Land Development

Builders should not be in the business of selling their creations, Robert J. Lucido says.That may seem like backward thinking. Where would builders be, after all, without buyers?Yet Lucido has built his career on just that premise, and builders have gladly taken the advice.Builder clients of the Columbia-based sales and marketing firm Builder's 1st Choice leave the selling of their homes to Lucido, whose business it is to know why some builders fail where others succeed.Most, he says, are simply too busy building to step back and consider the appeal of the two-story foyer or placement of the optional den.For five years, Lucido and his team of new-homes specialists have acted as extensions of dozens of area building companies, becoming their eyes and ears in a fiercely competitive marketplace, recruiting and training salespeople to staff model homes, and scoping out suitable building sites.

Services for William B. Huth, a Monkton land developer, will be at 1 p.m. today at St. James Episcopal Church on Monkton Road, where he was a member.Mr. Huth, who was 60, died of a heart attack Friday at his Monkton home.Born in Baltimore, Mr. Huth attended Boys' Latin School before going to work in a family furniture-refinishing business, J. W. Berry Inc., on Read Street.Mr. Huth worked for the Maryland Academy of Science from 1960 to 1975, when he went into the business of residential land development in Monkton.

Robert Addison Fox, a retired developer, died of liver cancer Saturday at his daughter's farm in New Freedom, Pa. The former Ellicott City resident was 78. Mr. Fox was born in Baltimore and raised in Evanston, Ill. During World War II, he was an Army Air Forces pilot. In 1953, Mr. Fox and his wife joined four other couples in developing 20 acres of Dunloggin Farms in Ellicott City into a residential community that they named St. Johns Manor. Mr. Fox joined Joseph Meyerhoff Corp. in 1958 and by the 1970s was senior vice president for Monumental Properties Inc., a Baltimore-based land development company.

New development standards that will allow farmers and other rural landowners to cluster the development of their land was passed by the Harford County Council last week and signed into law yesterday by County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann.The goal of the new standards, which are optional, is to prevent suburban sprawl while preserving rural land and open space. Landowners developing a small part of their property must place the remaining, undeveloped portion of their land in a permanent easement, preventing most future development.

Already, Joseph Stonestreet is tired of driving by the 80 acres at Route 2 and Central Avenue that developers stripped of trees for a project they now say they can't afford to finish.And he has at least two years to stare at the barren clearings before Friendswood Development Corp., of Houston, resumes work on South River Colony, a 1,400-acre project.Friendswood began clearing the land last summer to build a commercial center and golf course. But company officials decided last month to halt work because of the stagnant economy.

A developer claims he would be "protecting the land" by building up to 400 houses in conservation land near Bird River ("Battle lines form over site near bay" May 25). He must use the same logic as the Vietnam War officer who explained that it was "necessary to destroy the village in order to save it. " Chris Yoder, Baltimore The author is chair of the Greater Baltimore Group of the Sierra Club.

William Powel, Carroll County's agricultural preservation coordinator, tried to explain transfers of development rights to about 45 people last night.But the discussion kept getting mired in questions of whether the program is worth pursuing."This should have started when we brought in the concept of zoning," said Westminster farmer Donald Essich, arguing that county residents will not accept higher density in exchange for saving local farms. "This is too late."Transfers of development rights, similar to agricultural preservation programs, allow land owners to sell easements and permanently maintain their property as open space.

Philander Wallace was getting lonely. He bought a waterfront town house on the pier at Belt's Landing in Fells Point in April 1991, then waited and waited -- he and his wife were the only people in the whole development -- while the original developers went broke, and Maryland National Bank took over the $24 million community.Mr. Wallace is lonely no more. The development team that bought the project from Maryland National last month announced the details of drastic price cuts yesterday at the 102-unit community.

Baltimore County's plan to donate a parcel of undesirable land in Essex to a developer for the construction of affordable housing is being challenged by two councilmen who question why the county would get no money for the land and instead would help pay for the project. Under the plan, the county would give the former site of Kingsley Park Apartments to a partnership of Enterprise Homes and Mark Building, officials said yesterday, and would agree to contribute an undetermined amount for loans and for roads and other improvements.