City Of Baltimore

One Christmas night years ago, when there were still high-rise public housing complexes in Baltimore and drug gangs terrorizing them, I looked up from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and saw a ring of lights in a high, end-of-row window, the only such lights on the stark west side of the 14-story building. I took it as a small miracle, something like a gift - the spirit alive in one of the most foreboding places in the city - and have kept it with me all these years. I look for Christmas wherever I can find it - even in that bleak, broken Baltimore that seemed for so long hopeless, bogged down in poverty, unemployment and drug addiction.

Brenda J. Clayburn, a founder and later president of the City Union of Baltimore who was also a longtime city Police Department supervisor, died Sunday of undetermined causes at her Northwest Baltimore home. She was 63. "She had recently been sick, and we are waiting the results of an autopsy," said her daughter, Shirley Y. Cooper, who lives in Baltimore. "I was very saddened to learn of the passing of Brenda Clayburn. Brenda was a strong advocate for the thousands of city employees she represented, and she cared deeply for their welfare," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said in a statement Monday.

After reviewing five offers, the city of Baltimore has agreed to sell 38 acres of the former Baltimore Colts training camp in Owings Mills for $4.75 million to the Price Co., the San Diego-based operator of discount retail outlets known as Price Club.Baltimore's Board of Estimates voted yesterday to accept Price's offer, the highest of five submitted after the Schmoke administration solicited offers for the property last summer.John Hentschel, real estate officer for the city, called the transaction a "win-win-win" situation because the sale price exceeds the $4.6 million the city paid Colts owner Robert Irsay in 1986 for the entire Colts property, which includes 100 acres and a training center that the city will continue to own.Mr.

It's holiday cookie contest, time. The City of Baltimore is accepting recipes for its inaugural Holiday Cookie Challenge, which will be held on Dec. 1 at 2 p.m. in the Light Street Pavilion at Harborplace. Bakers of all skill levels can submit recipes for an opportunity to win prizes, including cash. The submission deadline is midnight on Monday, so you have all weekend to chop up your pralines. According to a press release from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, here are the rules in a nutshell: Recipes should be original or modified ones, and clear and concise.

`Right now, it is more dangerous to be a child in the city of Baltimore than it is to be a police officer in the city of Baltimore." -- Mayor Martin O'Malley at a City Hall news conference Friday.

On June 7, 2006 MR. STEWART. Employee of City of Baltimore, Department of Public Works.

Hoping to revitalize a blighted portion of Northeast Baltimore, the city began demolishing a long-vacant, low-income apartment complex yesterday to clear the way for a new, economically diverse housing community. The 307-unit Freedom Village apartments, built south of the current Belair-Edison neighborhood in 1948 for low-income residents, is being torn down. Its 15-acre site - along with 43 adjacent acres where the Claremont Homes public housing development stands - will be used for 500 low-income and market-rate rental units, and homes for sale.

ClarificationA story in Sunday's Today section on Baltimore entrepreneur Michael Lasky referred to back rent and unpaid loan payments owed the city of Baltimore by the owner of Harbor Inn Pier 5, a partnership including Lasky. The payments, totaling more than $158,000, were made the week the story went to press.Pub Date: 3/13/98

An article in the Oct. 15 editions incorrectly reported that the city of Baltimore's settlement of a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of tenants at four city housing projects that have been demolished or are slated for demolition would force residents to move out of the city.The Sun regrets the errors.

THE mood about cruises out of Baltimore is quite upbeat, according to Harriet Segal, head of the port's customer relations, with cruises scheduled for departure to Bermuda, the Caribbean, Canada and South America. Indeed, more passenger ships are scheduled to call at the Port of Baltimore this season than at any time in the past 15 years, say port officials. But the port will have to beef up its passenger business a whole lot to match or surpass the volume before World War II.In 1930, you could go direct weekly from Pier 11 in Canton to Le Havre, France.

About 1,000 Baltimore-area residents are expected to receive thousands of dollars each under a landmark $175 million settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice and Wells Fargo over accusations of discriminatory lending practices. Under the terms of the deal announced Thursday, Wells Fargo also will provide $7.5 million to the city of Baltimore, which federal officials credited with first raising issues of discrimination related to bank's subprime mortgages. The city alleged Wells Fargo steered minorities into subprime loans, gave them less favorable rates than white borrowers and foreclosed on hundreds of Baltimore homes, creating blight and higher public safety costs.

Torrential rainfall brought on by the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee flooded dozens of Baltimore-area roads, and sent the water rising out of rivers and creeks — and rescue crews have responded to more than a dozen calls of stranded drivers since midnight Thursday. And forecasters warn that more rain is on the way. Forecasters said heavy runoff will continue to spark concern into the weekend, as rivers rise behind the region's dams and threaten downstream communities. Carroll County schools delayed opening by two hours Thursday, and Charles County schools closed entirely.

The Maryland Stadium Authority agreed Tuesday to study the feasibility of building a new downtown arena and expanding the Baltimore Convention Center — but directors want the city of Baltimore to help pay part of the study's $150,000 cost. Directors of the state agency voted 6-0 to approve the May 24 request from Gov. Martin O'Malley and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to determine whether the project would be financially viable, and how much tax revenue it could generate. The panel also instructed executive director Michael Frenz to negotiate with city officials to see whether the city would make a "meaningful contribution" toward the cost of the study.

Baltimore may be the Charm City, but there is nothing charming about its treatment of the city's fledging food truck fleet. To protect existing brick-and-mortar businesses from competition, the city recently cracked down on food truck owners who want nothing more than to earn an honest living by selling delicious food to hungry Baltimoreans. The crackdown began two weeks ago, when a city bureaucrat began aggressive enforcement of a city law that restrains food trucks from competing with brick-and-mortar restaurants by requiring them to stay 300 feet — the length of a football field — away from any retail establishment that sells similar food.

Betty L. Johnson, an indefatigable church worker and a founder of the City Temple of Baltimore Baptist Church who also ministered to the homeless and hungry, prison inmates and pregnant teenagers, died Aug. 13 of a stroke at the Joseph Richey House hospice in Baltimore. The longtime Elgin Avenue resident was 94. Betty Law, the daughter of a Baptist minister and a homemaker, was born and raised in Merry Hill, N.C. After graduating from C. G. White High School in Powellsville, N.C., Mrs. Johnson earned a teaching degree from what is now Elizabeth City State University.

It's an elegant little word that ends any number of dramas, from Othello to the Merchant of Venice to - who knows - maybe even High School Musical. Exeunt. The common stage direction, the actors' cue to exit a scene, is Latin for, "They go out." In real life, though, exits tend not to be so simple. Lights don't fade to black, curtains don't fall with finality, the dramatis personae may go rogue and simply refuse to exit, stage left or right. So it went on Wednesday, when the long-running drama of Baltimore's Senator Theatre headed not necessarily toward its final conclusion, but at least the end of one act. Having teetered on the brink of closure for years as a result its owner's mounting debt, the Senator was going to auction.

The Baltimore mayor's chief of staff and two other government officials sued an Ocean City Domino's pizza and related businesses for $30 million after employees at the beachfront pizzeria refused to serve them and allegedly imprisoned them in the restaurant for five to 10 minutes about 1:30 a.m. Aug. 15. The owner of the Ocean City restaurant, John S. Basil, said service was refused because the three were "uncooperative," "belligerent" and "intoxicated," and...

Scott Sedmak of Arnold will take over as chief of business services for the Anne Arundel County Public Library starting Sept. 2.He comes to the library from the city of Baltimore, where he had worked since 1990 as special assistant to the director of finance. He represented the finance director on several key projects, including the renegotiation of the city employees' benefits package and the acquisition of a $62 million multiagency radio communications systems.Pub Date: 8/07/97

The Baltimore mayor's chief of staff and two other government officials sued an Ocean City Domino's pizza and related businesses for $30 million after employees at the beachfront pizzeria refused to serve them and allegedly imprisoned them in the restaurant for five to 10 minutes about 1:30 a.m. Aug. 15. The owner of the Ocean City restaurant, John S. Basil, said service was refused because the three were "uncooperative," "belligerent" and "intoxicated," and...

It's difficult to find much mention of the city of Baltimore these days without reference to crime. There is open argument, in the pages of this newspaper and its online edition, on radio talk shows and in private conversation, about the relative danger of working in or visiting "Charm City." Is it really charming these days, or a place to be avoided because of random acts of violence that appear increasingly directed toward people in neighborhoods that once seemed safe? Everybody has an opinion, it seems - some based on personal experiences, some shaped by a need to reassure potential visitors that there's no need to avoid the place.