Grant

Homeowners can qualify for rehab assistance An informational meeting on programs offering financial assistance to qualifying homeowners whose house needs rehabilitation or repairs will be held 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Pascal Senior Activity Center, 125 Dorsey Road, Glen Burnie. Leanne Garabedian and Carson Arnold from Arundel Community Development Services will provide information about the property rehabilitation program services available through ACDS, a private nonprofit organization that administers federal, state and local housing and community development funds, as well as affordable housing initiatives.

Developers overseeing the renovation of the American Brewery site in East Baltimore received approval for a $700,000 grant from the city's housing department yesterday. Two companies, Gotham Development and Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, are investing more than $35 million to convert the five-story former brewery into office space for Humanim Inc., a nonprofit social services agency in Columbia. The city's Board of Estimates unanimously approved a forgivable, no-interest loan for the project, which officials said they hope will spark revitalization in blighted blocks nearby.

Public land next to the Severna Park home of a top Department of Natural Resources official is being landscaped under a state grant written by his wife and approved by one of his employees. Michael Slattery, the assistant secretary who oversees the Forest Service, and his wife, Britt, a one-time U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, are actively involved in the two-year project. A $5,800 grant and $12,000 worth of volunteer labor and nonmonetary contributions are paying for the work, according to the application filed with DNR. The project involves shoring up a slope, removing non-native vegetation and replacing it with more than 500 native plants on a 30-foot-wide strip of land between the Slatterys' backyard and the popular B&A Trail, a former rail bed that runs from Glen Burnie to Annapolis.

Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library has received a $500,000 grant from the Carnegie Corp. of New York -- the legacy of 19th-century public library philanthropist Andrew Carnegie -- to improve services to youth, parents and caregivers.Surveys of Pratt patrons have found that more than half of those surveyed are parents and that a significant portion of those are single. Nearly 20 percent of library users, the survey found, bring children with them on library visits.Part of the money will be used to expand the "Family Place Project," which offers parent-child workshops and a parental collection, from two branches to eight.

A center to support female entrepreneurs in rural Maryland will open July 1 in Taneytown with a newly awarded $750,000 federal grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration.The Taneytown site will serve as headquarters for courses, one-on-one counseling, mentoring, a computer laboratory and an "entrepreneurial library" of books and videos.The center will be available to women from rural parts of Baltimore, Carroll, Howard, Washington and Frederick counties, said Bea Checket, founder of the Women's Business Institute, a Baltimore and Annapolis organization that won and will administer the grant.

BaseballBlue Jays: Named Kevin Briand manager of amateur baseball.Braves: Named Gene Watson and Rip Tutor scouts.Devil Rays: Declined to exercise option on 1B Paul Sorrento.Reds: Named Craig Kornfeld and Greg Zunino area scouting supervisors.Rockies: Declined to exercise option on C Kirt Manwaring. Hired Joe McDonald as minor-league scout.BasketballBulls: Placed G B. J. Armstrong, G Corey Benjamin and F-C Lari Ketner on injured list. Waived G Rusty LaRue.Bucks: Waived C Paul Grant. Placed F Darvin Ham and G Rafer Alston on injured list.

An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun made it unclear which office of George Soros' Open Society Institute issued a grant to Civil Justice Inc., a project to mentor lawyers in small firms. The institute's U.S. headquarters in New York issued the grant, not the Baltimore office.Pub Date: 2/13/99

Baltimore will receive more than $5 million in federal public safety money that will help provide 150 cameras in police patrol cars, establish the long-awaited downtown community court and beef up security in city schools.The Board of Estimates held a public hearing yesterday on the federal block grant the Bureau of Justice Assistance plans to award the city. The federal government requires that jurisdictions receiving the grants hold a public hearing before spending the money.The board must approve the use of the money, which members are expected to consider after the new year.

BaseballBlue Jays: Named Kevin Briand manager of amateur baseball.Braves: Named Gene Watson and Rip Tutor scouts.Devil Rays: Declined to exercise option on 1B Paul Sorrento.Reds: Named Craig Kornfeld and Greg Zunino area scouting supervisors.Rockies: Declined to exercise option on C Kirt Manwaring. Hired Joe McDonald as minor-league scout.BasketballBulls: Placed G B. J. Armstrong, G Corey Benjamin and F-C Lari Ketner on injured list. Waived G Rusty LaRue.Bucks: Waived C Paul Grant. Placed F Darvin Ham and G Rafer Alston on injured list.

When President Abraham Lincoln appointed General Ulysses S. Grant overall commander of federal forces in March 9, 1864, he hoped that Grant would be able to coordinate the Union effort and bring the Confederacy to its knees.On May 6, just before Grant engaged Gen. Robert E. Lee at the Battle of the Wilderness, he gave a message for Lincoln to a reporter headed back to Washington: "If you see the president, tell him for me that, whatever happens, there will be no turning back."In 1862, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan stopped just short of Richmond, Va., overestimating the size of the army before him. In 1863, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker sustained major casualties and turned back just beyond the Rapidan River.

At first the connection seems vague between the bustling Saturday morning 32nd Street Farmers Market and an Episcopal church basement filled with energetic preschoolers from around the world. But it is there, one of the social threads that bind communities together. The vendors at the Waverly market pay rent. The market association collects the rent and after paying its bills, gives grants, usually about $500, to nonprofits working in the community. "We usually award $8,000 to $10,000 a year," said Vernon Rey, president of the market.

The group of teens and twentysomethings had no problem summoning an audience for a presentation on community building recently at a West Baltimore youth center. After all, instead of offering suggestions, they're offering money. Big money. To young people just like themselves. At a time when grant givers across the country are tightening their fists amid the recession, the Baltimore-based nonprofit group Youth As Resources (YAR) is helping others their age turn ideas into initiatives with up to $3,500 in funding per project.

His friends, relatives and fellow inmates have been calling Mark Farley Grant by his middle name for years. When he wrote to me last month from Hagerstown, he signed off that way. Monday morning, when I met him in the noisy visiting room of the old state prison there, I called him Farley, too. Farley Grant has been incarcerated since his arrest in January 1983. His mother used to visit him regularly, but she died a few years ago. His older brother died last year. A sister comes now and then, but she has been ill of late.

Those who believe juveniles get away with murder - or that the criminal justice system generally takes too soft an approach toward young men who commit violent crimes - will be pleased to know that Mark Farley Grant has been in prison for 25 1/2 years. He was arrested for murder when he was 14, tried and convicted when he was about to turn 15. A Baltimore judge sentenced Mr. Grant to life in prison. He's 41 years old now, a resident of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services since 1984.

The Department of Justice on Monday cleared the way for the city to receive up to $8.2 million in stimulus funds after lifting a "high risk" designation it had placed on Baltimore's grant applications. The federal agency had threatened in April to withhold new crime-fighting funds because city officials had not properly accounted for grant money received in 1996, 1998 and 2000. That sent city officials digging through archives dating back two administrations for receipts or Board of Estimates agenda items to show auditors how the federal money was spent.

Preservation grant to Baltimore Heritage The National Trust for Historic Preservation said this week that it awarded an $80,000 matching grant to preservation group Baltimore Heritage Inc. to help traditionally African-American neighborhoods with new transit development. The grant is part of $5 million awarded to 21 state and local preservation groups across the country through the nonprofit trust's Partners in the Field grant program. Recipients were given grants to help property owners, developers, local officials and others working to enhance communities through historic preservation and economic revitalization.

Howard County announced yesterday that it has received a $35.5 million state grant to help pay for a $100 million county project to upgrade the county's Little Patuxent Water Reclamation Plant in Savage. The goal of the project is to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into the Patuxent River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay, officials said. James M. Irvin, the county public works director, said the grant from the state Department of the Environment is double the anticipated amount and will enable the county to free up more local funding for other water and sewer projects.

Dr. Albert Grant, a retired cardiologist who believed that his heart attack patients need not lead a sedentary life, died of a stroke Thursday at Delray Medical Center in Delray, Fla. The former Northwest Baltimore was resident was 89. Born Albert Gubnitsky in Baltimore and raised on North Broadway, he later changed his name to Grant. A 1936 City College graduate, he commuted to the University of Maryland, College Park, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1940. He then enrolled at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine and received a degree in 1943.

Homeowners can qualify for rehab assistance An informational meeting on programs offering financial assistance to qualifying homeowners whose house needs rehabilitation or repairs will be held 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Pascal Senior Activity Center, 125 Dorsey Road, Glen Burnie. Leanne Garabedian and Carson Arnold from Arundel Community Development Services will provide information about the property rehabilitation program services available through ACDS, a private nonprofit organization that administers federal, state and local housing and community development funds, as well as affordable housing initiatives.

The Baltimore region is blessed with a large number of grant makers: corporate giving programs, family and private foundations (local and national), giving circles, and donor-advised funds. The grant-making community in our area is alive, well - and very worried. Bad economic times mean greater challenges in meeting even the most basic human needs for food, shelter, and clothing. These conditions impact the very groups that serve the needy. We have already heard about a small community organization that bought office equipment with a loan it is now unable to repay.