Cross Keys

For many folks headed to Preakness, the focus of the afternoon isn't the race. It's the fashion — and we don't just mean hats. If you're in the grandstands, the Jockey Club area or Corporate Village, you'll want to dress the part. Betsy Dugan, owner of Bettina Collections in Cross Keys and former co-owner of Octavia in Pikesville, has been dressing women for Preakness for years. "This is the time ... to dress up," she said. If there's one rule of thumb, it's that ladies and gentlemen at Preakness should look like ...well, ladies and gentlemen.

Word got out on area blogs over the weekend, and it's true. The Donna's on Snowden River Parkway in Columbia closed Sunday after a 10-year run. “It's been tough,” onwer Alan Hirsch said about the closing. ““It was a great experience. Our customers became our friends. We had a decent business there but just not enough for us to commit to another 10-year lease.” Hirsch said that business continues to be excellent at the Donna's locations in Charles Village and Cross Keys.

The Village of Cross Keys, an upscale North Baltimore shopping center and one of the earliest projects of Columbia founder James W. Rouse, has been sold by General Growth Properties to Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., a retail and office property investor, according to a notice to tenants delivered Wednesday. The center on Falls Road is now being managed by Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., according to the memo to retailers from the center's management office. The open-air shopping center has about 30 shops and restaurants, including Williams-Sonoma, Talbots, Ruth Shaw and Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa. Chicago-based General Growth, which owns most of the malls in the Baltimore area, has been selling off noncore assets to boost its balance sheet since emerging from bankruptcy in 2010.

Cary B. Beehler, a former Cross Keys sales associate and avid bird watcher whose travels took her all over the world in pursuit of her hobby, died May 7 from complications of a stroke at Gilchrist Hospice in Towson. The Blakehurst retirement community resident was 91. The daughter of the owner of Baxter Paper Co. and a homemaker, Cary Baxter was born in Baltimore and raised on Deepdene Road in Roland Park. She attended the Calvert School, Greenwood School and St. Mary's Seminary for Women, now St. Mary's College of Maryland, in St. Mary's City.

Cross Keys Tennis Club will be host to a U.S. Tennis Association-sanctioned mixed doubled tournament Jan. 3-6. Admission is free. For more information, call 433-1800.

The Rouse Co. is seeking City Council approval to expand its retail space at the Village of Cross Keys and make other changes there.Fifth District City Council members Iris Reeves, Rochelle "Rikki" Spector and Vera Hall jointly introduced Monday a bill that would amend a 1972 Planned Unit Development to permit a series of changes proposed by Village of Cross Keys Inc., a Rouse subsidiary.According to the legislation, the Columbia-based developer is seeking authorization to construct a new ballroom annex to the Cross Keys Inn; construct an office building in place of several apartment buildings that were permitted in the previous Cross Keys plan but never constructed; build a "limited number" of town houses; build parking facilities; and convert "some or all of the second floor of the Village Square from office uses to retail uses or to a combination of retail uses and office uses."

You enjoyed eating crepes from the Crepe du Jour cart in the Village Square at Cross Keys; but you wanted, well, a little more in the way of a dining room. Head for Mount Washington, where the owners of the cart, Donna and Mustapha Snoussi, have opened a cafe of the same name at 1609 Sulgrave Ave. This is where Stone Mill Bakery was. Crepe du Jour's new location has been spiffed up with fresh paint and posters from Paris, and the cart's menu has been expanded. You can get crepes with all sorts of savory and sweet fillings, plus salads, quiche and homemade desserts.

The Bun Penny at Cross Keys, the gourmet wine and food shop where friends liked to gather to chat over a cup of coffee, closed Tuesday only two months after the Bun Penny at Harborplace shut down.The closing is another chapter to a saga that began when Rhoda and J. Malcolm Snape, owners of the two Bun Pennys, abandoned their businesses last year and fled to Europe, leaving behind debts of more than $260,000.The Bun Penny shops at Harborplace and the Cross Keys development on Falls Road are both owned by the Rouse Co. The Columbia-based development company was appointed manager of the operations after the stores were put in receivership and was running them until their subsequent closings.

The mention of Cross Keys instantly conjures images of the posh North Baltimore commercial and residential community with its village square that was the dream of visionary developer James W. Rouse. The planned community, which was heavily influenced by the garden cities of Europe and Edward H. Bouton's Roland Park, was conceived and built in the early 1960s on the site of the Baltimore Country Club's former 68-acre golf course. It sprawled along the western edge of Falls Road between Coldspring Lane and Northern Parkway, with its southern boundary being marked by two schools, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and Western High School.

Oprah ate the fried chicken. Howard Cosell came for the breakfast specials. Katharine Hepburn stopped by in scuffed tennis shoes. And the Diner guys, once they outgrew french fries and gravy at the Hilltop Diner, switched their allegiance to the Cross Keys deli.For two decades, the famous noshed with the ordinary at the Village Food Center in North Baltimore's Village of Cross Keys.Retired schoolteachers grabbed a sandwich there after a game of golf. Smartly dressed shoppers took a break from browsing at Nan Duskin and Jones & Jones Inc. Families stood in line for Sunday brunch.

The Village of Cross Keys, an upscale North Baltimore shopping center and one of the earliest projects of Columbia founder James W. Rouse, has been sold by General Growth Properties to Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., a retail and office property investor, according to a notice to tenants delivered Wednesday. The center on Falls Road is now being managed by Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., according to the memo to retailers from the center's management office. The open-air shopping center has about 30 shops and restaurants, including Williams-Sonoma, Talbots, Ruth Shaw and Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa. Chicago-based General Growth, which owns most of the malls in the Baltimore area, has been selling off noncore assets to boost its balance sheet since emerging from bankruptcy in 2010.

Gladys W. Winter, a homemaker and benefactor of several Baltimore cultural institutions, died Wednesday of emphysema at her home on Roland Mews in the Village of Cross Keys. She was 88. Gladys Woolford, the daughter of a banker and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Roland Park. After graduating from Roland Park Country School in 1941, she earned a bachelor's degree in three years at Swarthmore College, graduating in 1944. Mrs. Winter — who had a lifelong love and appreciation of music — also was a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory.

Thomas Robert Lindos, a retired First Home Mortgage loan officer and a continuing education teacher for the Harford County Association of Realtors, died of cancer Dec. 25 at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 64 and lived in the Village of Cross Keys. Born in Baltimore and raised in Towson, he was a 1965 City College graduate. He earned a business degree from the University of Baltimore. As a young man, he worked in sales and marketing and became a mortgage banker at First Home on York Road in Towson.

WOODBINE - The State Highway Administration will assist CSX railroad in closing a section of Route 97 (Old Washington Road) in Carroll County beginning Monday, Nov. 7. The closure is expected to last a week, and is being made to allow CSX crews to repair asphalt and concrete areas around the tracks. The roadway will reopen on Monday, Nov. 14 - weather and work-permitting, SHA officials said. Crews will close both directions of Route 97 at the CSX crossing north of Interstate 70 at the Carroll/Howard line.

Mary Lou Guyther, a former registered nurse who later became a sales associate, died Wednesday of heart failure at Gilchrist Hospice in Towson. She was 93. The daughter of a stone cutter and a homemaker, Mary Lou Tyrie was born in Towson and raised in Texas, Baltimore County. After graduating from Towson Catholic High School, she earned a nursing degree from the Mercy Hospital School of Nursing in 1939. She nursed for several years at what is now Mercy Medical Center until the outbreak of World War II, when she hoped to enter the Navy as a nurse.

Just inside the front door of Jeri Goodman's 10th-floor condominium unit, a highly polished silver sculpture of a pug rests on a hall table, frozen in puppy playfulness. Across the room, a bright red ceramic Buddha on a desk smiles a broad welcome. Wooden penguins frolic in a line at the living room window sill, one pointing its head toward a giant copper patina frog — a sculpture from the backyard of her childhood home — sitting on the bench of a black lacquer baby grand piano.

Nearly 35 years have passed since the late developer James W. Rouse broke ground for a mixed-use community in North Baltimore that he intended to be a model for urban living -- the Village of Cross Keys.Next spring, another developer will begin writing the final chapter of Cross Keys when it starts construction of the last housing that can be constructed there.Mark Building Co., a Columbia concern that has worked closely with the Rouse Co. but never before launched a development in Baltimore, unveiled plans yesterday to complete 16 "cluster houses" that will sell for about $300,000 each.

David Widows describes the Village of Cross Keys as "an oasis within Baltimore city limits." It's a point that probably very few would care to argue.Others compare the neighborhood -- it was James Rouse's original planned urban community -- to a small college campus.Purchased from the Baltimore Country Club in 1962 by the Rouse Co., the 73-acre community today encompasses nine condominium buildings and an upscale shopping area, and it is the business address for a variety of physicians and other professionals.

Arnold Vincent Preston, a former partner of Baker, Watts & Co. who later founded his own investment firm, died Monday of cancer at his Brooklandville home. He was 84. Mr. Preston, the son of an engineer and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Ellicott City. A talented athlete, Mr. Preston was a member of the Maryland All-Star Football Team in 1944 and was a two-time All-Maryland tackle while a student at Calvert Hall College High School. After graduating from Calvert Hall in 1945, he began his college studies at Bucknell University.