Calvert Street

Peace. It's wonderful. Savor it while Milosevic still hasn't overturned Montenegro or the KLA shot any of our guys yet.If Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin were alive today, someone would be running him for mayor.Never send to know for whom the Belle tolls; it tolls for anyone with the temerity to displease him.Without the Calvert House, it just isn't Calvert Street.Pub Date: 6/11/99

A $23 million makeover of the Charles Street bridge at Penn Station will shut one of Baltimore's busiest roadways for roughly 26 months beginning this summer, launching a siege of heavy demolition, rebuilding -- and frustration, as commuters and businesses grapple with traffic upheaval.Area merchants complain that plans to temporarily close the crumbling 1911 northbound span at the midtown Amtrak and commuter rail terminal might ruin their businesses, which feed off expressway access and foot traffic.

Baltimore Planning Commission members approved a 440-space parking garage yesterday for the city's downtown that will require displacement of a dozen businesses, including a popular bar.The $12 million project, which includes demolition of six buildings and the construction of the garage, is designed to alleviate a parking shortage downtown. Parking studies have shown that the city needs 3,600 more spaces downtown for existing businesses."We have lost businesses because of a lack of parking in downtown," said Andrew B. Frank, a director of economic development for Baltimore Development Corp.

Safety commission reissues warning about baby beddingIn reaction to the accidental suffocations of two Maryland babies, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reissued its warning last night about the dangers of putting infants to sleep on soft bedding like comforters and quilts.The state medical examiner concluded Thursday that five-month-olds Matthew Harrison and Ian W. Denny died at the home of Stevensville day care provider Stacy Russum because a quilt used as a protective barrier fell over the upper parts of their bodies.

That does it. It's time to come out, whoever you are -- you who keeps leaving cryptic, taunting markers on our Baltimore intersections.A new Toynbee Idea in Movie 2001 Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter street marker has appeared. You've seen the old ones -- heck, you walk over them every day. The white stenciled messages, clandestinely applied by some guerrilla artist, no doubt, have baffled the locals for years. No one seems to know when they first appeared. And no one knows exactly what the message means.

Fader's Tobacconist, the century-old cigar and pipe emporium that the Fader family sold in February, will move its downtown flagship store early next year to a former Cadillac dealership on South Calvert Street.Fader's building at 107 E. Baltimore St., home to the tobacco products supplier since 1972, will be razed sometime next year to make way for construction of a 34-story skyscraper set to include a suites hotel, office space, restaurants and a parking garage.Fader's expects to close a $265,000 deal to buy the 7,500-square-foot building at 12 S. Calvert from Williams, Jackson and Ewing within the next 10 days, said Michael J. Goeller, Fader's new owner and president.

O. James Lighthizer, a former Anne Arundel County executive and state transportation secretary, was arrested on drunken-driving charges early yesterday after Annapolis police saw him staggering on a sidewalk, then driving erratically on Rowe Boulevard, police said.Lighthizer, 51, of the 1500 block of Eton Way in Crofton recorded a 0.31 percent blood-alcohol content on a Breathalyzer test, three times the level considered legally drunk in Maryland, according to a police report.He was charged with driving while intoxicated, driving under the influence of alcohol, failure to drive to the right of the center line and negligent driving.

FOR YEARS IT WAS known as "Little Hopkins" because it was home to Robert Brent Keyser, a longtime president of the board of the Johns Hopkins University.It has housed doctor's offices and the headquarters of a publishing company.Last spring, it starred as the Baltimore Symphony Associates Decorators' Show House.Now Solomon's Corner, as the historic property at 1201 N. Calvert St. is known, is poised to become Baltimore's newest company headquarters -- the home of Brown Capital Management Inc.Brown president Eddie C. Brown purchased the 55-room mansion this year and wants to move his company there from 809 Cathedral St."

The Baltimore Sun Co. has scrapped plans to sell the newspaper's North Calvert Street offices to a real estate affiliate of the Johns Hopkins Institutions, according to a company memorandum issued yesterday.The decision to end negotiations on the deal -- in which the Sun Co. would have sold its property to Dome Corp. for $10 million and then leased space from it after a lengthy $10 million renovation -- stems from an ownership change involving the six-story 501 N. Calvert St. building and a 650-space parking garage next door.

In the 21 years that the Baltimore Symphony Associates has sponsored tours of decorators' show houses, the group has never featured a residence in or close to downtown Baltimore, and it has never featured a rowhouse.That will change next year, with the group's selection of a 55-room mansion called Solomon's Corner as the 1998 Symphony Decorators' Show House.The five-level, 16,000-square-foot dwelling, at 1201 N. Calvert St., is actually two rowhouses combined into one. It has never been on a public house tour.

The call about Michael Phelps' car accident on Calvert Street crackled over the newsroom police radio as I was about to leave work Thursday night. My first thought was, when I get home, I'll have to go online and see what happened. But then, a moment of clarity, a sense of the absurdity: I was going to get on my computer to see what was happening on a street corner just several blocks from where I was standing? When did the real world become a place for people who can't handle the Internet?

A 28-year-old woman who was slightly injured when her Honda Accord hit a Cadillac Escalade driven by Olympic swimming star Michael Phelps in Baltimore's Mid-Town Belvedere neighborhood is to be charged with running a red light, a city police spokesman said Friday. The woman is identified in a police report as Amanda Elizabeth Virkus of Sandy Spring in Montgomery County. If found guilty of the citation, she faces a $180 fine and three points against her driving record. Virkus suffered neck and shoulder injuries, according to the city Fire Department, and was treated at Maryland Shock Trauma Center and released.

A huge water main break caused extensive flooding in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore early yesterday. Several residences and businesses lost water service or had low pressure, and a city official said it could be two days before the area returns to normal. The rupture, which occurred about 4 a.m. in the middle of the 100 block of E. Madison St., at Hargrove Alley, turned city streets into fast-rushing streams carrying sand, mud, rocks and chunks of asphalt. The city's Office of Emergency Management set up a command post to coordinate work by the city Department of Public Works, the Fire Department and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. as city officials expressed concern about the condition of electrical lines, natural gas pipes and a potential collapse of the street, said Kurt Kocher, a public works spokesman.

Carrell L. Jenkins, founder and former president of a Timonium printing company, died of liver failure Dec. 1 at his Towson home. He was 82. Mr. Jenkins was born in Baltimore and raised on North Calvert Street. After graduating from Loyola High School in 1944, he served in the Pacific as a naval signalman. After the war, he entered Loyola College, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1949. He worked selling business machines for several Baltimore companies before co-founding A & F Printing Co. in 1970.

Long-stalled efforts to renovate and expand Baltimore's outdated courthouses began again this month after city officials asked the Maryland Stadium Authority to do a formal study of the project. The city and courts have set aside $700,000 for the feasibility study, which must be approved by two General Assembly committees before it can begin, said George Nilson, the city's solicitor. It would be the second study in five years. The first elaborated on previous reports and identified eight sites where a third courthouse to handle criminal cases could be built.

Pratt St. plan impedes drivers, pedestrians I wonder how much careful study was devoted to the traffic consequences of the proposed Pratt Street revitalization ("New Pratt St.," Sept. 10). While I welcome the added park land at the intersection of Pratt and Light streets that this plan would create, I fear that the plan would have a negative impact on motorists and pedestrians. Even with the addition of northbound lanes on Light Street above Pratt Street, forcing northbound traffic to make a left turn from Pratt Street to head north on Calvert Street is bound to create a backup at busy times of the day or evening.

So you want to know who, exactly, owns that vacant property near you. It's an eyesore and you'd like the name of the guy to complain to. Or you want to buy it and can't figure out where to send the offer. Or you're just nosy. Whatever the reason, you can search for answers without leaving home. http://sdatcert3.resiusa.org/rp_rewrite. It offers a variety of information on properties across Maryland - tax assessment numbers, prior sales history in many cases, whether the property is owner-occupied and, yes, who that owner is. A search on the Calvert Street address where I spend most of my time shows the owner as Tribune Co. and lists a mailing address in Chicago, for instance.

Baltimore city work crews restored water service last night to the part of the Mount Vernon neighborhood affected by a water main break a day earlier, but they said they would have to work through the weekend to reconstruct a damaged road. The break, which occurred in the 200 block of E. Madison St., between North Calvert Street and Guilford Avenue, flooded two streets and prompted the closing of two Maryland State Highway Administration buildings, a spokesman for the Department of Public Works said.

Art festival -- The Inner West Street Association will present the First Sunday Arts Festival from noon to 5 p.m. Sept. 2 on the first block of West Street from Church Circle to Calvert Street. This event will feature live music from Jeff Antoniuk Master Class Jazz Bands and Joe McCarthy Quartet, artists, vendors and crafts, street performers and sidewalk dining. Free. 410- 741-3267 or www.goweststreet.com.

Art festival -- The Inner West Street Association will present the First Sunday Arts Festival from noon to 5 p.m. June 3 on the first block of West Street from Church Circle to Calvert Street. This event will feature the Chuck Durfor Duo and the Unified Jazz Ensemble, artists, vendors and crafts, street performers and sidewalk dining. Free. 410- 990-4540 or www.goweststreet.com.