Garage

The new Main Street entrance to the Bel Air Municipal Parking Garage has opened. The entrance, which is off of Burns Alley between Courtland Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, was put in to work in conjunction with the new Main Street surface lot the town opened in July on the site of the former BB&T building. Traffic that enters the Main Street lot has the option of using one of the metered spaces on the lot or, if no spaces are available or the weather is rainy or snowy, a motorist can simply drive through the surface lot, cross Burns Alley and enter the parking garage.

Connie and Nancy and I have been best friends since the seventh grade, and when the three of us get together, it is middle school all over again. Card games and board games are part of our mix, and I am happy to report that while I am no better at these games than I was nearly 50 years ago, I am much more mature about losing. I think the wine helps. I have to say, nothing prepared me for life better than Park and Shop, a board game of competitive errand-running. Not even The Game of Life, with its kids and college funds and insurance policies, got me in shape for adulthood any better than Park and Shop.

Baltimore's architectural review board had little to say about renderings of the proposed Harrah's Casino on Russell Street. However, the hulking parking garage sitting behind it — looming above the water, facing drivers on Interstates 95 and 395 — came in for scathing criticism. Three members of Baltimore's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel who met with representatives of the project Thursday rejected the casino plan, saying the parking structure would mar the city's skyline.

A small fire broke out in the top floor of a five-story parking garage in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood this afternoon, according to city fire officials. City firefighters responded to the 100 block of East Read Street where they discovered heavy, dark smoke pouring from the roof. As of 1:45 p.m., firefighters had the fire under control. While there was heavy smoke in the area, no major damage was reported. No one was injured in the fire, fire officials said. Parts of North Calvert and St. Paul streets, near Read Street, were closed while firefighters were on the scene.

William Thomas Napier Martin IX, who with his wife became one of the world's largest collectors and sellers of period vintage postcards, died Wednesday of heart disease at the University of Maryland Medical Center. The Havre de Grace resident was 71. Mr. Martin, who was known as Bill, was living in Albany, N.Y., in the early 1970s, where he was chief of security for Montgomery Ward, with his wife, the former Mary Louise Walker, whom he had married in 1966. A lifelong stamp collector, Mr. Martin felt slightly guilty that he spent hours working on his collection while his wife, who had no interest in stamps, had been reduced to being a "stamp widow.

A Baltimore man was critically injured in a parking garage near the Columbia mall Thursday night when his van jumped a curb and struck a concrete support post, Howard County police said. About 7:09 p.m., Shmuel Yaakov Kleiner, 60, of the 6000 block of Clover Road in the Glen neighborhood of Northwest Baltimore, was driving a 2003 Acura MDX on the first floor of the parking garage at 10490 Little Patuxent Parkway when it hopped a curb and struck the post, police said. Kleiner was medevaced to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in critical condition by Maryland State Police, police said.

Howard County firefighters responded early Sunday morning to a fire in an attached garage in Ellicott City and prevented the blaze from spreading to the house, officials reported. None of the residents of the home in the 5100 block of Britton Lane and no firefighters were injured, but it took 90 minutes to bring the smoky fire, believed to have started among oily rags, under control. Damage was estimated to be about $13,000, but the residents were not displaced. Susan.reimer@baltsun.com Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

The Anne Arundel County school board voted unanimously Wednesday to oppose the city of Annapolis' efforts to build a parking garage and mixed-use development on land adjacent to Annapolis Elementary School, echoing sentiments of some residents who have argued vehemently against the project. Superintendent Kevin Maxwell recommended the board vote against entering into a memorandum of understanding that would have allowed the city to move forward with the project, which calls for using a portion of the parking lot at Annapolis Elementary for a garage.

A developer has filed for a permit to demolish theMorris A. Mechanic Theatre, a decades-old venue that has sat unused for eight years in the heart of downtown Baltimore, and replace it with a $150 million-to-$200 million mixed-use development. OneWest LLC plans to build two 30-story towers containing 600 market-rate apartments, 150,000 square feet of retail space and an underground parking garage on the site at 1 NorthCharles St., the partnership said. "The market is ripe and the financing is available for apartments," said Howard S. Brown, a partner in OneWest and chairman and president of Owings Mills-based David S. Brown Enterprises Ltd., which is managing the development.

On a sunny spring afternoon, children continue a tradition in the downtown playground next to Annapolis Elementary School: shooting hoops, kicking a ball around, riding the swings. Adults, meanwhile, pursue another generations-old practice: arguing the future of the little park, long considered the keystone to waterfront revitalization. "This is as big for Annapolis as Harborplace was for Baltimore," said Alderman Ross H. Arnett III, who days ago joined a 6-3 majority voting to let the city pursue plans to wipe most parking spaces off City Dock and move them to the playground site, enabling the city to make better use of what some say is the most valuable piece of real estate in town, if not in Maryland.