Court Hotel

Morton Sarubin, the developer of the luxurious Peabody Court Hotel, quietly sold it last month for $8.1 million to Metropolitan Commercial Properties Inc. of Baltimore.The new owner is a private company formed in 1990, and the 104-room hotel at 612 Cathedral St. is its first acquisition. Grand Heritage Hotel Co. of Annapolis, the company that has managed the hotel since 1989, will continue to manage it and plans no major remodeling or staff changes, according to Grand Heritage Chairman John Cullen.

Morton "Morty" Sarubin, a politically connected Baltimore developer whose noted projects included the luxurious Peabody Court Hotel and the Beethoven Apartments in Bolton Hill, died Saturday of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Keswick Multi-Care Center. The developer, who was labeled "the landlord with a golden touch" in a Baltimore Magazine article, was 85. Mr. Sarubin was born in Baltimore and raised on Callow Avenue. He attended Polytechnic Institute and was 15 when he enrolled in 1940 at the University of Maryland.

The Harbor Court Hotel, one of the Inner Harbor's early high-profile projects and Baltimore's only five-star hotel, is for sale and is expected to generate strong interest from buyers at a time when hotel values are rising and investors face a shortage of luxury hotel deals. Harbor Court, which opened in 1986 and helped give the city an aura of elegance and sophistication, is being sold by its original owner and developer, Los Angeles-based David Murdock. Murdock, a multimillionaire Los Angeles financier who wowed city officials two decades ago with the upscale waterfront project, is also selling his only other city property, the One Market Center office and retail building at Howard and Lexington streets on the west side.

The Harbor Court hotel will be officially rebranded the InterContinental Harbor Court Baltimore on Monday after a $5 million upgrade that followed the Inner Harbor hotel's sale and management change earlier this year. "It's been positively received by our sister properties as well as our global sales force," Lori Coyne, the hotel's director of sales and marketing, said yesterday. "There's a lot of excitement about having an InterContinental property in Baltimore." InterContinental arrives just as competition in Baltimore's hotel market heats up. Construction is under way on the city's long-awaited convention hotel - a 20-story, 756-room Hilton, on Pratt Street adjacent to the Baltimore Convention Center - which is to open in August 2008.

The Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association and the Harbor Court Hotel have received annual awards from Meetings & Conventions magazine.The association, the nonprofit agency charged with luring tourists and conventions, won a "gold service" award.That award is based on overall professionalism and helpfulness of staff, advice on hotels and site inspections, transportation planning assistance, guidance on local attractions and facilities and liaisons with local vendors and services.

Baltimore's Harbor Court Hotel has joined the prestigious ranks of New York's Plaza, San Francisco's Ritz-Carlton and Paris' Hotel de Crillon by winning a Five Star Diamond Award from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences. The award is based on the anonymous observations of hospitality-industry professionals and some world travelers. Establishments are rated on atmosphere, food, hospitality and cleanliness.The academy is an international award program founded in 1989 and based in New York City.

The Harbor Court Hotel has been rated Maryland's top hotel -- and the 11th-best in America -- in a poll of Conde Nast Traveler magazine readers.The poll listing the top 25 U.S. hotels appears in the magazine's November issue. It is based on the opinions of more than 30,000 readers.The 203-room Inner Harbor hotel joined such prestigious hotels receiving the honor as Four Seasons in Washington, Chicago and Boston and the Ritz-Carltons in Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta.Criteria used to judge destinations around the world include service, rooms, restaurant, location and atmosphere.

J. F. Forstmann Co. Inc., a developer based in Frederick, moved to the Stone House at Westview, 5215 Chairman's Court in Frederick.Barry Blau & Partners, a direct response advertising agency, moved to 849 Fairmount Ave., Suite 200 in Towson.Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market relocated to Annapolis Harbour Center at Maryland Route 2 and Patuxent Boulevard.KudosCornerstone, a Baltimore-based advertising agency, had four finalists in the Best in Baltimore show sponsored by the Advertising Association of Baltimore and three awards in the American Corporate Identity competition.

Their first gubernatorial confrontation of the 1998 election year in Maryland came yesterday among the high rollers.Raymond F. Schoenke Jr., the wealthy insurance company executive from Laytonsville, was meeting Gov. Parris N. Glendening for the first time since Schoenke declared on Jan. 20 that he would challenge Glendening in this year's Democratic primary.Glendening and Schoenke met during President Clinton's fund-raiser luncheon at the Harbor Court Hotel -- an event attended by 25 or so contributors who paid as much as $25,000 to be there.

The Peabody Court Hotel, the long-troubled luxury inn in Mount Vernon, has a new owner.Paul Whetsell, president of CapStar Hotels Inc. of Washington, said his company closed its purchase of the property yesterday. The sale, which had been expected, takes the hotel off the hands of its reluctant owner, NationsBank of Charlotte, N.C.The bank acquired the hotel when its owners defaulted on a loan about two years ago and has been seeking a buyer ever since.Mr. Whetsell did not disclose the price, but he noted that "it's a good time to be buying" hotels.

Baltimore gained a little cachet yesterday when it was announced that the luxury Harbor Court hotel will take on the prestigious InterContinental brand after the acquisition of the complex by a Massachusetts real estate trust for $78 million. Hospitality Properties Trust of Newton, Mass., said an existing agreement was expanded to permit InterContinental Hotels Group to manage the 195-room hotel in the Inner Harbor. InterContinental operates 13 other hotels owned by HPT through 2029. The Harbor Court complex includes 72,000 square feet of office space and an attached garage with 530 spaces.

The Harbor Court Hotel could be sold in as soon as a month, and if the sale proceeds as expected, the new owner likely will retain the name that has signified luxury in Baltimore for more than 20 years, according to people involved in the sale. "We're working with a terrific buyer now," said Edward C. Roohan, president and chief operating officer of Castle & Cooke, the Los Angeles-based development company controlled by Harbor Court owner David Murdock. "This is an independent group but first-class all the way, with a wealth of hospitality experience.

When Bethesda-based photographer Amy Lamb began exhibiting her elegant, meticulously crafted images of flowers more than a decade ago, the digital technology that made the pictures possible was just emerging as a vital new creative tool. Lamb, a former National Institutes of Health scientist whose specialty was molecular biology, took up the camera seriously after taking a beginning photography course at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where one of her assignments was to photograph an orchid show in the museum's botanical gardens.

The Harbor Court Hotel, one of the Inner Harbor's early high-profile projects and Baltimore's only five-star hotel, is for sale and is expected to generate strong interest from buyers at a time when hotel values are rising and investors face a shortage of luxury hotel deals. Harbor Court, which opened in 1986 and helped give the city an aura of elegance and sophistication, is being sold by its original owner and developer, Los Angeles-based David Murdock. Murdock, a multimillionaire Los Angeles financier who wowed city officials two decades ago with the upscale waterfront project, is also selling his only other city property, the One Market Center office and retail building at Howard and Lexington streets on the west side.

The champagne was chilled. So were the towels in the fitness center. In the bathroom, a platoon of tony toiletries appeared to be arranged by a feng shui master. Staying at the Four Seasons in Washington is nice. Very nice. You don't have to be in the $1,500 a night Capital Suite in the hotel's Premier Wing to feel rich there. A room in the "Deluxe Wing" for a mere $375 a night is quite plush: There's even a remote for the clock radio/CD player. No question, if a $100-million, 200-room Four Seasons is built by 2005 along Inner Harbor East as hotel developer and bakery magnate John Paterakis Sr. has promised, it will give Harbor Court Hotel a run for its money.

It wasn't the custom-made Irish linen. Ditto for the Italian marble or the handmade rugs, the silk wall coverings, the frescoes on the ceiling, or even those 5-inch color TV sets mounted in the guest bathrooms.Oh, those things are nice. But to the discriminating traveler, they're practically a given. What makes Baltimore's tony Harbor Court Hotel truly special -- at least in the eyes of the American Academy of Hospitality Services -- is the service. Period."You can look at marble and crystal all day," says Joseph Cinque, the academy's director of operations.

The Harbor Court hotel will be officially rebranded the InterContinental Harbor Court Baltimore on Monday after a $5 million upgrade that followed the Inner Harbor hotel's sale and management change earlier this year. "It's been positively received by our sister properties as well as our global sales force," Lori Coyne, the hotel's director of sales and marketing, said yesterday. "There's a lot of excitement about having an InterContinental property in Baltimore." InterContinental arrives just as competition in Baltimore's hotel market heats up. Construction is under way on the city's long-awaited convention hotel - a 20-story, 756-room Hilton, on Pratt Street adjacent to the Baltimore Convention Center - which is to open in August 2008.

The Harbor Court Hotel could be sold in as soon as a month, and if the sale proceeds as expected, the new owner likely will retain the name that has signified luxury in Baltimore for more than 20 years, according to people involved in the sale. "We're working with a terrific buyer now," said Edward C. Roohan, president and chief operating officer of Castle & Cooke, the Los Angeles-based development company controlled by Harbor Court owner David Murdock. "This is an independent group but first-class all the way, with a wealth of hospitality experience.

Baltimore's Harbor Court Hotel has joined the prestigious ranks of New York's Plaza, San Francisco's Ritz-Carlton and Paris' Hotel de Crillon by winning a Five Star Diamond Award from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences. The award is based on the anonymous observations of hospitality-industry professionals and some world travelers. Establishments are rated on atmosphere, food, hospitality and cleanliness.The academy is an international award program founded in 1989 and based in New York City.

Residents battling construction of the Wyndham Inner Harbor East Hotel headed back to the courtroom yesterday with their third lawsuit, this one challenging the legality of the hotel's tax exemption.Judge Richard T. Rombro took the matter under advisement, after about two hours of arguments.At issue is whether the city had the authority to grant a tax exemption under which the Wyndham is to pay $1 a year for 25 years -- an agreement that hotel opponents say amounts to about $85.6 million in lost property taxes over 25 years.