Housing Project

Construction has begun on more than 100 housing units for senior citizens in Dundalk. Baltimore County officials gathered this week for a ground breaking for the Greens at Logan Field, a 102-unit development being built on the site of Baltimore's first municipal airfield after World War I. The Enterprise Homes development, scheduled for completion in 2014, is for senior citizens who earn 60 percent or less of the area median income. The $15.2 million project is set to include mostly one-bedroom apartments, plus 18 two-bedroom units.

Construction has begun on more than 100 housing units for senior citizens in Dundalk. Baltimore County officials gathered this week for a ground breaking for the Greens at Logan Field, a 102-unit development being built on the site of Baltimore's first municipal airfield after World War I. The Enterprise Homes development, scheduled for completion in 2014, is for senior citizens who earn 60 percent or less of the area median income. The $15.2 million project is set to include mostly one-bedroom apartments, plus 18 two-bedroom units.

A boy who came home from school and found his mother dead was then bound with belts and duct tape by her alleged killer, whom police arrested last week. Edward Ford, 36, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of 44-year-old Cheryl Thomas, who was discovered dead in her home in the McCulloh Homes housing project near downtown Thursday afternoon. According to police, Thomas' son returned from school and found her in her bedroom, handcuffed behind her back and with her feet bound.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta has agreed to provide $1.3 million to fund affordable housing projects in Baltimore and Cecil County, Maryland's U.S. senators announced Wednesday. "As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I have fought to put funds in the federal checkbook to develop affordable housing," Senator Barbara Mikulski said in a joint statement with Senator Ben Cardin. Developers will work with local member institutions of the Atlanta-based community development bank to construct or renovate 128 residential units, the senators said.

Baltimore County's Planning Board overwhelmingly rejected yesterday a Pikesville-area housing project for the elderly that has pitted a synagogue against many of its neighbors.Veteran planning officials called it the most bitter development dispute to come before the board in years, and both sides had become so entrenched in their positions that mediation efforts failed dismally.Beth Tfiloh Congregation, in the 3300 block of Old Court Road, wants to develop a 152-unit senior citizens housing center on a 35-acre site that already includes the synagogue and a school.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros yesterday announced a $49.6 million federal grant to fund Baltimore's long-discussed plan to raze five high-rises at the Lafayette Courts public housing project and replace them with town homes.A host of federal, state and city officials hailed the Lafayette plan as one that could serve as a model for America's troubled public housing stock, because it calls for less density, more tenant input in management and a better social service infrastructure to support residents.

Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church recently became the latest religious organization in Baltimore to open an affordable housing development, a $1.8 million, 23-unit project called Walker Daniels Housing for the Elderly.The project is located inside two turn-of-the-century row houses and an addition at 2100 to 2104 W. Madison Ave.The apartments, all rented, are named for two former church ministers with the longest service, the Rev. William W. Walker and the Rev. Reginald J. Daniels. They range in size from 300 to 600 square feet.

Seeking to acquaint inner-city dwellers with rental options elsewhere, Baltimore's housing authority has started running weekly tours of suburban apartment complexes for residents of the doomed Lexington Terrace public housing development.The housing authority has run one or two tours a week since late January for residents of the 677-unit Westside housing project, which is set for demolition in July.The tours, paid for with federal relocation funds, are part of city housing chief Daniel P. Henson III's new emphasis on "housing mobility" programs.

Nobody can tell the sorry history of Strathdale Manor Apartments better than the people who live next door in the Frankford community of Northeast Baltimore.For nearly 20 years, they had seen rent court battles, drug deals, vandalism, shootings and abandonment.Now they're worried that a plan to resurrect the mostly vacant apartment complex in the 6100 block of Frankford Ave. will only bring back their neighborhood nightmare. The Frankford Improvement Association is fighting developer Otis Warren's efforts to renovate 535 apartments subsidized by the city and state.

The Boston Heights apartment complex in Annapolis, boarded up fencedoff and empty since late 1989, will reopen next year as newly renovated low-income housing.Work on the 159-unit complex, long beset by open-air drug markets, sporadic violence and slum-like living conditions, is scheduled to begin within the next month.Leslie Steen, president of the non-profit Community Preservation and Development Corp., which bought the complex for $2 million, told the Annapolis City Council Monday night that the complex should reopen as Admiral Oaks by March.

Ground has been broken for an affordable housing complex in West Baltimore, the developer has announced. The $14 million revitalization on the south side of the 3000 block of West North Avenue will consist of two low-rise, elevator buildings. It will replace 20 vacant lots and seven vacant rowhouses, according to a statement released Monday by The Woda Group LLC. Plans call for 22 one-bedroom and 42 two-bedroom units in the buildings. The apartments, which should be complete in June, will be leased to tenants with incomes at or below 60 percent of Baltimore's median income, Woda's statement said.

Twenty years after opening its first large residence for students, the Maryland Institute College of Art plans to build a $16.5 million addition that will increase the number of undergraduates living on campus and help revitalize Baltimore's North Avenue corridor and northern Bolton Hill. College officials intend to break ground this fall on Commons II, a five-story building with 62 apartments that can accommodate about 240 students. When it opens in the fall of 2013, MICA will have on-campus housing for more than 1,000 students, up from practically none in 1991 and enough for more than half of its undergraduates.

A boy who came home from school and found his mother dead was then bound with belts and duct tape by her alleged killer, whom police arrested last week. Edward Ford, 36, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of 44-year-old Cheryl Thomas, who was discovered dead in her home in the McCulloh Homes housing project near downtown Thursday afternoon. According to police, Thomas' son returned from school and found her in her bedroom, handcuffed behind her back and with her feet bound.

A Baltimore jury on Wednesday awarded $1.3 million in damages to a 17-year-old girl, finding that negligence by the Housing Authority of Baltimore City was a substantial factor in lead-paint poisoning she suffered as a young girl. Amafica Woodland lived in a now-demolished house in the Flag House Courts housing project in East Baltimore until she was nearly 3. Her attorney, Scott Nevin, said he expected the award to be reduced to $690,000 because of a state cap on non-economic damages.

A controversial big housing development in western Maryland that was reported last fall to be shelved apparently has new life. Terrapin Run, which sparked lawsuits and legislation to strengthen the state's Smart Growth laws, is back on track, Columbia developer Michael Carnock told WCBC radio in Cumberland.  He said he hopes to proceed with his original plan to build 4,000 townhomes in eastern Allegany County. The developer had reportedly been trying to sell the 935-acre site near the Green Ridge State Forest, and Allegany's county commissioners agreed to drop their lawsuit against the state planning and environment departments to aid a sale, according to the radio station.

A decade after the Department of Veterans Affairs closed its hospital at Fort Howard, most of the buildings at the sprawling Baltimore County waterfront property are boarded up. A big rusty pole in front of the old facility has no flag. But there are plans to turn the site into a huge, mixed-use development for veterans and senior citizens. Nearby residents oppose the developer's proposal, but the Department of Veterans Affairs is moving forward with the project, which has the backing of elected officials.

Mayor Martin O'Malley and several other elected officials held a groundbreaking ceremony yesterday for a 166-unit affordable and mixed-income housing project on Broadway just south of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Broadway Overlook, which will be funded in part by a $21 million federal grant, will be built next to the former Church Hospital and replace the high-rise Broadway Homes complex that were demolished two years ago. Developer Judy Seigel and partners plan to build a community of brick rowhouses, with trees and lawns in front.

Even before construction begins on a new housing project for the elderly in Towson, there is a waiting list."Every apartment is taken," said Jim Choplick, director of communications for Catholic Charities, which will manage the low-cost, 82-unit complex at Chesapeake and Virginia avenues called Trinity House.Today, the $6.1 million project -- a collaborative effort funded by jTC Baltimore County and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development -- moves closer to becoming a reality with a groundbreaking ceremony at 2:30 p.m. Guests are expected to include Baltimore County Executive C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger III, Cardinal William H. Keeler and Harold A. Smith, executive director of Catholic Charities.

The former executive director of the Havre de Grace housing authority was sentenced Monday to serve six months in a halfway house and fined $1,200 for taking kickbacks from contractors to replace kitchen faucets in a residential complex. U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. also sentenced the former director, George R. Robinson, 63, to three years' probation. The Bel Air resident had faced up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty in January to bribing a public official, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office.

Gov. Martin O'Malley stunned environmentalists and builders alike Thursday by calling for a crackdown on housing developments that use septic systems — a bid to curb suburban sprawl and help restore the Chesapeake Bay. His proposal, part of the annual State of the State address, set the stage for a fierce debate in Annapolis. Developers warned that it could stifle growth and cost jobs in a real estate industry still struggling to climb from the recession. Speaking to lawmakers, O'Malley said that pollution from homes being built with septic systems is undercutting Maryland's efforts to clean up the bay. While the state has moved to curb pollution from farms and sewage treatment plants, the governor said, "there is one area of reducing pollution where so far we have totally failed, and in fact it has gotten much worse ... and that is pollution from the proliferation of new septic systems — systems which by their very design are intended to leak sewage into our bay and water tables.