Chain

After more than a century outfitting generations of Baltimore's men, women and children with new shoes, retailing institution Hess Shoes will close its remaining 11 stores, the chain said yesterday.N. Hess' Sons Inc. will begin going-out-of-business sales immediately, said Larry Drombetta, president and chief executive officer.Once the sales are completed, Hess will become the latest in a series of Baltimore retailers such as Hutzler Bros., Hochschild Kohn, Stewart's, O'Neil's and Brager-Gutman whose names have disappeared.

President Barack Obama didn't release his proposed budget for 2014 until Wednesday, but liberals and the AARP have been howling all week about something they expected to be in it. What has our president done to provoke such outrage among his supporters? He's chained CPI. In an attempt to meet Republicans halfway in the battle over taxes and spending, Mr. Obama has offered to change the formula for calculating Social Security's annual cost-of-living increase - an "entitlement reform" GOP leaders have long asked for. The result would not change current Social Security benefits, but it would reduce future raises by an estimated three-tenths of 1 percent in the first year, or about $42 for the average beneficiary.

Evelyn Mogren lets the chips fall where they may nearly every day. After pull-starting her gas-powered chain saw, she deftly applies the tip to a parrot's wing, a fox's tail or a rabbit's fur coat, and their hides and claws begin emerging from blocks of pine. Fragrant chips fly everywhere like rocket-powered confetti, and sawdust blankets the patio at the side of her family's Thunder Hill Road home. It's a paradox unfurling right before an observer's eyes: a vibrating power tool, commonly used to prune trees and harvest firewood, that can just as readily finesse the delicate feathers of a bird, the fine strands of hair on an animal, or a pair of soulful eyes - when guided by skilled hands.

Caribou Coffee is converting to the Peet's Coffee & Tea brand in the Baltimore area, and one of the four area locations, in Owings Mills, will close on Sunday. The Reisterstown Road Caribou is one of 80 "underperforming" stores the company said it decided to close after closely evaluating markets over the past few months. The three other Baltimore area Caribou coffee shops, in Hunt Valley Towne Centre in Hunt Valley, in Gambrills and at North Charles and Fayette streets in downtown Baltimore, will stay open but will be re-branded over the next year and a half.

Ben Schuster, a Holocaust survivor who developed a supermarket chain after moving to Baltimore, died of pulmonary fibrosis Saturday at Sinai Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 85. Born in Holoby, Poland, he graduated from a yeshiva - a Jewish school - and attended two years of college until he was forced to flee because of Nazi persecution. He joined the Polish army and faked an appendicitis attack to avoid fighting. Family members said he spent the rest of the war fleeing the Nazis.

Is anyone in Anne Arundel County -- or anywhere -- missing a goat? A female in very poor condition that's being called Tuscany was found wandering near Linthicum on Thursday and county officials are trying to find out who she belongs to and how she got there. Animal Control responded to a call on Friday after an 11-year-old found Tuscany on River Road in northern Linthicum. The goat had a chain weighing more than 23 pounds hanging from her neck. Though the chain wasn't tight, it was so heavy that it had become embedded in the goat's neck.

A drunken driver crashes into another vehicle. The drunk is injured. The other driver is hurt - maybe even killed. So the drunk gets rushed to the hospital. A police investigator, trained in the handling of evidence in such cases, goes there, too, hoping to collect the blood samples that could convict the perpetrator of driving under the influence or even more serious charges. But once in the emergency room, the investigator is told it is hospital policy not to allow its medical personnel to help collect such evidence because they could be hauled into court and diverted from patient care.

Jos. A. Bank Clothiers Inc.'s stock surged Wednesday after the retailer announced a nearly 13 percent increase in second-quarter profit and plans to expand the chain to 800 locations. Shares in the Hampstead-based men's apparel chain ended the day up $5.81, at $47.44, in Nasdaq trading. Jos. A. Bank expects to grow to 700 full-line stores and about 100 factory stores in the United States, the company said. The chain, which now runs 572 stores, had previously announced plans to grow to 675 stores.

In a radio appearance on ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning on Wednesday, former Orioles pitching coach had some interesting comments about his tenure with the club when asked about the current turmoil surrounding the Boston Red Sox. Mazzone compared his time with the Atlanta Braves, where he helped the team to 14 consecutive division titles and five World Series appearances (including one championship), to his two years with the Orioles. "It all starts at the top. It's called the chain of command.

Baltimore-based Smyth Jewelers has been hired to manage the Bailey Banks & Biddle Group jewelry chain, which has nine locations in seven states, the retailers announced Monday. Smyth, which runs three Smyth stores and two Pandora stores in Maryland, will handle the operations, purchasing, administration and field support for the Bailey stores. Texas-based Bailey runs stores in Arkansas, California, Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. Smyth CEO Mark Motes and the firm's chief operating officer, John Jackson, will oversee the Carrollton, Texas, chain's operations.

Rite Aid agreed Thursday to allow construction of a ShopRite supermarket in West Baltimore's Howard Park neighborhood to move forward. The move appears to eliminate the final impediment to the long-awaited grocery store. A groundbreaking has been scheduled for May 7 and construction should be complete within 10 months, said Howard S. Klein, general counsel of Klein's ShopRite of Maryland. "We have been working on this project since I was a member of the City Council representing this district," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.

With Jos. A. Bank Clothiers Inc. likely poised to announce year-end and fourth-quarter results this week, investors and analysts wonder just how bad it will be. So far this year, stock in the Hampstead-based men's apparel chain has sat out the stock market rally, falling 6 percent even as the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 7 percent. The concern stems from the retailer's January warning that its profit for the fiscal year ended Feb. 2 will be off 20 percent. The problems prompted Zacks Investment Research to dub Jos. A. Bank its "bear of the day" in a report issued last week.

This week, beginning Tuesday, Feb. 19, Seven Oaks Elementary School in Perry Hall will help students celebrate diversity through the school's annual “African American Read-In Chain.” Throughout the week, visitors to the school will share with students some of their favorite  literature written by African American authors.   Some of the school's scheduled readers are Sen. Katherine Klausmeier, Delsgates John Cluster and Eric Bromwell, County Councilman David Marks, and several Baltimore County Public Schools friends and educators, as well as former Seven Oaks Elementary administrators and teachers.

In a cost-cutting move, a logistics division of Lockheed Martin is moving from Johnstown, Pa., to Middle River, according to a company representative. The 78-person Global Supply Chain Services team was notified of the move Thursday, said Emily Caruso, a Lockheed Martin spokeswoman. "Our goal is to make offers to all qualified employees willing to relocate," Caruso said. "We'll supplement that with local hiring. " Lockheed Martin is not renewing the lease on this division's workspace in Johnstown, a move that will save the company $1.6 million annually, she said.

Top Baltimore police commanders, including the director of the agency's training academy, were unaware that training exercises were being conducted at an Owings Mills facility where a rookie University of Maryland officer was shot in the head and critically wounded, officials said Wednesday. Anthony Guglielmi, the city Police Department's chief spokesman, called the training at a former state psychiatric hospital a "communication breakdown in the chain of command," and said the department has identified multiple problems - including the fact that there were no supervisors on site.

Deep Creek Lake Deep Creek Dunk Missed the Polar Bear Plunge in January? Here is your second chance to freeze for the Special Olympics. The 15th Annual Maryland State Police Deep Creek Dunk will be held Feb. 23. After dunking into the frigid water, there will be plenty of food and a wine tasting to warm you up. Registration for the Deep Creek Dunk is noon Febg. 23, with the dunk scheduled at 2 p.m. There is a $50 minimum donation to register. You may also register online at dunkmd.com.

Marylanders do not live by crabs alone. In fact, when it comes to eating, we can pack it away with the best of them, according to some national restaurateurs. The Chili's restaurant on Baltimore's Northern Parkway is among the top 10 in sales volume in the 260-unit chain; a smaller Chili's in Bel Air is in the top 25. Chi-Chi's in Timonium is fourth in sales in the 223-unit chain. And the Red Lobster that opened in White Marsh two months ago has been feeding 10,000 people a week!Evening Sun staff writer Michael Dresser recent described how the Baltimore region -- awash in two-income households, but starved for time in food preparation -- has become increasingly attractive to chain restaurants, from Sfuzzi and Ruth's Chris Steak House in the city, to the Silver Diner in Towson, to others beyond the beltway.

The final chapter in the Chicken George fast-food chain saga appears to have been written by its president, Meldon S. Hollis Jr., who has moved to dissolve the business under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.The filing for Chicken George of Maryland Inc. was made Tuesday by Mr. Hollis, a lawyer and a former city school board president.A secretary at Mr. Hollis' Baltimore law office said that the attorney was in Washington yesterday afternoon and unavailable for comment.Mr. Hollis took control of the chain in January 1989, purchasing it from Jerry Hill, a Baltimore businessman.

Harbor East's Lancaster Street has seen some welcome additions recently. Ouzo Bay's seafood program has impressed many Baltimore diners. Townhouse Kitchen and Bar has settled in as an upscale sports bar with a notable selection of beer. Both of these new restaurants have filled voids in the flashy neighborhood. So what does latest newcomer Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant add? It was a question I kept circling back to during a recent happy-hour trip, with no clear answer. The atmosphere was amiable, our servers were attentive and the beer selection was adequate.

He has used a chain saw to carve intricate wooden sculptures for years, but when Mark Acton won a commission to hew two big new statues by the reservoir in Druid Hill Park, he wasn't sure he could pull it off. His material would be two tree stumps, each more than 12 feet tall and 20 feet around. Both were red oaks, which have especially tough wood. And when he first inspected them, he saw that each had lots of termite damage - the reason the city had cut them down. "'I thought, 'What in the world have I gotten myself into?