Landmark

A U.S. District Court judge has approved a settlement in a Baltimore fair housing case dating back to 1995. The case arose when the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland on behalf of public housing residents sued HUD, saying that it demolished old public housing high-rises where mostly African-Americans lived and then moved residents to equally segregated housing and poor conditions in other parts of the city. Under the settlement, HUD will continue a program established in an earlier part of the case that moves families to mixed-income neighborhoods throughout the region.

The giant gray cylinder has loomed over the North Baltimore landscape for decades, providing heating gas for city homes and a familiar landmark for drivers on the Jones Falls Expressway. Soon it will disappear from the skyline, and with it will go an important link to the city's industrial past. But it will not go quietly. It will literally go out with a bang. The Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. plans to implode the Melvale Gas Holder - about 25 stories tall - near Cold Spring Lane and the JFX, the last of more than a dozen gas storage facilities that once served Central Maryland, and one of the last in the country.

As the American Cancer Society plans to recruit 500 people who live or work in the Harford County area, it has scheduled enrollment for Nov. 7-11. What if you could prevent even one family member from hearing the words: "You have cancer?" The American Cancer Society is seeking cancer fighters in Harford County to help spread the word about the importance of participating in Cancer Prevention Study-3 (CPS-3), a landmark national study to help researchers better understand the genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors that cause or prevent cancer.

It's easy to see why the city's sale of the Senator Theatre gave Comptroller Joan Pratt heartburn. The city paid $810,000 for the movie palace three years ago and this week sold it for a $310,000 loss. Worse yet, the city is hardly washing its hands of the seemingly snakebit property. It will hold the mortgage — and charge a minuscule 2 percent in interest. The city is putting up an additional $700,000 loan to the theater's new owners, who are also receiving a loan from the state and another from a bank.

The Forest Diner has left the county. Decades after serving its first bacon and eggs on U.S. 40, the Ellicott City landmark was lifted recently onto a flatbed truck and hauled away to be restored for its next life, although it's not clear where that next life might be. The sign standing above National Pike still says "Forest Diner," but the movable type below says "Coming Soon!" and gives a phone number to call if you want to lease space in the mixed retail and apartment project now being built there.

The landmark Eastern Avenue industrial building fooled me. I assumed it was abandoned, and I was wrong. The former Crown Cork and Seal complex in Greektown is a busy workplace for cabinetmakers, musicians, artists and a craft brewer. It's just that nobody puts up a sign on this curiously anonymous post-industrial survivor. The place where food- and beverage-packaging machines once were made remains a bustling village. It houses the studios of two Sondheim Award-winning artists, Tony Shore and Laure Drogoul.

Baltimore's long dormant Parkway Theatre on North Avenue, a fixture in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, would be added to the city's landmark list, if public officials approve a plan now before the City Council. Baltimore's Commission on Historical and Architectural Preservation is holding a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday to decide whether to designate the theater a city landmark. The theater was designed by Oliver B. Wight and opened in 1915 as a first-class movie house.

Developer James W. Rousewas a pioneer at recycling other people's buildings for new uses, including Faneuil Hall in Boston and parts of the South Street Seaport historic district in Manhattan. Now one of the most prominent buildings he constructed from scratch - the former Rouse Co. headquarters in Columbia - is about to get a similar treatment from a successor to Rouse's firm. The Howard Hughes Corp. of Dallas, which succeeded Rouse and General Growth Properties as the master developer of Columbia, has a $20 million plan to convert the former Rouse headquarters on Little Patuxent Parkway from a single-occupant office building to a mixed-use, multitenant development with a 41,000 square-foot Whole Foods Market as the anchor.

After being closed to the public for nearly two decades, a new day may be dawning for the Peale Museum on Holliday Street if its planned restoration as the Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture comes to fruition. "I think it has lots of significance to Baltimore. It had been the city's first City Hall, an African-American school and where gas illumination was used by a company that eventually became BGE," said Walter Schamu, a partner in the firm of Schamu, Machowski, Grego Architects, which prepared restoration plans with consulting architect James T. Wollon Jr. "It's a handsome building that can be saved and given a new life," said Schamu.

David Kohlasch, a 30-year veteran of the hospitality industry, recently took the helm of an Inner Harbor landmark. Sonesta, a hotel brand relatively unknown in the Mid-Atlantic, assumed management in May of the InterContinental Harbor Court hotel, now called the Royal Sonesta Harbor Court. Before this year, the rapidly expanding brand only had a handful of properties in the United States. Its roughly two dozen hotels were concentrated in South America and Egypt. By the end of summer, Sonesta hotels will dot the eastern seaboard, nearly doubling the brand's locations.