Business District

In Sunday's column, I mentioned the shifting of what we consider downtown Baltimore from the old central business district to the city-within-a-city, Harbor East, created by "the Bread Man. " John Paterakis, who made a fortune baking hamburger buns for McDonald's, invested in the old industrial parcels between the Inner Harbor and Fells Point. His investment, sweetened with tax breaks and other incentives from the city, has paid off big-time, and even those of us who ridiculed the long-gone Schmoke administration's decision to give millions to a millionaire have to acknowledge it. But Harbor East today is hardly the quaint, three-story townhouse neighborhood Mr. Paterakis had originally envisioned and pitched to nearby communities.

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.

Harbor Point, a development project led by bakery magnate and developer John Paterakis Sr., will be the site of the headquarters for the combined Constellation-Exelon company if the proposed merger is completed, the energy giants announced Wednesday. The prospect of adding a new office tower to Baltimore's skyline excited city officials and the development community. But some were disappointed that the companies chose a site between Harbor East and Fells Point, rather than in the central business district.

Exelon Corp.'s pledge to build a new Baltimore headquarters as part of its proposed buyout of Constellation Energy could alter the city's skyline, injecting fresh life into the traditional downtown business district or further expanding the waterfront corporate center east of the harbor. While Exelon is not revealing its short list of possible sites for the new building, local real estate brokers and others have identified several attractive potential locations, including some in the core business center and one between Harbor East and Fells Point.

The owner of a dress shop is so fearful of crime along Greenmount Avenue in Waverly that she keeps the door locked even when her shop is open. The man who runs a discount store a block away feels it is safe enough to stroll the avenue with his three young children. A young clerk who just started behind the counter of a doughnut shop is happy to have found work amid the sour economy, but says, "It's scary in here. " The proprietor of the avenue's most expensive restaurant is threatening to leave.

For reasons best known to The Sun, its coverage of the sparsely attended pep rally for State Center neglected to include any meaningful comment from the project's primary public opponents, the Coalition to Save Downtown Baltimore. That's unfortunate, because the local politics of the moment will be fleeting. What matters in the long run will be the adverse total effect of adding over 1 million square feet of unnecessary and highly taxpayer-subsidized office space in midtown when there is already 2 million square feet of vacant space in the downtown business district.

If attendance at a kick-off meeting last week to form a new Sykesville Main Street Association is any indication, then quite a few Sykesville residents, business owners and property owners are hungry to spark new life into downtown Sykesville. Nearly 50 people turned out at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, on Main Street, May 12 to hear guest speaker Steve Moore, president and CEO of Washington, DC Economic Partnership, discuss The Main Street 4-Point Approach, which the town hopes to utilize to revive its sleepy Main Street.

The law firm of Miles & Stockbridge said Thursday that it will move its Baltimore office to the Transamerica Tower by early 2013. The relocation will keep 275 employees in the city's central business district. Miles & Stockbridge is the latest of several large firms to lease space in the 35-story structure, originally constructed for USF&G Corp. and one of downtown's most prominent buildings. Its owner, a subsidiary of Lexington Realty Trust of New York, has spent approximately $45 million on upgrades for new tenants since Legg Mason moved from the building to Harbor East in 2009.

The Downtown Partnership plans to unveil an ambitious proposal Friday to create more than $100 million worth of new parks and public plazas throughout the central business district, including major projects for the Inner Harbor, Charles Center and west side. The proposal would transform the downtown landscape, with a green oasis where the 1st Mariner Arena stands and possibly the demolition of the Lexington Market Arcade to reopen the street as a public thoroughfare. The proposed work could also involve the realignment of city streets to make way for plazas and streetscape improvements.

The advertisement caught my eye: "Let's eat. Fried scrapple and hominy. It's only thirteen cents. " It appeared at the bottom of The Sun's local news page in 1934. If that amount seems low, I found another — 10 cents for country sausage and fried mush. Adjusted for inflation, the scrapple was $2.06 in today's money. The mush (a corn meal dish) would be $1.56 today. These dishes were standard fare at Baltimore's Oriole Cafeteria chain, a business that prospered during the Depression.