Greenway

After originally planning not to move forward, the state is now going ahead with plans to purchase the Greenway Gardens in Morgan Run, according to John Little, director of the Carroll County Department of Parks and Recreation.The state will use money from Program Open Space, a state program that uses real estate taxes to purchase land statewide, to purchase the 27-acre parcel.Greenway Gardens is the state's first major Carroll County land acquisition with open space money in years.

The Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway presented the Town of Perryville with a check for $32,678 earlier this month to help with the renovation of the historic Rodgers Tavern on the town's waterfront. The check, presented to Mayor Jim Eberhardt on Feb. 5, is from a Neighborhood Business Works Grant that the organization collaborated on and received from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. The purpose of the grant is to help with the restoration of the Rodgers Tavern for future public use as a focal point of downtown Perryville business development, according to a news release from the Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway announcing the grant.

The Patapsco Heritage Greenway will offer volunteer naturalist training from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays, July 7 to 25, at Catonsville Community College and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays at the Avalon Area of Patapsco Valley State Park.Participants must be at least 18 years old.The volunteers will learn about plants, trees, wildlife, streams and ecology as well as Native American and local history of the area.After completing the training, the volunteers -- who will be known as Greenway guides -- will be asked to lead at least four walks along the greenway's trails.

Anne Arundel County's largest tract of continuous forest , the South River Greenway, has added another 73 acres in a step toward expanding protection of the sensitive wetlands, county officials said. The state Board of Public Works approved the acquisition of the 62-acre Dorothy Boehm property this month, along with an additional 11 acres, using Maryland Program Open Space funds. The expansion adds to the Bacon Ridge Natural Area, located within the nearly 4,000-acre Greenway in Crownsville, which runs on both sides of the South River.

When talk began two years ago about creating a recreational greenway along the wasteland of the Gwynns Falls Valley, many Baltimoreans declared the idea a pipe dream. Yet the 14-mile system of trails today has received enough funding to become a reality by next summer.Not only has the Gwynns Falls Valley been given federal funds aimed at encouraging alternative transportation modes but two non-profit organizations involved in its planning were recently awarded a total of $883,728 toward implementation costs.

"After 29 years you miss it," Mickey Lotz of Glen Burnie said. "But life goes on and so does the league."The 29 years were at Greenway Glen Burnie. The league is the Wednesday Care Free Ladies, and Lotz would have bowled duckpins for another 29 years at Greenway if a fire hadn't leveled the center just after the 1993-94 season had started.Lotz, past president, secretary, treasurer, past everything in the 12-team women's league, has spent her entire duckpin career with the Care Free Ladies.

Two years ago, the Schmoke administration teamed up with a number of private organizations and set about to create a recreational trail along the Gwynns Falls from Leakin Park to the Inner Harbor and Cherry Hill in South Baltimore.Considering how trash-strewn and polluted that greenway is currently, many residents greeted the idea with skepticism and predicted nothing would come of it. Yet the New York-based Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund late last year gave $883,728 for the implementation of the plan.

What is the oldest bowling league in Anne Arundel?OK, I don't know either, but the oldest league at Greenway Glen Burnie is the 36-year-old Thursday Jills, which has eight teams of five members each.So says Liz Penze, who works the control counter when the women are bowling at Greenway Glen Burnie duckpin center."I know the league has been around for a long time," said Bonnie Keyton, who has been secretary for the league for 15 years and a member for 19.Keyton lives in Severn and carries an average of 100. That average was 116 a short time ago, but she has had foot problems that led to eight operations.

It's dark now, empty and quiet, sitting forlornly among the industrial clutter of East Baltimore.But once upon a time Greenway East bowling center's lights gleamed brightly.A giant among its smaller brothers, the largest duckpin center in the world saw the best and the worst of the duckpin world for three decades."Did you hear the bad news?" were the first words that Joe Rineer, bowling center proprietor and Hall of Fame duckpin bowler, spoke when approached for a comment. "Greenway East is closed."

Artists and landscape architects from around the country will compete this spring to design ways to enliven a six-mile greenway stretching along the Gwynns Falls from Baltimore's Inner Harbor to Leakin Park.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke announced that three artist-led design teams have been selected from among 19 bidders to participate in a two-month competition to develop plans for public amenities for the Gwynns Falls Greenway.The Greenway competition is the third in as many months involvingprime public land in Baltimore.

Caught by the slumping housing market, a large swath of a new-home development in Harford County went to foreclosure auction yesterday and was bought back by the lenders - for $7 million less than what was owed. The lenders, a group of local investors who were the previous owners of that Havre de Grace property, outbid at least one other party to regain the 85 acres that make up phases two and three of Greenway Farm. Their attorney said they plan to move forward with the development, which sits directly to the east of the Bulle Rock Golf Course.

State leaders approved the free transfer yesterday of 547 acres of the former Crownsville Hospital Center to Anne Arundel County, which intends to preserve the environmentally sensitive parcel as parkland with hiking trails. The Board of Public Works' unanimous vote to declare the state land west of Interstate 97 as surplus is a critical step in the county's effort to build a nearly continuous strip of open space stretching from the Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel to Waterworks Park, just outside Annapolis.

City man gets 21 years in cocaine scheme A 41-year-old Baltimore man received a federal prison sentence of more than 21 years yesterday for his role in a conspiracy to sell cocaine. Terrence Moody earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine, 50 grams of crack cocaine and an undisclosed amount of heroin, according to prosecutors. Two of Moody's co-defendants, Larry Yarrall, 30, and Lashavio Gilliam, 37, both of Baltimore, were also sentenced in U.S. District Court yesterday to more than 12 years and more than 10 years in prison, respectively.

Aboard The Jil Carrie-- --In baseball and fishing, opening day is an acquired taste. While there are those who cite crowds and rank amateurs as reasons to stay away, there are thousands more who gladly put up with the little annoyances to kick off the season in style. In cities, they fill ballparks. On the Chesapeake Bay, they fill the boats that fill the water from Susquehanna Flats south to the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Calvert County and beyond. At 5 a.m. yesterday, I joined a group of men who, in good-natured fun, are called "The Legends."

TUCSON, Ariz. / / I went for the warmth, of course, and because Tucson's sprawl embraces classic scenery and classic places. The nickname, "Old Pueblo," hints at that. Yet there's a city here, too, with a bit of downtown arts culture and a university, both commanding space that might otherwise be taken up by yet another lending institution. After I arrived, I drove directly to a residential neighborhood only a few blocks away from the commercial eyesores that neighborhoods need -- gas stations, dry cleaners, convenience stores and fast-food emporia.

Marianne Healey prepares a Christmas centerpiece at Greenway Farms in western Howard. Healey's son, Mike, who runs the business, says he expects this weekend to be the peak for those who want to cut a live tree in the county.

More than four months after a five-alarm fire destroyed the Greenway Bowling Center, owners of the building say they have made no plans to do anything with the site."

Within a few years, people will be able to walk or bike all the way from Leakin Park in northwest Baltimore to Camden Yards -- without crossing a street -- by following a linear park called the Gwynns Falls Greenway.Derelict stretches of the stream valley that now are strewn with tires and discarded furniture will be transformed into a landscaped pathway for nature lovers and urban commuters.A series of pedestrian bridges across the stream will double as neighborhood gathering spots, with coffee shops, snowball stands and community tool sheds built into the sides of the wooden spans.

A man found dead on a Susquehanna State Park trail Saturday was identified yesterday as 60-year-old Richard Edward Lottero, a park volunteer from Havre de Grace, police said. He died of a heart attack, the state medical examiner's office said. A woman hiking on the Heritage Greenway trail spotted his body about 3:40 p.m. and called 911, said Cpl. Ken Turner, spokesman for the Maryland Natural Resources Police. Lottero often helped groom park trails and was believed to be doing so at the time of his death, Turner said.

Ted Niederman was eager to try the newly dedicated Gwynns Falls Trail across western Baltimore yesterday, but one thing nearly stopped him. "I was afraid the place would be so crowded I wouldn't want to be here," said Niederman, a 67-year-old architect who lives in Green Spring Valley in Baltimore County and, at 1 p.m., was the first cyclist in 45 minutes to pass through Middle Branch Park. Bikers and walkers who tested the new parts of the 14-mile trail, which was dedicated Saturday as its last leg opened, enjoyed relative serenity yesterday.