Charles Center

As the New Year begins, hopes abound for Baltimore's Mount Royal cultural district. The Schmoke administration has embarked on a campaign to transform the Howard Street corridor into an "avenue of the arts." Architects from around the country are vying to design a performing arts center next to the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. "It's a natural," says Gov. William Donald Schaefer.But 10 blocks south of the cultural district, the picture isn't nearly so bright. Charles Center, the 33-acre renewal area that was the starting point for Baltimore's vaunted Renaissance, took a definite turn for the worse in 1993:* One Charles Center, the Mies van der Rohe-designed office tower that led the downtown building boom when it opened 32 years ago, went on the auction block after its owners defaulted on a $19.6 million mortgage.

In recent days, The Baltimore Sun had three articles that should be read together: Proposed changes to slots law to attract a downtown casino ("Changes planned for Md. slots law"), the Greater Baltimore Committee's desire for a new sports arena and Convention Center expansion ("A sports arena at Inner Harbor?"), and the Travel Section's report on Travel + Leisure's survey showing Baltimore a poor destination, especially because of poor hotels and lack of entertainment ("Survey finds Baltimore not too charming")

A legislative subcommittee yesterday cut $12 million from Gov. William Donald Schaefer's budget that was earmarked to buy One Charles Center, effectively killing talks aimed at the state buying the 22-story building to cut government agencies' rental bills.The move by the health and environment subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee follows an earlier move by a Senate panel to kill the funding, meaning there is little chance the funding will be revived as the state's fiscal 1995 budget nears final form.

Warren Alfred Peterson, an architect and founding partner of one of the most highly regarded design teams in 20th-century Baltimore, died March 21 of complications from pneunomia in Jamestown, N.Y. He was 81. With Charles Brickbauer, Mr. Peterson in 1963 established Peterson and Brickbauer, a small but influential partnership whose buildings for corporate, institutional and residential clients gained attention and praise far beyond Maryland....

One of the original property owners in Baltimore's Charles Center renewal area has sold the last of its holdings there.Metropolitan Real Estate Investments, an affiliate of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., announced this week that it sold the land beneath the One Charles Center office tower last month for an undisclosed sum.Metropolitan Life is affiliated with Metropolitan Structures, the builder that won a city competition to construct the 22-story office...

One Charles Center is the ultimate proof of the old saw about banks: If you owe the bank $1,000 and you don't have it, you have a problem. But if you owe one, say, $19.6 million, and you don't have it, the bank has a problem.But the problems that the 22-story office building at 100 N. Charles St. is likely to cause Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. only begin with the fact that the owner, First Capital Financial Corp. of Chicago, cannot repay a $19.6 million mortgage on the building that it took from Met Life in 1988.

CSX Corp. said yesterday that it will stay at One Charles Center in downtown Baltimore, ending a widespread belief in the real estate community that the transportation giant was preparing to move an additional 500 jobs to Florida.The nation's biggest railroad, which formerly occupied the entire 320,000-square-foot building at 100 N. Charles St., signed a lease for 132,645 square feet of office space through the year 2000, said Kathy Burns, a CSX Transportation Inc. spokeswoman.Ms. Burns said CSX moved 545 workers to Jacksonville, Fla., in 1992 and 1993 as the company consolidated its railroad unit to a single headquarters.

WHEN ORIOLES OWNER Peter G. Angelos acquired One Charles Center a year ago, he bought more than a 22-story office tower. He bought the cornerstone of a 1950s revitalization campaign that produced the city's first modern office campus and paved the way for the transformation of the Inner Harbor.Just think: The 1961 groundbreaking for One Charles Center marked the first time since the late 1920s that a major building was under construction in downtown Baltimore.Mr. Angelos, a young lawyer and member of the City Council in those days, remembers all the excitement.

Peter G. Angelos yesterday completed his $6 million purchase of the One Charles Center downtown office tower, the second building he has bought this year to house his expanding law practice.Angelos' acquisition of the 22-story skyscraper comes months after negotiations to buy the 12-story Sun Life Building collapsed over price. Angelos, the Baltimore Orioles' chief executive, was under some pressure to find new office space because his law firm's lease was expiring at 300 E. Lombard St."The current business plan is to make the building available to tenants seeking first-class office space," Ted Hirsh, an Angelos attorney, said of One Charles Center.

Call it a splurge to look young again as age 30 arrives. Call it an investment in keeping Baltimore's downtown renaissance vital. And, in the case of One Charles Center -- the landmark building that kick-started Baltimore's commercial resurgence when it opened in 1962 -- call the building's newly announced renovation a recession-induced necessity."

On December 29, 2009, CATHERINE ANN SPARKES "CATHY" (nee Maxwell); beloved wife of George M. Sparkes; devoted daughter of Richard and Irene Maxwell; loving sister of Denise Wendler and her husband Kevin; aunt of Karl, Jennifer, and Bradley Wendler, and Katherine Sparkes; daughter-in-law of Alfred and Mary Sparkes; sister-in-law of Alfred Sparkes, Jr. Also survived by many other loving family members and friends. A Memorial Service will be held at the Schimunek Funeral Home Inc., 9705 Belair Road (at Forge Road)

On November 5, 2009, Gerard "Jerry" C. Sauer A Memorial Service will be held at the family owned McComas Funeral Home, P.A., Abingdon, MD on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 7 p.m. Friends may call at the funeral home in Abingdon on Tuesday from 5 to 7 p.m. Those who desire may contribute to Johns Hopkins Children Center, 100 N. Charles Street, 1 Charles Center, Baltimore, MD 21201. Memory tributes may be sent to the family at mccomasfuneralhome.com.

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.

Edward Wilson Jr., former chief relocation agent for the city of Baltimore who had earlier been vice president of Charles Center-Inner Harbor Management Inc. specializing in business relocation, died Friday of cancer at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The longtime Towson resident was 82. Mr. Wilson was born in Radford, Va., and was raised in Lynchburg, Va., and Portsmouth, Va., where he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1945. He joined the Army near the end of World War II, and served as a noncommissioned intelligence officer in Dachau, Germany.

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.

The owners of One Charles Center, the award-winning building that became ground zero of Baltimore's 30-year-old downtown renaissance, this month decided to give it back to its lender after the building's major tenant began moving out.One Charles Center, a 300,000-square-foot structure designed by the world-famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, will become the property of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. of New York, which provided financing for a...

Peter G. Angelos, who led a charge to restore local ownership to the Baltimore Orioles, has turned his attention to restoring downtown's first modern skyscraper to prominence.But the roughly $6 million he bid to buy the One Charles Center office tower will serve as more than Angelos' latest effort to revitalize the city: The 22-story building also will become a permanent home for his expanding law practice."One Charles Center has over the years lost its aura as one of downtown's premier buildings, in part because it has had a single tenant for so long," said Ted Hirsh, an Angelos attorney who handles the firm's real estate matters.

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.