Hampton Inn

The city of Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation are teaming up to offer the city's first guaranteed-ride-home service to encourage alternative commuting options. Called the Fare-less Cab, the program offers a safety net for Annapolis-area commuters who work at enrolled businesses and end up working late or need to get home early because of an emergency. "It's like life insurance - it's there just in case," said Paula Chase-Hyman, coordinator for the partnership, Clean Commute Annapolis.

The city of Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation are teaming up to offer the city's first guaranteed-ride-home service to encourage alternative commuting options. Called the Fare-less Cab, the program offers a safety net for Annapolis-area commuters who work at enrolled businesses and end up working late or need to get home early because of an emergency. "It's like life insurance - it's there just in case," said Paula Chase-Hyman, coordinator for the partnership, Clean Commute Annapolis.

Developers said yesterday that they are putting the finishing touches on a plan for a 126-room, limited-service hotel on a small, triangular-shaped lot near Camden Yards on the west side of downtown. Several years in the making, the proposed hotel joins a number that are in the works or on the drawing board in Baltimore. If ground is broken for it in the spring, as planned, the hotel will defy a tough financing environment and become the third limited-service or extended-stay hotel downtown on which construction has begun in recent years.

More housing could be headed to the heart of Baltimore's downtown, in another sign that an area once dominated by office buildings is shifting to hotels and apartments. The city's economic development agency has asked developers to submit plans for turning much of the northwest corner of Calvert and Lombard streets into residences with built-in parking. The city seems interested in a mix of preservation and new construction, with street-level retail. The project area would cover eight buildings - which the city owns, is acquiring or has legal power to buy - that bracket the Brookshire Suites hotel, which is not part of the deal.

The historic USF&G Corp. building, once destined for demolition, will show off an extreme makeover Thursday as downtown Baltimore's newest hotel -- a Hampton Inn & Suites. The $22 million transformation of the 1906 building at Calvert and Redwood streets has been in progress for about three years. "Our concept was to take the historic building and restore the historic areas, and everywhere else to make sure that the customer had all the modern amenities that could be afforded into a hotel," said Rick Diehl, one of the principals of Baltimore-based Focus Development LLC, which developed the hotel.

Construction on the city's next Marriott will not begin by the end of the year, the target date set by its developer. Kevin Urgo, senior vice president of Bethesda-based Urgo Hotels, said he had hoped to get the 176-room Marriott Residence Inn under way on a fenced lot on Redwood Street before the end of this year. But a series of events and opposition has delayed his loans. "We'll have good news in January," Urgo said. Urgo has had both support from the city and opposition from preservationists and labor unions since he proposed the hotel about five years ago. The city approved last month a $3.2 million tax break called a PILOT, or payment in lieu of taxes, for the hotel.

Developers of a Hampton Inn & Suites downtown said yesterday that they expect to break ground in the next week or two, making it one of the first to overcome the economic slump that had stalled projects all over Baltimore. Financing has been the main sticking point for most of the delayed hotels, but industry observers say lenders nationally are looking at some hotels again - and say Baltimore is high on their list for consideration. Focus Development LLC, led by Shaffin Jetha, was able to secure a construction loan from Corus Bank of Chicago for the 116-room hotel at Calvert and Redwood streets.

In Columbia, three extended-stay hotels stand on a swath of land that stretches just longer than a half-mile, and soon, a Hampton Inn hotel will join them. And while the competitors are sandwiched together beside Route 100, company officials say with the extended-stay business booming, there's enough business to go around. "All of this starts with demand," said Tim Sheldon, senior vice president of extended-stay lodging for Bethesda-based Marriott International Inc., adding that different brands of extended-stay hotels have different niches, from a budget stay to upscale accommodations.

Plans to save the long-vacant USF&G Corp. building by converting it into a hotel for Hampton Inn & Suites won initial support yesterday from the city's Design Advisory Panel. The group also looked favorably on the latest revisions to the 225-room luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel planned for Federal Hill, with a few more suggestions on design. The Hampton Inn project calls for adding three stories on top of the former USF&G building, to create a total of 175 suites in the historic building, which has been empty for at least 15 years.