East Hotel

A Baltimore developer's proposal to build a 27-story, 900-room hotel complex east of the Inner Harbor -- with tens of millions of dollars in government assistance -- has received a crucial nod from the city's economic development agency.Baltimore Development Corp. chose the proposal from H&S Properties Inc., a company owned by the politically connected baking mogul John Paterakis Sr., over two competitors seeking to build downtown mega-hotels.The BDC board's unanimous recommendation now goes to Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who is said to generally favor the $112.

TripAdvisor has announced the winners of its 2013 Travelers' Choice awards for lodging and three Baltimore hotels are among those recognized by the travel website. The awards are based on millions of reviews and feedback from travelers who rated more than 650,000 hotels in categories of Top Hotels, Luxury, Service, Small Hotels, and B&Bs and Inns. The Inn at The Black Olive , where TV stars such as Julia Louis Dreyfus reportedly have stayed, was ranked third among U.S. properties in the Small Hotel category.

The proposed Wyndham Hotel at Inner Harbor East won approval from the city's economic development agency yesterday -- with a price $25 million higher than the original proposal and taxpayers being asked to put up an additional $15 million of the cost.At the same time, the Baltimore Development Corp. voted to delay opening any hotel on city-owned parking lots next to the Baltimore Convention Center -- where Orioles owner Peter Angelos wants to build a Grand Hyatt hotel -- until at least 2002.

Preliminary plans for a red brick and glass hotel near Harbor East were approved Thursday by the city's architectural review panel. The structure, at South Central Avenue and Fleet Street, also will have about 14,000 square feet for retail and restaurants on the first floor, said Neil Tucker, a partner with Chesapeake Real Estate Group LLC. It's too early to name retailers, he said, but that they will be equivalent in quality to retailers currently...

A Laurel hotel clerk foiled a robbery attempt Tuesday when he ran from a gunman and locked himself in a rear office, county police said.A man with a silver handgun walked into the Laurel East Hotel, in the 3400 block of Fort Meade Road, shortly after 8 p.m. and demanded money from a clerk, police said.The clerk, whom police did not identify, went to a rear office, locked himself inside and waited about five minutes. When he left the office, the gunman was gone.No money or property was taken from the hotel, police said.

THE BALTIMORE City Council intended to roll over and play dead rather than oppose a misconceived plan to build a convention hotel a mile away from the Convention Center. But the tremendous outcry against the proposal that dominated a public hearing Thursday night should have shaken the council from its lethargy.This monster edifice is not what people want. It's the council's job to make sure the hotel, in its current configuration, is not stuffed down Baltimoreans' throats.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and developer John Paterakis Sr. have made a case for building a hotel on the bakery mogul's property in Inner Harbor East -- but not one of this size.

When the proposed $124 million Westin Inner Harbor Hotel opens in two years, it will contain separate wings that create a luxury hotel within a hotel.One wing of the planned 600-room, four-star hotel will be a 25-story tower where most rooms will offer guests a view of the harbor. The other, the Harborfront Wing, is envisioned as a five-star hotel within the bigger hotel, containing 80 rooms directly overlooking the Inner Harbor."The general idea is that [both options] will appeal to a broader audience," said Mark A. Lukens, director of development for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., which bought Westin in January.

Three members of a neighborhood coalition have filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the tax exemption for the proposed Wyndham Inner Harbor East Hotel.The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore Circuit Court yesterday by members of the Waterfront Coalition, is an effort to reduce the size of the project. The suit names as defendants the mayor and the City Council, along with three partnerships connected with the Inner Harbor East Hotel. It seeks an injunction, alleging that such action is necessary to prevent the loss of public funds from tax exemptions.

A three-judge panel at the Court of Special Appeals in Annapolis heard arguments yesterday on the zoning approval for the proposed Wyndham Inner Harbor East Hotel.The challenge, filed by the Waterfront Coalition against the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, seeks to invalidate the zoning.Each side had 30 minutes to argue its case. Typically, decisions are rendered within six to eight weeks.In past action, the coalition -- made up of neighborhood groups from Fells Point, Butchers Hill, Canton and East Baltimore -- has sought to set aside the amendment of the Inner Harbor East Master Plan and to obtain an archaeological investigation of buried train tracks thought to be under the hotel site.

EVER SINCE the Schmoke administration gave the go-ahead to the taxpayer-subsidized Inner Harbor East Wyndham hotel a year ago, rival developer Harvey Schulweis has been acting like a jilted suitor. He has now dropped a bombshell by vowing to construct a 28-story hotel on Pratt Street, directly across from Harborplace, without any public subsidies whatsoever.Mr. Schulweis says he hopes to start construction of a 600-room Westin hotel and its 200-space underground garage in late summer and complete the project by the fall of 2000.

DEAR BALTIMORE City Council: Several of you are questioning the proposal to have the city finance the construction of a $305 million hotel to give the downtown convention business a boost. You're in rare form. We're not used to the City Council doing this sort of thing - challenging the mayor, demanding a better deal for taxpayers. I'm impressed. Seven years ago, when the city needed a convention center headquarters hotel, the lame-duck mayor, Kurt Schmoke, wanted to throw what amounted to a $45 million subsidy to Big John Paterakis for his Inner Harbor East hotel - a mile from the convention center.

When Marriott International Inc. begins operating a pair of new lodging projects being built in Inner Harbor East, it will manage 41 percent of all the hotel rooms downtown, giving the Bethesda-based company a significant advantage over local competition.In all, Marriott will operate four distinctly different hotels downtown containing 2,104 rooms beginning in early 2001, and be the only company to manage multiple hospitality properties in the city."The obvious synergy is that they'll be able to refer business to one another," said Warren Marr, director of hospitality and leisure consulting at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, one of the nation's top hotel counseling firms.

The state's second-highest court has upheld a Baltimore Circuit Court ruling that said the 31-story Wyndham Inner Harbor East hotel does not violate a master plan created to guide development in the area near Little Italy.The Court of Special Appeals' ruling on a lawsuit challenging a city ordinance permitting the Wyndham essentially ends a community group's chances to further stall or derail the $134 million project on planning grounds.John C. Murphy, an attorney for the Waterfront Coalition Inc., said the group intends to petition Maryland's highest court to hear the case.

When the proposed $124 million Westin Inner Harbor Hotel opens in two years, it will contain separate wings that create a luxury hotel within a hotel.One wing of the planned 600-room, four-star hotel will be a 25-story tower where most rooms will offer guests a view of the harbor. The other, the Harborfront Wing, is envisioned as a five-star hotel within the bigger hotel, containing 80 rooms directly overlooking the Inner Harbor."The general idea is that [both options] will appeal to a broader audience," said Mark A. Lukens, director of development for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., which bought Westin in January.

A three-judge panel at the Court of Special Appeals in Annapolis heard arguments yesterday on the zoning approval for the proposed Wyndham Inner Harbor East Hotel.The challenge, filed by the Waterfront Coalition against the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, seeks to invalidate the zoning.Each side had 30 minutes to argue its case. Typically, decisions are rendered within six to eight weeks.In past action, the coalition -- made up of neighborhood groups from Fells Point, Butchers Hill, Canton and East Baltimore -- has sought to set aside the amendment of the Inner Harbor East Master Plan and to obtain an archaeological investigation of buried train tracks thought to be under the hotel site.

Three members of a neighborhood coalition have filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the tax exemption for the proposed Wyndham Inner Harbor East Hotel.The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore Circuit Court yesterday by members of the Waterfront Coalition, is an effort to reduce the size of the project. The suit names as defendants the mayor and the City Council, along with three partnerships connected with the Inner Harbor East Hotel. It seeks an injunction, alleging that such action is necessary to prevent the loss of public funds from tax exemptions.

Attacking Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's choice of a 750-room Inner Harbor East hotel to receive potentially tens of millions of dollars in public subsidies, Baltimore's top economic development official warns that the selection could force a city bailout of the hotel and the Convention Center.Baltimore Development Corp. Chairman Roger C. Lipitz's letter to the mayor represents perhaps the most scathing criticism of the controversial decision to award rights to develop a $112 million, 27-story hotel to a politically connected team led by H&S Bakery Inc. owner John Paterakis Sr.Lipitz and a number of industry experts, economists and meeting planners argue that the Inner Harbor East hotel would fail to meet the need for a major new hotel near the Convention Center -- which recently underwent a $151 million expansion and renovation -- because of the hotel's distance from the center.

WHEN BALTIMORE'S Board of Estimates voted unanimously July 23 to approve construction of the $132.6 million, 750-room Wyndham Inner Harbor East Hotel, it took a critical step toward meeting the increased demand for additional hotel rooms in Baltimore. That demand has been spurred by the expansion of the Convention Center, as well as by the current and projected growth in the number of leisure and business travelers to Baltimore.Now that the Board of Estimates has put its formal stamp of approval on the Wyndham Hotel project, I want to take this opportunity to explain the process that has led to the decision to locate a hotel in Inner Harbor East.

Brushing aside criticism of an unfair tax break, the Baltimore City Council cleared the way last night for construction of a controversial Inner Harbor East hotel by freeing developers from paying city property taxes for the next 25 years.The 14-4 vote should allow the builders of the Wyndham Inner Harbor East Hotel, including Baltimore bakery magnate John Paterakis Sr., to break ground on the 31-story, $134 million project by the end of June.As about two dozen opponents of the project chanted, "Wyndham no, children yes," council supporters listed new jobs, expansion of the tourism industry and other new tax income for the city as reasons to favor the 750-room hotel to be located on the waterfront near the intersection of President and Lancaster streets.

EVER SINCE the Schmoke administration gave the go-ahead to the taxpayer-subsidized Inner Harbor East Wyndham hotel a year ago, rival developer Harvey Schulweis has been acting like a jilted suitor. He has now dropped a bombshell by vowing to construct a 28-story hotel on Pratt Street, directly across from Harborplace, without any public subsidies whatsoever.Mr. Schulweis says he hopes to start construction of a 600-room Westin hotel and its 200-space underground garage in late summer and complete the project by the fall of 2000.