Development Agency

A planned expansion by a package handling company that wants to add more than 60 jobs in the Baltimore area has been stalled by community opposition and by a city agency's refusal to modify the building plans at Seton Business Park.Baltimore County Economic Development Director Robert L. Hannon yesterday withdrew a request before the County Council to rezone 20 acres in the business park, which is owned by the city and straddles the city-county border.Hannon said the county could no longer support the planned expansion of RPS Inc. because Baltimore Development Corp.

As workers installed the shiny wooden lanes and unloaded crates of pins, Robert E. Thompson stared at his financial ledger in growing horror. He realized he would be broke before his new Glen Burnie bowling alley had even opened for business.Already $600,000 in debt, his applications for further financing rejected by several banks, Thompson turned to Anne Arundel County's Economic Development Corp. But even this county-financed agency -- set up to promote new business in the county -- turned him down, calling his venture too risky.

Twenty-four merchants threatened with eviction by a proposal to build hundreds of apartments on the west side of downtown Baltimore held a quiet rally yesterday to protest their displacement.Holding signs reading "West Side Merchants Deserve Better," the shopkeepers stood silently at Lexington Street and Park Avenue, near where workers are expected to start demolishing buildings in the spring."I've been here 24 years, and now I'm afraid I will have to close. I feel so sick about this whole thing, I don't know what to do," said Young Cho, owner of Wig House Beauty Salon at 112 W. Lexington St.As part of an effort to rebuild and rejuvenate several blocks on the struggling west side of downtown, the city's development agency is offering to buy dozens of stores and threatening to condemn and seize buildings if the owners refuse.

Park America Inc.'s days warehousing cars at 500 E. Pratt St. may be numbered, but at this point, no one knows exactly what that number is.Six months after Baltimore City Community College unveiled grand plans for a $90 million complex to replace a surface parking lot there, it remains only an asphalt monument to possibilities.BCCC and a Philadelphia developer would like to turn the 240-space lot -- the last undeveloped tract of land near the Inner Harbor -- into a commercial mecca, complete with shopping mall, office tower, hotel and parking garage.

Seeking to build on newly reconstructed public housing in East Baltimore and other improvements, Baltimore's economic development agency wants to create a downtown business park to attract companies that can provide jobs for city residents.Baltimore Development Corp. intends to spend up to $3.5 million in voter-approved economic development bond funds to purchase up to 71 properties along a four-block stretch of the Fayette Street corridor, across the street from the main post office.The agency wants to raze the buildings, many of which are underused and derelict, consolidate the lots into three to five development parcels, and offer the properties to businesses willing to move to the area.

Baltimore County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger has dropped plans to privatize local economic development programs.Ruppersberger concluded that privatization would cost too much and that it might conflict with local chambers of commerce and regional economic development programs. Anyway, he said, he was satisfied with the way the Department of Economic Development was working within the county government."Things are not broken. Why do you need to fix it?" said Ruppersberger's spokesman, Michael H. Davis.

The county pays too little attention to the struggling community along Pioneer Drive in Severn, community activists there say.Residents Yvonne Johnson and Edith Perry say the neighborhood organizations they run have been passed over for funding by the private agency charged with assisting their community and other impoverished areas in the county.As Arundel Community Development Services Inc., the private agency, prepares to pay a Washington-based organization $75,000 for social workers, residents have not been properly consulted, Johnson and Perry say.They have gotten more than 130 residents to sign a petition asking County Executive John G. Gary to meet with residents and to address their concerns.

WHEN MAYOR Kurt L. Schmoke reorganized the Baltimore Development Corp. 15 months ago, he seemed to understand that cronyism was not the best way to run this quasi-governmental economic development agency. A professional replaced a political appointee as president and an independent board substituted for a law firm headed by Schmoke cronies.BDC under M.J. Brodie operates more efficiently. But two recent decisions show the agency, even with an independent board, still does the mayor's bidding.

Plans to privatize Baltimore County's Department of Economic Development have been postponed at least until fall because of a shortage of time and money, and because the department is running well, county officials say.When County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger III took office last year, he said he wanted to set up a private economic development agency that would be more effective in recruiting businesses. Several Maryland counties, including Howard and Anne Arundel, have private agencies.

In the strongest evidence yet that persistent doubts about Baltimore as a destination have been replaced by renewed confidence, three major developers yesterday proposed downtown megahotels that would add at least 800 rooms each.The proposals -- an 800-room Westin on the site of the former News American; an unidentified 800-room hotel a few blocks east on Pratt Street; and a 750-room Hilton at Inner Harbor East and an adjacent 150-suites hotel -- came in at yesterday's deadline in response to a request from the city's economic development agency.

One member of the development team served as the volunteer owner's rep for a $30 million expansion of Baltimore's School for the Arts. Two others recently turned the dilapidated Census Building on Howard Street into Miller's Court, a $20 million center with affordable housing for teachers and offices for local nonprofits. Now they've joined forces in an effort to save one of the most prominent landmarks in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, the historic but dormant Parkway Theatre at 3-5 W. North Ave. Samuel Polakoff, managing director of Cormony Development and a member of the Board of Overseers at the School for the Arts, and Donald and Thibault Manekin of Seawall Development Corp.

Speaking for the first time since a city agency received a subpoena and the offices of a prominent Baltimore developer were raided, Mayor Sheila Dixon characterized the investigation by state prosecutors yesterday as a witch hunt. Dixon, who said she has done nothing wrong and who argued she did not know what the Maryland state prosecutor's office is looking into, said she is cooperating with investigators but believes the probe could be politically motivated. "What would help me is if you go to the state's [prosecutors]

Baltimore officials are moving ahead to condemn property of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation as part of the major west side redevelopment project, while hoping to sign a final agreement by year's end with the New York developer chosen for the job. But local business leaders are exploring ways for the superblock project to move forward without a prolonged legal fight and to resolve the deepening rift between the city and one of its largest charities....

In a decision that could have broad implications for the public's right to inspect the workings of government, Maryland's highest court ruled yesterday that the agency overseeing Baltimore's economic development must open its meetings and its paperwork for public review. Writing that the Baltimore Development Corp. has previously been able "to cloak the business of the citizens of the city of Baltimore behind the veil of a supposedly private corporation," the Court of Appeals dismissed city arguments that the agency's closed-door meetings are legal and crucial to the agency's work.

With access to information about the city's largest property deals at stake, Maryland's highest court heard arguments yesterday on whether the Baltimore Development Corp.'s closed-door operations can persist. The city's economic development agency, which has always operated as a "quasi-public" organization, exempt from state open meetings and public information rules, insists the secrecy is lawful and critical to its work. But the west-side property owners challenging the agency's ways say that with a board chosen by the mayor, a budget funded almost entirely by the city, and responsibility for nearly every major Baltimore development project, the BDC should comply with sunshine laws like any other public body.

City officials, armed with the power of condemnation, are moving to breathe new life into the former Chesapeake Restaurant and other long-vacant properties at the gateway to the Charles North neighborhood, part of the city's arts district near Penn Station and the Charles Theater. Baltimore Development Corp. said yesterday that it is seeking proposals from developers to transform the former landmark restaurant at 1701-1709 N. Charles St., a parking lot and two vacant townhouses around the corner on East Lanvale Street.

FIRST the government taxes you. Then it gives your money to somebody else and calls it economic development. Would it be too much to ask government to reveal what it's doing? Almost 15 years after the Soviet Union imploded from its own incompetence and secretiveness, central economic planning is alive in Maryland. There's Baltimore Development Corp., a $13 million public-private agency that orchestrates millions in annual tax incentives, property seizures and contract awards. There's the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, a $96 million, 300-employee agency that picks statewide business winners and reallocates capital accordingly.

It should have been smooth sailing: The Baltimore Development Corp. wanted Hollander Ridge off its hands, and seven companies wanted to take it. But the city's quasi-public economic development agency has scrapped applications for the 51-acre former public housing project and issued a new request for proposals this week, potentially delaying its sale or lease by eight months because of a legal snag. The agency said it wasn't told by the city housing authority until recently that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires Baltimore to consider financial return above all else when selling or leasing the Pulaski Highway site.

The city is racing toward decisions on who will build a new convention headquarters hotel, where it will be built and other important details, including the number of rooms and its impact on sightlines from Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Sources familiar with the process say an advisory panel of business leaders clearly favored two potential developers over a third and that a key recommendation could go to Mayor Martin O'Malley as early as next week on who should build the project, which is estimated to cost more than $200 million - almost certainly with public financing.

Baltimore's development agency has received five proposals to build apartments and shops in the 400 block of N. Howard St. as part of the city's efforts to rejuvenate the west side of downtown. The Baltimore Development Corp. will evaluate the proposals over the next several weeks and recommend one to Mayor Martin O'Malley by the end of November, said Sharon Grinnell, chief operating officer for the city development agency. The large number of responses to the agency's June request for proposals in the area illustrates the strong interest in the city's project to rebuild the struggling west side of downtown, said M. J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the agency.