Charles Village

A cabdriver was fatally shot last night as he transported a passenger in Baltimore's Charles Village after a road rage incident on a nearby street, city police said. No arrest had been made late last night, and the nature of the argument was not known, said Agent Donny Moses, a city police spokesman. About 9 p.m., Northern District police received a call of a shooting in the 100 block of W. 28th St. between Maryland Avenue and North Howard Street, Moses said. "When police arrived, they found the driver of a Checker cab slumped in the driver's seat bleeding from a bullet wound to the head," Moses said.

GO SAIL IN THE HARBOR Visit the Pride of Baltimore II when it docks in Baltimore this weekend. The tall ship, an 1812-era reproduction Baltimore clipper, will be open throughout the weekend for free deck tours and day sails, including a one-way trip from Baltimore to Annapolis. .................... The Pride of Baltimore II will be in the Inner Harbor tomorrow through Sunday and in Annapolis Tuesday. Free deck tours will be available 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday. Day sails will be held tomorrow and Saturday at the Inner Harbor and Tuesday in Annapolis 4 p.m.-7 p.m.; Sunday, day sails will be 9 a.m.-noon and 2 p.m.-5 p.m. Tickets are $45. The one-way day sail from Baltimore to Annapolis is 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday, and tickets cost $65. Day sails are limited to 35 passengers; reservations required.

As the graduate student walked by a dark sport utility vehicle on her way to the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus, the men inside the vehicle struck up a conversation with her, asking for directions to North Avenue. Then a passenger emerged from the parked SUV in the 100 block of W. 29th St. and tried to force the 29-year-old woman into the back seat. "He grabbed her arm and started to pull her toward the SUV, and threatened her to come with him," said Maj. Michael Pristoop, commander of Baltimore's Northern District.

Acquisitions PSA Financial, a Lutherville-based financial services firm, acquired RSM McGladrey Insurance Services Inc., a Hunt Valley benefits brokerage and consulting firm. Awards Gail Smith-Howard, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Baltimore, received one of the new Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce's first Year of the Woman Awards. Contracts Merkle, a Lanham-based data marketing agency, contracted with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation of Simi Valley, Calif., to provide fundraising services, including strategy, data analytics and donation processing.

CLOUD 9 CLOTHING Charles Village, 3201 St. Paul St., 410-889-1330 Hours: Monday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. With the opening of their third Cloud 9 Clothing store (and a fourth soon to follow in Rockville), it's understandable if Randy Shayotovich and Priya Rayadurg are feeling, well, on cloud nine. The married couple's new store in Charles Village takes the same concept as their other Cloud 9 stores and expands it: more space, more clothes, more accessories. Located in a new development between a Starbucks and a Chipotle Mexican Grill, this store at 2,130 square feet is nearly double the Cloud 9 Clothing in Canton.

Police have charged a Baltimore man with murder in the fatal beating of a 70-year-old woman last year in North Baltimore.Michael P. Stewart, 47, who lived in the 1100 block of Forrest St. was charged last week with first-degree murder after the state medical examiner's office determined Eunice Heath died May 3 from injuries she suffered during a robbery Nov. 1 of her Charles Village townhouse.Stewart, held since November at the Baltimore City Detention Center on robbery charges, remains a suspect in the homicides of two other elderly people last year during robberies of their homes in the area, police said.

The zoning board rejected a challenge yesterday to the planned demolition of four townhouses in Charles Village to make way for a CVS drugstore and a 16-space parking lot at 25th and Charles streets.About a dozen Charles Village residents protested the plan to demolish the vacant townhouses. They said they wanted to preserve the architectural and historical fabric of the neighborhood by persuading CVS to incorporate the buildings in the pharmacy's design.It was the latest development in a conflict over the design of a proposed CVS pharmacy across the street from a Safeway supermarket on 25th Street between Maryland Avenue and Charles Street that opened two years ago. That part of 25th Street became known as the "book block" because several used bookstores set up shop there.

Michael W. Howard examines a Baltimore map and sees its heart: Charles Village.Clara King moved across the country to live in Baltimore, and has found her calling as a community activist in South Charles Village.Halle Van der Gaag first lived in Charles Village as a Goucher College student, and now, the mother of two young children is determined to make her community a magnet for other parents.This weekend, all three will celebrate -- and of course, take part in -- the Charles Village Festival, a two-day party that expands annually in proportion to thecommunity's renewed sense of cohesion and purpose.

Meeting with Charles Village leaders last night, the Johns Hopkins University unveiled a draft of a new master plan for the Homewood campus in North Baltimore, featuring new parking garages and a pedestrian bridge over Charles Street.The first update of the university's master plan in 95 years, the document is expected to be complete in May.The main problem with the campus, Hopkins officials said, is that it is hard to navigate and uninviting."We hope the campus is an amenity, but many neighbors don't take advantage of it," said Janet Sanfilippo, the university's director of city and community relations.

A 21-year-old college student driving through Charles Village was killed yesterday afternoon when his Honda Civic was broadsided by a car being pursued by at least two or three Baltimore police cruisers.Marc David Levy, a student at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash -- 15 blocks north of where he lived at St. Paul and East Biddle streets in midtown.The impact of the crash sent the cars spinning around 2: 30 p.m. at a busy Charles Village intersection and trapped Levy in a mangled heap of metal.

Neighborhoods thrive when they're home to a mix of residents who reflect a broad range of occupations found in a great city. That's the role of the so-called "creative class" - arts, design and media workers, computer programmers, educators, engineers and scientists - who have been so instrumental in creating lively new communities and driving economic development in post-industrial America. The new apartment building at 26th and Howard streets is therefore just the kind of project Baltimore needs to turn around a once-vibrant pocket of the city.

Woman killed in Glen Burnie hit-and-run 2 A 60-year-old woman was killed in what police are calling a hit-and-run in Glen Burnie about 7 p.m. Saturday. The woman was hit at the intersection of Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard and Oak Lane. She was transported to Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie, according to an Anne Arundel County fire department spokesman. Police are investigating the case and have no information on the driver. Police did not immediately release the victim's name.

My curiosity led me to walk a few blocks from my front door and ask just what was happening at the old Federal Land Bank building on St. Paul Street. This elegant 1923 limestone structure, vacant for years, was obviously being thoroughly renovated, but there was no posted notice giving details or a completion date. I knew of no media hype about it, either. I found an opening in a construction fence at 24th Street, sidestepped piles of bathroom tiles and other construction materials and supply bins, and asked the workers.

Back in 2003, friends of Greg Alexander and Paul Williams told them they had found the perfect house for the couple. Five years later, it appears the friends were spot on. "We couldn't live anywhere else," said Alexander, a 39-year-old freelance writer and editor of Mason-Dixon ARRIVE, a monthly lifestyle magazine. The place he refers to is Charles Village in North Baltimore. The perfect house was (and remains to this day) a meticulously renovated, three-story brick Victorian townhouse with a wide front porch and compact, landscaped front garden.

SUNDAY Citizen Cope Go see American musician Citizen Cope perform tunes at 9 p.m. Sunday at Rams Head Live, 20 Market Place. Doors open at 8 p.m. Cope's music is a fusion of hip-hop, folk and blues, complemented by his rugged voice. Tickets are $35. Call 410-244-1131 or go to tickets.rams headlive.com. The Jolley Twins Trio The Jolley Twins Trio, composed of three brothers who hail from Washington, play as part of a Community Concerts at Second show, beginning at 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Second Presbyterian Church, 4200 St. Paul St. There will also be a silent auction to benefit Govans Ecumenical Development Corp.

If gardeners are ever truly green, it is probably with envy, an emotion that commonly overtakes them when they see someone else's garden. That's never more true than on garden tours, when you pay for a ticket to see gardens that are nicer than yours. Home and garden tours clutter the calendar in late May and early June, when the weather might still be mild and the gardens are at their peak of color and freshness. Saturday and Sunday in Reservoir Hill, Charles Village and Annapolis' Murray Hill neighborhood, many "little gems" will be on display on self-guided walking tours.

Sister Helen Regina Vanick, the retired principal of Charles Village and East Baltimore parochial schools, died of cardiopulmonary collapse Tuesday at her order's Aston, Pa., retirement home. She was 91. Born Ruth Patricia Vanick in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton, she attended St. Anthony of Padua Parochial School and worked as a stenographer at the Montgomery Ward store. In 1935 she entered the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and received the name Sister Helen Regina. She earned an English degree from Mount St. Mary University in Emmitsburg and a master's degree in education from Loyola College.

The Johns Hopkins University hopes to buy a vacant block in Charles Village once planned for luxury condos and transform it into a mixed development of parking, shops and other university uses once the economy rebounds. A Hopkins spokesman said Wednesday that the university is in talks with a joint venture of Baltimore-based Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc. and Canyon Johnson Urban Funds to purchase the property in the 3200 block of St. Paul St. Struever and Canyon Johnson had proposed The Olmsted as luxury condos with price tags as high as $700,000, then shifted to smaller, market-rate and affordable apartments amid the housing slowdown.

Jeanne Knight refers to her 1907 Charles Village row house as "last gasp Victorian," a description that speaks volumes about the neighborhood and its architecture. While the houses immediately to her north are of Arts and Crafts design, hers bears the hallmarks of late Victorian construction. In 2005, she purchased the two-story brick home in the Old Goucher neighborhood, an area bounded by 22nd and 26th streets and Maryland and Guilford avenues that had once been part of the campus of Goucher College before the school relocated to Towson.

Baltimore will become a little more bicycle-friendly today when the city opens its first on-street parking spaces specifically for bikes in front of Eddie's supermarket in Charles Village. The city has replaced one parking space for cars in the 3100 block of St. Paul St. with racks that can accommodate 10 to 12 bikes. Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration is seeking to encourage bicycle use. Nate Evans, a bicycle-pedestrian planner with the city Department of Transportation, said the Charles Village parking is the first of about five such spots that Baltimore will create in commercial districts.