Charles Center

John M. Johansen has painful memories of a time when TV personalities Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas paid $6.8 million to purchase a house he designed in Connecticut, only to tear it down. "It was like a death in the family," he laments. Now the retired architect wants to avert another death - this time a theater he designed for downtown Baltimore. Parking lot operators have purchased the dormant Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Charles Center for $6 million and teamed with a developer who wants to build housing, stores and maybe a hotel on the site.

WHEN AHMAD Kabiryousefi learned he had to move his Burger King restaurant from Charles and Fayette streets in Baltimore, he thought he found an ideal replacement location less than a block away.A six-story building at 8-12 E. Fayette St. offered nearly as much room for a restaurant as his current location in the base of the One Charles Center office tower.It was highly visible.And because it was close to his location, the restaurant owner wasn't afraid of losing customers as a result of the move.

The terror of Friday morning lingered in Natale Caliendo's eyes yesterday as he showed off his healthy cat that -- along with many of his belongings -- survived the fire that heavily damaged five floors of the downtown Charles Center Tower apartment high-rise."

IT CAN take an extraordinary effort by public servants simply doing their jobs to remind the rest of us that there is nothing simple about what they do. Baltimore firefighters, police officers and rescue personnel responded swiftly to the deadly fire early last Friday in a Charles Street apartment building. Their performance in the worst downtown fire in 20 years saved hundreds of lives. They deserve commendation for a job well done.The fire at Charles Center Towers caught sleeping residents off guard.

Efforts to revitalize downtown must start with Charles CenterWe welcome your editorial ("A Charles Center fit to lead a revival," Jan. 11) about the revival of Charles Center. We would like to add information on how the city can achieve renewal of Charles Center, the central business district and the entire downtown, 90 percent of which is not the waterfront.The key is to revitalize the historic Charles Center corridor and provide Baltimore with a vital main street environment. We say this not based on our interests but on discussions with national planners, developers and retailers over the past three years about how Baltimore's downtown can most quickly and inexpensively become the active center it has historically been.

THERE IS a downside to the Inner Harbor success: As businesses keep gravitating to prestigious locations south of Baltimore Street, aging buildings in more distant parts of the central business district go out of favor. What to do?Downtown Partnership suggests turning vacant and underutilized office buildings along Preston Gardens -- the sliver-like park that divides St. Paul Street across from Mercy Hospital -- into 1,000 apartments. Among eight buildings being considered for conversion are the old 15-story Stanbalt tower as well as the Bell Atlantic and Commercial Credit buildings.

IN BALTIMORE'S continuing quest to unify the east and west sides of downtown, no recent change has made a bigger difference than the partial removal of the former Hamburger's clothing store at Fayette and Charles streets.For the first time in 30 years, it is possible to stand on the east side of Charles Street at Fayette and see the west side of town, rather than a dark tunnel, because a major visual barrier has been eliminated.The improvements are to continue this year with the reconstruction of the last remaining fragment of the Hamburger's store as a $6.1 million Downtown Center for the Johns Hopkins University's School of Continuing Studies.

IT makes good sense to create a separate, non-profit corporation to lead and champion development of the 18-block area surrounding the old Howard Street retail corridor. A well-coordinated private-public partnership is essential for this $350 million undertaking to succeed.The West Side Development Corp. should be up and running by mid-September. It faces a formidable task, but the group is better positioned to undertake it than the quasi-governmental Baltimore Development Corp.Indeed, one of the most heartening signs at the announcement of this group's formation last week was the encouragement of M.J. Brodie, who runs the BDC. He praised business leaders involved in the west side effort and the "classic, evolving private-public partnership."

GOING STRONG, Walter Sondheim Jr. is awaiting the millennium like everyone else. It will mark the seventh decade in which he has led efforts to improve Baltimore and Maryland public life.When problems fester, mayors and governors put Mr. Sondheim on boards. When the problems are crucial, they make him chairman.He is the motivator, mediator, facilitator, diplomat, tactician and consensus-builder, harnessing diverse personalities to a common goal.Other people burn out at this sort of thing.

Peter G. Angelos yesterday unveiled a comprehensive revitalization for One Charles Center, two years after the Baltimore lawyer purchased the 22-story skyscraper that helped spark downtown's renaissance.Angelos' real estate arm, Artemis Management & Development Inc., plans to begin work next spring on the elevated plaza surrounding the 100 N. Charles St. building, adding glass on its ground level, as well as lighting, window tinting, cleaning and other improvements.In all, Angelos intends to spend $12 million to add parking, retail and restaurant space, and a new stairwell and entrance to the 320,000-square-foot building, which was completed in 1963.

Bernard Manekin, whose commercial real estate firm that he owned and operated with his brother for more than 50 years succeeded in transforming Baltimore's skyline and self-image, died Saturday in his sleep at his home in the St. James condominiums on North Charles Street. The longtime Northwest Baltimore resident was 95. "He was one of the original visionaries who made our Charles Center and ultimately the Inner Harbor a success. If he hadn't been able to lease One Charles Center in a poor economic climate, the whole project might have died right there," said Martin L. Millspaugh Jr., who was the first chief executive of Charles Center-Inner Harbor Management Inc., which oversaw the development in the 1960s of the harbor and what became Charles Center.

On July 30, 2009, Leo Kahan, Services at SOL LEVINSON & BROS., INC., 8900 Reisterstown Road at Mount Wilson Lane on Sunday, August 2 at 12 noon. Interment Baltimore Hebrew Cemetery, Berrymans Lane. In lieu of flowers contributions in his name may be made to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, S.W., Washington, D.C., 20024-2126 or Johns Hopkins Myeloma Research, One Charles Center, 100 North Charles Street, Suite 234, Baltimore, MD 21201, or the charity of one's choice.

Dr. Barbara Jean Upton In lieu of flowers, condolences may be sent to the Family of Dr. Barbara Upton, 1298 Whirlaway Court, Gambrills, MD 21054. Contributions in her memory may be made to the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, One Charles Center, 100 North Charles Street, Suite 234, Baltimore, MD 21201.

Dr. Barbara Jean Upton In lieu of flowers, condolences may be sent to the Family of Dr. Barbara Upton, 1298 Whirlaway Court, Gambrills, MD 21054. Contributions in her memory may be made to the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, One Charles Center, 100 North Charles Street, Suite 234, Baltimore, MD 21201.

Even in the toughest times, wise leaders take the long view. That's why a plan unveiled last week by Mayor Sheila Dixon to transform a 100-acre arts and entertainment district north of Pennsylvania Station into a $1 billion cultural crossroads over the next 30 years expresses the kind of ambition the city dare not abandon. To be able to see tremendous opportunity where others see only blight and decay is exactly the sort of forward-looking confidence that allowed earlier visionaries such as former Mayor William Donald Schaefer and businessman Walter Sondheim to imagine a revitalized Inner Harbor and a new Charles Center.

On August 11, 2008 Harry M. Ruth. A Funeral Mass will be held at St. Pius X Church on Friday at 10:00A.M. In lieu of flowers contributions may be made to Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, One Charles Center, 100 N. Charles St., Suite 23,Baltimore, Md. 21201.

Even in slow and deliberate Baltimore, things arrive and depart rapidly in the Inner Harbor East. I'd read that several new apartment towers were ready for residents. My niece Liz talks about its jazzy sportswear, shoe and handbag stores. And maybe one day this summer I'll make it to the movie theater complex now that the MTA has routed a new bus line along Fleet Street. Change always unsettles my sense of urban geography. On a short walk this week through the Inner Harbor East (think: Fleet, Lancaster, Caroline and the Jones Falls - the waterway, not the expressway)

Long before Baltimore had its Harborplace pavilions, or the National Aquarium, or Oriole Park, there was Charles Center. The 33-acre district in the heart of downtown might not be as well known as some of the newer spots, and tourists don't typically seek it out. But it is as significant as any other development associated with modern-day Baltimore because, in many ways, it was the catalyst for all that followed, including the even more ambitious effort...

Albert Berney, a retired president the old Hamburger's men's clothing store who served on numerous civic boards, died of respiratory disease Tuesday at Keswick Multi-Care Center. The North Baltimore resident was 88. Born in Baltimore and raised in Reservoir Hill in the Esplanade apartments, he attended Park School and was a 1936 Polytechnic Institute graduate. He earned a degree in accounting at Antioch College in Ohio and was a lieutenant in the Navy in the South Pacific during World War II. In 1949, he became controller of the business founded by his great-grandfather Isaac Hamburger in 1850.

On January 25, 2008, EDWARD STEVE ROTH, JR., age 56 of Essex. He is survived by his mother, Frances (Addie) Roth; his sister, Kathleen Lawrence and his brother, Allan Roth (Pam). He is also survived by nieces and nephews, Christopher, Jennifer, Brian, Daniel, Camryn, John and Eryk. He was predeceased by his father, Edward Steve Roth, Sr. In lieu of flowers, the family would like to request memorial contributions to Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, One Charles Center, 100 N. Charles Street, Suite 234, Baltimore, MD, 21201.