Gateway

The startling success of Columbia's Gateway corporate park is putting small Howard County shoulder to shoulder with much larger jurisdictions among Maryland's top job producers.Among the top three counties in attracting jobs -- competing with Montgomery and Baltimore -- Howard is becoming less a bedroom suburb and more a place where people work and live.Gateway, south of Route 175 and bordering Interstate 95, is a driving force."What Gateway has allowed the county to do is accommodate the growth of high-tech and corporate firms," said Anirban Basu, director of applied economics at the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University.

NORTH SIOUX CITY, S.D. -- Gateway 2000 Inc. warned yesterday that its third-quarter earnings will drop far below estimates mainly because it spent more money to gear up for personal computer sales that failed to meet its forecasts.The direct-seller of PCs had been expected to earn 47 cents a share, the average estimate of 18 analysts polled by IBES International Inc. But the company said a buildup of computer parts, falling prices and the United Parcel Service strike will push its profit before taxes and charges to "marginal levels."

Construction of a sprawling, multimillion-dollar residential and retail compound on the edge of Columbia is expected to begin next month. The last major obstacles to the retail component of the project, Gateway Overlook, were removed Thursday night when the Planning Board unanimously approved two measures sought by the developer, General Growth Properties Inc. The first was an amendment to permit a tightly restricted gasoline station on the property....

SAN DIEGO -- Acer Inc. has long tried to get a foothold in the United States, but giants like Dell Inc. and Hewlett Packard Co. have constantly tripped up the Taiwanese computer maker. Yesterday, Acer opened a back door into the market, buying Gateway Inc. to instantly become the No. 3 PC seller behind HP and Dell, both in the United States and internationally. Acer's $710 million purchase of Irvine, Calif.-based Gateway marks a final chapter for a pioneer in the U.S. personal computer business whose once iconic cow-spotted boxes and "Gateway Country Stores" harkened back to its all-American roots on an Iowa farm.

Plans for four more structures, including three national restaurants, have been approved at Gateway Overlook, a large upscale residential and retail center under construction in Columbia. It was the second time in a month that the county Planning Board approved elements for the sprawling development, and others will be considered soon. Gateway Overlook is bounded by Route 175, Route 108, Lark Brown Road and Old Waterloo Road. It will be a mixed-use center, with a half-million square feet of residential and commercial space.

Built with the vision of a high-end technology and office park, Columbia Gateway is quickly booming into exactly what developers planned it to be. "It's finally come of age," said Hayes Merkert, senior vice president of Manekin Corp., which is managing an emerging development of four buildings totaling 115,000 square feet. Although developers say Gateway's growth was thwarted by the real estate recession in the early 1990s, development in the park picked up in the mid to late part of the decade, and it hasn't stopped.

Some people thought the sculpture would be a pig. That would be fitting, after all, to mark the entrance to Pigtown and the city's newest gateway project. But what appeared yesterday at the edge of the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood were two 18- foot-tall rusted cages with an iron gate, formerly known as "The Cerberus House," after the mythical dog that guarded Hades. "How am I supposed to like it if I don't know what I'm looking at?" asked James Baldwin, standing at the gateway with a group trying to figure out the neighborhood's latest addition.

Costco Wholesale Corp., the world's largest membership retail company, will expand to a sprawling residential-commercial development on the edge of Columbia, county documents show. Other records indicate that Lowe's Companies Inc., the giant home-improvement firm, also is intended for the project. Expanding to Gateway Overlook would put both companies within about 2.5 miles of major competitors, BJ's Wholesale Club and Home Depot. The property is bounded by Route 175, Route 108, Lark Brown Road and Old Waterloo Road.

Anyone who doubts Baltimore's architectural landscape is leaping into the 21st century needs look no further than the Maryland Institute College of Art's stunning new Gateway building at North and Mount Royal avenues. The drum-shaped dorm and student activity center astride the Jones Falls Expressway has turned heads for months as workers put the final touches on its gleaming glass and steel exterior. When it opens Aug. 24, it will mark the northern anchor of MICA's campus and the newest addition to a local skyline that is winning Baltimore national renown for innovative design.

Sykesville is on its way to having a landscaped gateway entrance from Route 32 into the town and the Warfield Center, its planned business complex. State Highway Administration officials announced this week that construction will begin in the summer on a $3.1 million intersection north of Cooper Drive, near Sykesville Middle School. "This will be the gateway to Route 32," said Robert L. Fisher, SHA district engineer. "It will support the Warfield redevelopment and the state police training center."