Lafayette

The federal government's scheduled announcement today to spend $50 million on reconfiguring the Lafayette Courts project near the main Post Office represents a new dawn in Baltimore's -- and the nation's -- efforts to overhaul troubled public housing complexes.Instead of merely trying to preserve the failed status quo, the government is finally opting for alternatives.If everything goes as planned, demolition of five of the Lafayette project's high-rises should be going on by next fall. The cramped and outdated high-rise units would then be replaced with garden apartments more suitable for family living.

When Baltimore's Housing Authority asked tenants of Lafayette Courts what kind of residences they wanted to live in after their high-rises were demolished, the answer was nearly unanimous.They didn't want any more towers, with tiny apartments and bleak spaces at ground level. They envisioned a neighborhood of traditional Baltimore rowhouses with brick walls, steps in front, yards in back and parks where children can play."We just want to live in the same kind of housing that everybody else has," resident Janice Bagwell said at a community planning session last year.

Hoo Soon Kim and her husband opened Kim's Jewelry in the Lafayette Market in 1979.But two years ago her husband died of cancer. Now she believes plans by the city to close the market for at least a year to renovate it will mean the end of her livelihood."

Alfred McAllister, an Edgewood High School senior, and this year's Harford County Player of the Year for basketball, has signed a financial aid package with Lafayette College.An honor student, McAllister received particularly high marks for assuming a leadership role on the basketball team after mid-season changes put three juniors in the starting lineup.The Rams of coach Bob Slagle won 13 of their last 14 games before losing in the semifinals of the state tournament for a second successive year.

After standing for decades as a bleak symbol of urban decay, Baltimore's Lafayette Courts housing project came to a dramatic end yesterday, collapsing into rubble and dust in a matter of seconds.Shortly after noon, a series of slow, staccato explosions briefly shook the ground and flattened the desolate 11-story towers that had loomed over the eastern edge of downtown Baltimore. The spectacular display lasted just 20 seconds but fascinated tens of thousands.Crowds on the surrounding streets cheered, and many people wept, as the six high-rise buildings shuddered from the blast of 995 pounds of dynamite and crumbled.

The city will demolish all six Lafayette Courts high-rises, replacing them and 13 other apartment buildings with traditional Baltimore rowhouses -- part of a plan to revive the public housing development and blend it into the surrounding community.City-hired designers this week displayed the most detailed plans to date for redeveloping the 800-unit East Baltimore complex. The rebuilt complex will have 460 units, about half of them rowhouses.Although the original proposal called for one high-rise to be remodeled into a senior citizens home, plans now call for a new building with 196 one-bedroom apartments for elderly residents.

ANNAPOLIS -- Navy had no reason to fear Terry Burke. Although he's a senior co-captain, Burke never scored a field goal as a freshman or sophomore and had a career-high of 10 points last season against Pennsylvania.In an uncharacteristic outburst, Burke poured in 22 points in a 10-minute span in the second half to lead Lafayette to a 75-62 win over Navy last night before 1,025 in Halsey Field House.Burke's output included six three-pointers in seven attempts. The 6-foot-2 guard from the Philadelphia suburb of Abington finished the night with 8-for-12 from the field for his game-high 22 points.

In East Baltimore, the gutted shells, the skeletal remains, of what had once been the Lafayette Courts public housing project tower over us like a high-rise ghost town -- empty windows and exposed cinder blocks and great piles of bricks and debris and trash.It is a steamy, hot day beneath a sickly, yellow sky. The six buildings of the Lafayette Courts public housing project cast no shadows."Personally," says Sandra Domneys grimly, "I'm glad they're tearing it down." We were standing on Ms. Domneys' porch in the 1000 block of Low St. Ms. Domneys and her children live in a one-story low-rise apartment building that sits like a shoe box at the foot of one of the abandoned high rises.

Although Baltimore's new Lafayette Courts development has gained attention primarily because of the public housing it will replace, one of its most visible components will be a health care facility.Greater Baltimore Medical Center plans to construct a $5.7 million building called GBMC's Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Community and Family Health Center on a city-owned parcel at Fayette and Aisquith streets.The two-story structure will replace a health center GBMC has operated for 30 years at 1017 E. Baltimore St. The 1877 building originally housed the Presbyterian Eye, Ear and Throat Charity Hospital, which joined with the old Women's Hospital in the 1960s to form GBMC in Baltimore County.

Chicago. -- Teaching kids has been a lot easier since the bullets stopped flying through his school playground, says Don Moran, principal of the Ulysses S. Grant School, opposite a public-housing development on Chicago's West Side. But the Chicago Housing Authority's success in ousting pistol-happy gangs by security ''sweeps'' in several public-housing high-rises an isolated victory in the battle against inner-city violence.A survey of 53 fifth- and sixth-graders in a Southeast Washington neighborhood revealed 31 percent had witnessed shootings.