Downtown Baltimore

Baltimore : Fatal crash Two die when car hits tractor-trailer Two Baltimore men were killed yesterday morning when the car in which they were riding crashed into a tractor-trailer in the 5100 block of Baltimore National Pike. When police arrived at the scene about 6 a.m., they found a 1999 Cadillac wedged underneath the rear of the tractor-trailer. Police said the driver and his passenger - whose names were not released - died upon impact with the tractor-trailer, which was stopped at a red light.

Army-Navy game expected to bring traffic woes to city Traffic along Interstate 95 and the approaches to downtown Baltimore is expected to be heavy Saturday morning as some 71,000 spectators converge on M&T Bank Stadium for the annual Army-Navy football game, the Maryland Transportation Authority warned yesterday. The authority, which operates the nearby Fort McHenry Tunnel and parts of I-95, urged motorists to travel early or seek alternate routes to avoid backups. Kickoff is at 12:20 p.m., but the authority warned that traffic on I-95 and I-395 in Baltimore will likely be heaviest in the three hours before game time.

TWENTY-FOUR city blocks on the west side of downtown Baltimore would be designated a national historic district, if public officials approve a nomination by local preservationists.Baltimore's Commission on Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) is scheduled next week to consider a request to add to the National Register of Historic Places an area bounded roughly by Park Avenue and Liberty Street on the east, Baltimore Street on the south, Pearl Street on the west and Centre Street on the north.

WHILE BALTIMORE preservationists are already upset about possibly losing historic buildings as part of the city's campaign to redevelop downtown's west side, the Schmoke administration is exploring plans to demolish historic buildings along Charles Street to make way for a parking garage.Baltimore's Planning Commission approved a City Council bill last month that would authorize the city to acquire buildings "in the vicinity of" Charles and Fayette streets to make way for a $10 million, 500-car parking garage.

On one side of the road stand office buildings, upscale retail shops, a popular indoor racquet club and medical offices -- all within easy access of Interstate 83, downtown Baltimore and the Beltway.On the other side is a rolling expanse of field and woodland that forms the threshold to Baltimore County's Green Spring Valley, with wealthy estates and working farms and a community determined to preserve its rural landscape."You've got a recipe for major fighting," said Baltimore County Planning Director Arnold F. "Pat" Keller.

Joel Marshall Bagby, president of his college and university fund-raising firm, died Saturday of lymphatic cancer at Stella Maris Hospice.He was 64 and lived in Monkton.During his long career, Mr. Bagby advised a number of prominent academic institutions on how to woo students and to coax them as graduates to donate money to their alma maters."His forte was that he was a brilliant writer and conceptualizer," said Gerry Willse, a colleague and friend. "He could get to the heart of the matter and make you understand it."

Talk about a gym with a view.Developers are proposing to build a 20-story apartment tower in downtown Baltimore featuring a rooftop exercise complex with windows gazing out at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the glowing clock of the Bromo Seltzer Tower.The Quadrangle Development Corp. of Washington, and Mendel Friedman of Baltimore plan to present sketches of the 300-unit Market Center West apartments to a city architectural review board Thursday.The $30 million-plus project, which would replace a city-owned parking lot at Lombard and Howard streets, would fit with the city's strategy of reviving the west side of downtown by attracting hundreds of students and young professionals, said Edward M. Hord, designer of the project and principal of the Hord Coplan Macht architecture firm.

It's taken me 40-some years to admit the truth. In the weeks before Dec. 25, I indulged in the forbidden pleasures of previewing the Christmas gifts my parents had assembled in the dark corners of the old house on Guilford Avenue.We customarily treated the weeks in early December as the open season of sacred secrecy, preparation and exploration.We did not decorate early, but everything else was in tantalizing progress. To a child, this was a wildly stimulating season, when stuff was going on behind your back yet you were supposed to be on your best behavior.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening has agreed to spend $1.8 million in design funds to restore the historic Hippodrome Theater in downtown Baltimore.But the governor said he wants details about how the project fits into the city's ambitious west-side redevelopment effort and assurances that the state will not be left subsidizing the theater operation.The governor withheld state funds for the second phase of the design work this year after projected theater renovation costs jumped from $35 million to $53 million.

Two Washington, D.C. philanthropies, the Ford Foundation and the National Congress for Community Economic Development, have donated $73,500 to the Maryland Center for Community Development in downtown Baltimore.The award will be used to support public policy programs, including educating community development corporations about welfare's impact on Maryland communities, and evaluating changes in federal work force funding.

Administrators at Mercy Medical Center used an aging, historic trowel on Friday to place an even older brick into the wall of the downtown hospital's latest expansion. Thomas R. Mullen, president and CEO of Mercy Health Services, and Sister Helen Amos, executive chairwoman of its board of trustees, had their hands on history. Cardinal James Gibbons had held the same trowel when the cornerstone was laid for the first hospital building in 1888. Cardinal Lawrence Shehan marked the construction of the current building on St. Paul Place in 1963 with the same trowel.

Light rail the future of transit It is time for the next generation of transit in Baltimore. The Baltimore Metropolitan area is growing and the demand for a reliable transit option is only increasing. How we address this challenge will shape our communities for decades to come -- it will help determine how we connect with each other, to our neighbors and neighborhoods, to our places of work, and play, and worship, and help us continue building a growing and vibrant economy in the region.

Are you in favor of housing Maryland's federal detainees (now spread among two dozen facilities in multiple states) at the former "Supermax" prison in downtown Baltimore? Yes 7% No 92% Not sure 1% (4,486 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Should Baltimore's zoning laws be changed to allow many more venues to offer live entertainment such as concerts and poetry readings? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

Do you think that recent positive signs for the economy mean that the recession is almost over? Yes 81% No 17% Not sure 2% (7,558 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Are you in favor of housing Maryland's federal detainees (now spread among two dozen facilities in multiple states) at the former "Supermax" prison in downtown Baltimore? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

This week's high drama at the Senator Theatre reminded me that owning and maintaining an old entertainment palace is not easy. Put your name on a theatrical mortgage at your own financial and mental peril. The lights of the marquee may impart excitement and glamour. But the anxiety involved with keeping up a roof, walls, furnace and upholstery in a house that seats hundreds of people is a killer. And what about the bank that holds the deed? Two summers ago, I was walking along Baltimore Street and spotted an open door at the Morris Mechanic Theatre, which, at that point, had ceased being an operating entertainment venue.

Ever since the Fort McHenry Tunnel opened in 1985, motorists heading south on Interstate 95 have had to take an exit ramp to head that way. Staying on the main roadway would lead you to Interstate 895 and the Harbor Tunnel. After this weekend, no more. If the weather cooperates, the Maryland Transportation Authority will change the traffic pattern at the I-95/I-895 split Sunday morning so that the road to the Fort McHenry Tunnel becomes the default route. Travelers headed for the smaller Harbor Tunnel, opened in 1957 but only half as busy as its younger counterpart, will be the ones taking a right exit.

Downtown Baltimore has always been a work in progress. From the days of the Baltimore clipper ships lined up at the docks to the shiny Legg Mason headquarters towering above Inner Harbor East today, change is the only constant - without it, whatever economic ambitions the city may harbor are doomed to failure. And while it's understandable that many of us fret over worrisome matters that arise from time to time, such as whether there's an adequate police presence around the waterfront to counter visitors' concerns over unruly teens, the hopeful signs of growth and new development are too often minimized or even overlooked.

Just 12 blocks separate the old headquarters of Legg Mason at 100 Light St. in downtown Baltimore from its glassy new headquarters at 100 International Drive in Harbor East. But it's a quantum leap for the global asset manager - and the city that fought to keep it in town. The 24-story Legg Mason Tower is part of a wave of waterfront development that marks an expansion and redefinition of Baltimore's downtown - from a relatively compact core with a well-defined business district to a new, linear city that encircles the harbor, with eight miles of shoreline and companies and residences spread out all along the water's edge.

How can this be? This isn't supposed to look like this. The other afternoon, while on Redwood Street near Calvert, a group of bellhops unloaded a car and carried luggage into the old Maryland Trust Co. building. One part of me said, 'This is a bank, not a hotel.' The same luggage transfer was happening across the street, at what I still think of as the Baker Watts investment firm. I chuckled at all this. It's been a long, long time since my grandfather brought me downtown to get a fresh stash of silver dollars at the old Maryland Trust.

Filene's Basement in Baltimore's Inner Harbor will remain open after all, since a new buyer emerged Monday for the bankrupt off-price retail chain. Discount retailer Syms Corp. and Vornado Realty Trust won an auction for the New England-based chain in a $62.4 million deal to buy 23 of the retailer's 26 stores, said Gerry Corrigan, managing director of Abacus Advisors, which is helping Filene's with the restructuring. The deal, which is expected to be approved by the bankruptcy court as soon as Thursday, comes less than a week after a winning bid by Men's Wearhouse, which would have closed the Baltimore location in mid-June, was declared invalid by a judge.