltimore - complete with composting toilets, a tankless hot water heater and a roof that recycles storm water. The city's grant marks the end of Herring Run's two-year drive to raise the $600,000 needed for the building, which they hope will brighten up Belair Road and be an inspiration for those seeking to improve the neighborhood.

Waterview Overlook, a condominium complex to be built in the Harbor West community, will be among the most environmentally friendly buildings in Baltimore. Developers are using recycled wood for half of all the flooring and cabinets in the units. It uses Energy Star appliances and building materials such as caulk and tiles that are made with environmentally friendly products. While homes and office buildings have led the "green" building boom, developers are now applying environmentally friendly materials to residential high-rises and apartment complexes in hopes of luring more customers.

One of the largest buildings in Baltimore's Hampden neighborhood will soon play a large role in its revitalization. Hampden Hall, a former veterans' meeting hall that looms above the shops at the southeast corner of 36th Street and Roland Avenue, will be converted to 14 loft-style apartments by mid-2006. Baltimore businessmen Joe Preller and Bob Geis bought the building last year and plan to create two-level apartments that they will rent for $750 to $1,100 per month. Both say they already own "high-end" rental apartments in Hampden and believe there is a strong demand for more.

One of the industrial workhorses of Baltimore's waterfront will soon get a new life as a focal point of the burgeoning Harbor East community. The E. J. Codd Co. building at 700 S. Caroline St., longtime home of a company that makes boilers and machinery, was sold recently to a group that plans to turn it into Baltimore's newest office and retail center. Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse, known for its conversions of such historic structures as the former Bagby Furniture Co. building on Exeter Street and the American Can Co. complex on Boston Street, intends to invest $10 million to rehabilitate the original Codd building, which dates from 1881, and two additions completed in the early 1900s.

A now-defunct construction contractor cut corners on pillars at Baltimore City Community College's Liberty Campus in 1965, potentially putting occupants of the building at grave risk more than 35 years later, a state Cabinet secretary told the Board of Public Works yesterday. The discovery of the allegedly shoddy work -- now repaired -- has prompted state officials to inquire about other public buildings and schools built in Maryland by the contractor, Lacchi Construction Co. They won't have to look far. In the 1960s, the company was the general contractor on an Annapolis building adjacent to the offices of Comptroller William Donald Schaefer and Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp, two of the three members of the public works board.

The old red bank at Calvert and Redwood streets survived the Great Fire of 1904, which destroyed most of Baltimore's financial district. But it seems to have caught fire this winter, after a $2.5 million renovation turned it into the city's hottest new nightclub and party palace. Every week, hundreds of revelers deposit $10 per person to venture inside Redwood Trust, the cavernous entertainment center created inside the old Mercantile-Safe Deposit and Trust Co. branch. What they find is a bank transformation unlike any other: Teller windows have given way to a well-stocked bar. The walk-in vault is a VIP lounge.

In Baltimore City One man arrested, 2 sought after woman alleges abduction, theft One man was in custody and two others were being sought by city police in the reported abduction at gunpoint of a woman who was taken from her home to the check-cashing business where she works and allegedly forced to give the men its money. Police said Kimberly Johnson, 32, a clerk at Check Mart in the first block of W. North Ave., was awakened in her East Baltimore home at 7 a.m. yesterday by three men, and taken away after her children - ages 5, 10 and 12 - were ordered into a second bedroom.

NEARLY A CENTURY after it opened as one of Baltimore's most elegant residences, the old Cecil Apartments building on Eutaw Place is about to be reborn for a new generation of urbanites.Silver Spring-based developer Richard Brinker is planning to acquire the vacant, eight-level building at 1123 Eutaw Place and renovate it to contain 64 apartments by early 2001.Brinker wants to attract employees of the nearby state office buildings and other professionals who work in downtown Baltimore and want to live near their offices.