Business District

The jazz quartet's last tune of the lunchtime set at the Columbia lakeside took an up-tempo bebop turn, the sort of sound one might associate with things urban and urbane: the Village Vanguard, maybe Birdland. The band played before a sparse crowd seated on a grassy terraced slope, folks who would get into their cars and drive off through a place that looks much like a suburban office and shopping area with its wide boulevards, tidy lawns, neat rows of trees, and parking lots. Not quite urban.

Harbor East is moving farther east with baker-cum-developer John Paterakis Sr.'s announcement Friday that he will break ground this summer on a new, mega-Whole Foods and later on a new residential/retail building across Central Avenue from the glittering mini-city he has almost single handedly built during the last 15 years. Things are bustling in that corner of the city, what with the planned construction of a new headquarters office tower for Exelon Corp. and a variety of other smaller scale residential, retail, office and hotel developments nearby.

When Towson American Legion Post 22 commander Jim Rebbert looks at a planner's drawing envisioning a future for the patch of land where the post now stands, he gets the jitters. The drawings show businesses and apartments along pleasant, tree-lined thoroughfares, but not the Legion post. "You don't see us there, need I say more?" Rebbert said. T he Legion's leaders have no intention of going anywhere. The county is considering several changes this year that would extend the boundaries of downtown Towson, including one that would allow more intense development on the 14-acre triangular expanse where the Legion post stands just south of Towson Circle.

Unless you've missed the news and are befuddled as to why people keep saying you're an hour late to things, we've all just "sprung forward. " How is it springtime already? With spring comes a lot of shuffling and changes in Hampden. Every year, it surprises me at how The Avenue (and our business district in general) can keep getting better and better, but it does. And if a lot of the plans and rumors I've heard come to fruition, Hampden looks poised to grow its thriving local economy.

A proposal to expand Westminster's business district west along Pennsylvania Avenue and into a primarily residential area has been given an unfavorable review by the city's planning and zoning commission. The proposal now heads to the city's Common Council, which is to schedule a public hearing before taking action. Thomas B. Beyard, the city's director of planning and public works, said the proposal would probably not be on the city council's agenda until January. The proposed zoning amendment would allow the establishment of light business, such as coffeehouses and art galleries, from West Main Street to Sullivan Avenue.

Against a backdrop of recent optimism about downtown Baltimore, a prominent business group said yesterday that the central business district is seriously threatened by physical decay, soaring office vacancies and lack of investment.The report, by the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, highlights the growing number of empty offices in downtown's older, "Class B" buildings. It arrives as city leaders increasingly are talking about demolishing more of those buildings to make room for development.

Six Morgan State University graduate students displayed their ideas yesterday for enhancing the Waverly business district on Greenmount Avenue, site of a new "Main Street" effort.While their designs will not definitely be implemented, it was a chance to rethink the "self-image" and identity of the area centered at 33rd Street and Greenmount Avenue, said Frank Jannuzi, president of the Charles Village Community Benefits District. "I found so much that was attractive and provocative."Main Street is a national program that promotes more vibrant downtown areas.

Trying to strike a balance between promoting new businesses and controlling traffic on East Baltimore Street, the Taneytown City Council will vote on two zoning ordinances tonight that would modify the downtown business district.The council will vote on the ordinances after a public hearing at 7: 30 p.m.The ordinances are in response to increasing interest from business owners and potential business owners who want to locate along the city's main corridor, said Chip Boyles, city manager."There's been a number of inquiries," Boyles said.

IN MODERN Baltimore, like most cities, it has been assumed that certain key economic activities need to be located in the central business district. The decision by Piper & Marbury to move to a suburban neighborhood challenges those assumptions. If Maryland's largest law firm no longer requires a downtown perch, who does?Piper & Marbury's announcement shocked city boosters, particularly because Francis B. Burch Jr., the Piper & Marbury chairman, is a vice chairman of the Greater Baltimore Committee.

THE GOOD NEWS is that Inner Harbor office buildings have recovered from recession. The bad news is that this success has not yet spread to the older buildings in the central business district. Or as Laurie Schwartz of Downtown Partnership puts it, "Pratt Street may have the high buildings and high occupancy, but it's the financial district with its high vacancies that's casting the shadow on downtown's future."This dichotomy underscores the fragility of the downtown real estate market.While the IBM skyscraper at 100 East Pratt Street sold recently for a record $137 million, many older buildings farther away from the harbor are languishing.

A construction mishap led Saturday to prolonged closures of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and the West Nursery Road business corridor near BWI, but state officials said the roads should reopen by rush hour Monday morning. The problem occurred as crews were carrying out a bridge replacement procedure that was being used for the first time in Maryland. To replace the two spans of the West Nursery Road overpass, they planned to wheel away the old bridges — built in 1948 — and roll new ones in. But they had to halt their work about 12:45 a.m. because the existing bridge deck shifted while they attempted to remove it, according to Valerie Burnette Edgar, spokeswoman for the State Highway Administration.

On Sept. 13, the Arbutus Business and Professional Association celebrated the completion of the Leeds Avenue repaving project and the beginning of the East Drive repaving project with County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, many elected officials and community leaders. I love Arbutus! It's full of hard working people, entrepreneurs and businesses. We have elected officials with their behind-the-scenes people who work tirelessly for us, and community associations who support us. We have an Ice Cream Cottage, town hall, lots of fun eateries and our very own neighborhood movie theater.

Calvert Center, a 17-story office building between Mercy Medical Center and Battle Monument Park, is set to go to auction in October, the auctioneer announced. The roughly 412,000-square-foot high-rise, which formerly housed Bank of America's local operations center, is to be sold at auction on Oct. 11. Bids must be at least $14 per square foot, according to CBRE Auction Services. Seven percent of the building, located at 225 N. Calvert St., is currently occupied, auction materials say. Several major downtown office buildings have been put up for sale recently.

Fifth District Baltimore County Councilman David Marks said Tuesday, July 3, that he will not go forward with a bill that would have created a new zoning overlay district in West Towson. "What I was trying to do was explore the idea of a new zoning classification to build in some protection on the west side of Bosley Avenue, but also accommodate some of the zoning requests," said Marks, who represents Towson. "In some initial discussions I had with community leaders, they seem to indicate they have not supported them, so I decided not to move forward with it," he said.

The jazz quartet's last tune of the lunchtime set at the Columbia lakeside took an up-tempo bebop turn, the sort of sound one might associate with things urban and urbane: the Village Vanguard, maybe Birdland. The band played before a sparse crowd seated on a grassy terraced slope, folks who would get into their cars and drive off through a place that looks much like a suburban office and shopping area with its wide boulevards, tidy lawns, neat rows of trees, and parking lots. Not quite urban.

Attention, Baltimore commuters: The JFX has been reduced to two lanes in each direction. That means, come Monday morning, it's going to be extra-crowded on the expressway. To get to work on time, check out the directions below for alternate routes into the city. And leave early! The expressway's left lanes have been closed near 29 t h St. and Druid Lake Drive to permit repairs to damaged drainage pipes under the highway, said the Baltimore Department of Transportation, which expects the project to take as many as eight weeks.

For a city whose last Fortune 500 company was about to be acquired by an out-of-town corporation, there was not just consolation but actual excitement over one of the deal sweeteners: Chicago-based Exelon Corp. promised to build a new downtown office building for the merged company, the first such construction in Baltimore's central business district since 2004. The competition was spirited among a handful of developers: They produced architectural renderings of shiny towers and lined up contractors and financing packages.

Buoyed by the success last month of Celebrate Taneytown, the city's first festival, business and government leaders now are hoping to reinvent the city's central business district.Fresh paint is Mayor W. Robert Flickinger's vision. Frank W. Neubauer, chairman of the Taneytown Economic Development Commission, looks for aesthetics and an active, not just cosmetic, business redevelopment. Nancy McCormick, chairman of the commission's beautification committee, wants an atmosphere that will nurture existing businesses and attract new ones.

When Towson American Legion Post 22 commander Jim Rebbert looks at a planner's drawing envisioning a future for the patch of land where the post now stands, he gets the jitters. The drawings show businesses and apartments along pleasant, tree-lined thoroughfares, but not the Legion post. "You don't see us there, need I say more?" Rebbert said. T he Legion's leaders have no intention of going anywhere. The county is considering several changes this year that would extend the boundaries of downtown Towson, including one that would allow more intense development on the 14-acre triangular expanse where the Legion post stands just south of Towson Circle.

That Aberdeen and Havre de Grace are to receive $170,000 in Community Legacy Program grants from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development seems like a positive development on first glance. A closer look, however, reveals a bit of state government spending that is discretionary, at best, in a time when the state government is moving in the direction of jacking up taxes on gasoline and any number of other things. The City of Aberdeen is to receive $50,000 which is to be used to help pay for improvements to the facades of businesses in the downtown district.