Harborplace

THE ROLAND PARK Second Presbyterian Church looked absolutely stunning last Saturday for the wedding of Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer and Richard Matthew Dohler. Thousands of wildflowers, miles of lace ribbons and tulle, and window sills decorated with Singapore orchids set the stage for the nuptials of the daughter of pop music star Donna Summer and her first husband, Helmut Sommer,and the son of Dick and Bonna Dohler, he's an Ellicott City builder.The church was filled with the music of German trumpeteer Langston Fitzgerald and selections of Bach, Beethoven and Vivaldi, played by the church's music director Margaret Budd on the organ.

Baltimore police are searching for a man who allegedly took a photograph of a 15-year-old girl in an Inner Harbor bathroom last month by sticking his camera phone underneath her stall. Police said on April 17, the girl noticed someone taking her picture from under the stall, and called out to the person, thinking it was a friend. After she did so, "an unknown male told her he was just messing with his phone," police said. The girl then ran out of the bathroom, police said.

More than 20 years after it left the Baltimore waterfront, McCormick and Co. plans to open a store this summer at the Inner Harbor that will sell spices as well as an updated image of the homegrown company. Shoppers at the McCormick World of Flavors store will not only be able to buy cooking products and gifts. They will also be able to take part in interactive activities and cooking demonstrations that illustrate McCormick's evolution from spice maker to global flavor company.

During a stroll Thursday night from Little Italy to Harborplace, I bought jelly beans in The Best of Luck candy store, listened to a sidewalk trumpeter play the blues, noted several dead lights that left unappealing darkness along Pratt Street, and watched a Baltimore police officer train his flashlight into cars approaching the stop at Pratt and South, apparently looking for anyone not wearing a seat belt. He was the first cop I saw, and I guess his duty was in the cause of public safety, but I'd much rather have seen the man on foot patrol, strolling the sidewalks and Inner Harbor promenade with the rest of us. His presence certainly would have been appreciated 30 minutes later, when a squadron of eight skinny boys on bicycles decided to pop wheelies and fly along the brick walkway between the World Trade Center and the National Aquarium, oblivious (or maybe not)

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. is now open at Harborplace. The restaurant and market takes over the old Phillips anchor space. The restaurant will be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. The restaurant is owned by Houston-based Landry's Inc, which refers to itself as "America's biggest dining, hospitality and entertainment company. " Their holdings include casinos, resorts, hotels and such formerly independently owned restaurants groups as McCormick & Schmick's and Morton's the Steakhouse.

It is time to recycle this once proud and true Baltimore landmark, Harborplace ("Phillips leaving Harborplace," June11). It has served its purpose well, and with Jim Rouse's and Mayor Schaefer' vision took a once languishing passing through town and made it a destination city, attracting in some years even more people than Disney World. Now our great city is again on the decline, it is aging, and but for the Grand Prix, it is boring. So it is time once again to leverage our unique harbor assets to bring Baltimore out of the desert to soar once again.

I've never been to a Bubba Gump Co. I've been reading some online reviews, and it sounds in general like Bubba Gump is better than people thought it was going to be. They have fun there. Not everyone agrees; people seldom do.    Forrest Gump Visits Bubba Gump Shrimp Co in Daytona Beach from SEE Coastal Media on Vimeo .   We can only realy agree that Bubba's "shrimp" speech in Forrest Gump is one of the most excruciating sequences in the history of cinema.

Harborplace & The Gallery has added another new tenant as the downtown Baltimore shopping complex continues efforts to appeal to more area residents and businesspeople as well as to tourists. The shopping center announced Wednesday that IT'SUGAR, a candy shop, will occupy a 3,100-square-foot space on the first floor of the Pratt Street Pavilion this summer. The candy store is the latest business to announce that it's moving to Harborplace, which had lost some of its highest-profile tenants during the recession.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake attended the grand opening of Lenny’s Deli in the Pratt Street Pavilion at Harborplace today. This was the happy pavilion. The announcement today that original tenant Phillip Seafood was leaving this Fall made the Light Street Pavilion made that the sad pavilion. The mayor, according to the an account in the Daily Record, learned of Phillips' closing while attending the grand opening at Lenny's. Lenny's opened in April into what used to be the bottom half of La Tasca , which still occupies the upper level.

After 30 years of performing, Vince Tabron still gets a rush when his singing puts a smile on the face of an audience member. Part Harmony, Tabron's five-member a cappella group, will be among a slew of scheduled entertainment this weekend to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Harborplace, a group of shops and restaurants that have become the focal point of Baltimore's famed Inner Harbor. Part Harmony has been among the street performers performing at Harborplace since 1985. "Everything has grown so vast," said Tabron, a 50-year-old Owings Mills resident who works in the parts department for a car dealership.

Readers might conclude that they were well served by The Sun editorial page's 1971 endorsement of City Council President William Donald Schaefer for mayor. Perhaps less so by its lament that he was "not an inspiring leader" or its prediction that the city would soon "yearn for charisma" from the mayor's office. The Sun has published editorials, usually several a day, throughout almost its entire 175-year history. That adds up to a lot of opinions about the day's news, some of which look prophetic when viewed through the prism of history, others profoundly lamentable.

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. is now open at Harborplace. The restaurant and market takes over the old Phillips anchor space. The restaurant will be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. The restaurant is owned by Houston-based Landry's Inc, which refers to itself as "America's biggest dining, hospitality and entertainment company. " Their holdings include casinos, resorts, hotels and such formerly independently owned restaurants groups as McCormick & Schmick's and Morton's the Steakhouse.

The addition of four national retailers - Anthropologie, J. Crew, MAC Cosmetics and Lululemon Athletica - at Harbor East could solidify the Baltimore waterfront neighborhood as one of the region's top shopping destinations, local retail consultants and business owners said Wednesday. "It makes downtown even more vibrant and attractive to high-quality, upscale retailers," said Mark Millman, chief executive officer of the retail executive hiring firm Millman Search Group in Owings Mills.

More than 20 years after it left the Baltimore waterfront, McCormick and Co. plans to open a store this summer at the Inner Harbor that will sell spices as well as an updated image of the homegrown company. Shoppers at the McCormick World of Flavors store will not only be able to buy cooking products and gifts. They will also be able to take part in interactive activities and cooking demonstrations that illustrate McCormick's evolution from spice maker to global flavor company.

What is it we want from Phillips? Like it or not, the restaurant is the city's unofficial headquarters for Chesapeake seafood. For the last three decades, more visitors to Baltimore likely received their first crab cake from Phillips in Harborplace than anywhere else in Baltimore. I think we want to know that Phillips is representing us well. If, like many, you've found yourself uneasy about how Phillips was performing in this ambassadorial role, I've got some encouraging news for you. Phillips' move across the harbor last fall from the Light Street Pavilion to a new home at the Power Plant has done it a world of good.

Maybe moving out of Harborplace was the best thing that ever happened to Phillips. The Sunday review is of Phillips in its new Power Plant home, where it appears to have settled in very nicely. Whether or not you intend to go to Phillips, you'll be happy to know that visitors to Baltimore are being treated well at Phillips, which serves as Baltimore's de facto orientation center for Chesapeake seafood. I liked the new Phillips. I just wish they'd dim the lighting, which look like they've been pushed up to the surgical setting.

If Ripley's Believe It or Not! opens a proposed "odditorium" museum at the Inner Harbor, it will be hard to miss. To lure visitors to its collection of "amazing exhibits" and "unbelievable & genuine artifacts from around the globe," the Orlando, Fla.-based entertainment company wants an attention-grabbing facade at its proposed site in the Light Street Pavilion at Harborplace. But city officials are pressing the company to tone down the facade's design, which initially featured a three-dimensional sea monster bursting from the building, teeth bared, as its green body coiled around a three-masted ship.

Ripley's Believe It or Not! is negotiating a lease to open a museum at Harborplace, a person with knowledge of the deal said Thursday. The company, known for its "odditoriums," also has a location in Ocean City as well as attractions around the country and world. Ripley's arrival would be the latest event in a burst of tenant activity at the shopping complex in downtown Baltimore. Phillips Seafood announced last week that it was leaving Harborplace. General Growth Properties, the owner of Harborplace, announced shortly afterward that Bubba Gump Shrimp would take the seafood restaurant's place.

After more than 30 years in its original Inner Harbor location, Phillips has moved two piers east and will open the doors of its new location in the Power Plant 4 p.m. today. Lunch service begins on Monday, Nov. 14 at 11:30 a.m. The Phillips folks shared some photographs of the new Phillips with us. You can see them all on the restaurant's Facebook page. Here's how the press release describes the interior. I saw it with my own eyes, and can vouch for it. It's a radical departure from the Harborplace but nothing feels forced or gimmicky.

Stuart L. Buchwald, a former Baltimore professional prestidigitator who performed under the name of "Stuartini the Magnificent," died Oct. 21 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer at his home in Hollywood, Fla. He was 67. Mr. Buchwald was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. After graduating in 1962 from City College, he earned a degree in psychology in 1966 from the University of Baltimore. "Stuart and I have been friends since we were 9 years old. He lived at 4021 Cold Spring Lane, and when my family moved into a home around the corner on Garrison Boulevard, he was the first friend I made, and we've stayed friends for 57 years," said Stuart J. Snyder, a Baltimore lawyer.