Downtown Partnership

Nearly 1,000 market-rate apartments would be added to downtown Baltimore in the next few years if three projects announced in recent days are completed. "It seems like it all came to fruition this week, but we've been working for a year, year and a half, to get to this point," said Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership, which launched a campaign in spring 2011 to encourage the conversion of underused downtown office buildings into residences. The newest plans include the renovation of one of Baltimore's most distinctive buildings, the conversion of a former department store warehouse and the overhaul of several buildings off a heavily trafficked city center corner.

THERE IS a downside to the Inner Harbor success: As businesses keep gravitating to prestigious locations south of Baltimore Street, aging buildings in more distant parts of the central business district go out of favor. What to do?Downtown Partnership suggests turning vacant and underutilized office buildings along Preston Gardens -- the sliver-like park that divides St. Paul Street across from Mercy Hospital -- into 1,000 apartments. Among eight buildings being considered for conversion are the old 15-story Stanbalt tower as well as the Bell Atlantic and Commercial Credit buildings.

A project to clean up a homeless encampment outside a church in downtown Baltimore recently received an infusion of cash from two developers who have long complained about the area. Khaled Said and Sanket Patel, who are developing hotels along the Fallsway, have committed $30,000 to nearby St. Vincent de Paul Church. The church's park, at the Jones Falls Expressway and Fayette Street, has been a destination for the homeless for four decades. In recent years, tents, lean-tos and leftover food collected on the lot, making it particularly unsanitary and angering neighbors.

Office vacancies worsened, condos sat empty and development hit the brakes, but the recessionary bite out of downtown Baltimore's work force was a lot smaller last year than in 2008, a new report suggests. Employers cut 790 jobs last year, compared with 14,000 jobs lost the year before, according to estimates prepared for the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore. The group, which plans to release its annual State of Downtown report Tuesday, measured economic activity in the one mile around Light and Pratt streets, which includes the west side, Inner Harbor and Harbor East as well as the central business district.

It looks like the "Kitchen Nightmare" might not be over for Baltimore's Cafe Hon . A producer for the show has been calling around town, looking to book people for what appears to be an episode that will check in on how the Hampden restaurant has fared since Chef Gordon Ramsay swooped in last year to help turn the place around. "Kitchen Nightmares" visited the struggling Cafe Hon last fall. The plot surrounded the restaurant's sharp drop in reputation after news broke that owner Denise Whiting had trademarked the word "hon," a beloved Baltimore term of endearment.

The Reeves Agency said yesterday that it has volunteered to provide marketing communications services for Downtown Partnership of Baltimore's "Street Smarts" public education campaign."

Bracing for a change in the way Baltimore handles its downtown poor, the Downtown Partnership and Baltimore Mental Health Systems will extend a program aimed at identifying homeless people and getting them necessary services.The Hands In Partnership program has helped identify 60 downtown homeless people since May. The program involves six public safety guides trained to identify the needy and link them with homeless outreach agencies.In addition, once a month a group canvasses areas where the homeless gather in search of the needy.

At a forgettable, long-shuttered building on North Liberty Street that people hurry past without a second glance, LaTrice Whitaker will be selling cupcakes, playing jazz and pouring mugs of gourmet coffee. At a similarly empty building nearby, two local men will showcase furniture they craft by hand from salvaged wood. And if Sarah Doherty has her way, after sundown every night, the blank facade of 307 W. Baltimore St. will become a virtual movie screen as she projects video artworks onto its arched front windows.

Downtown Baltimore's leading business group proposes luring more people into the city's center by creating a new park, installing dozens of video cameras to deter crime, building at least three parking garages, and allowing free parking at night.The plan, to be unveiled today by the Downtown Partnership, is designed to attract up to 2,300 new employees and 1,000 downtown residents and boost retail sales in the area by $1.5 million a year.The 16-year-old organization is unveiling its strategy for revitalizing Charles Street and the central business district a week before a mayoral election that will bring the first change in city leadership in 12 years.

Baltimore Police Maj. Frank A. Russo, commander of the Central District, will be the new public safety director for the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, a quasi-public group administering additional sanitation and security services in the central business district.Major Russo, a 25-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department, will oversee a crew of 35 uniformed, radio-equipped "public safety guides" downtown -- the security element of the so-called "crime and grime" patrols being established in a special downtown tax district and expected to be deployed in mid-February.