Lease

Advertising.com Inc., the Baltimore company that started with an idea in a college dormitory room and was bought three years ago by America Online Inc., will remain a corporate fixture along the city's waterfront - though it might also expand elsewhere as it grows, the company said yesterday. The online marketing and advertising company has reached an agreement to extend its lease at its Tide Point headquarters in Locust Point. With its lease set to expire late this year, the growing technology company underwent a competitive search process that included Baltimore and the surrounding area, as well as in the Washington area, said Lynda M. Clarizio, president of Advertising.

Anne Arundel County took the final step toward acquiring control of the former Naval Academy Dairy Farm in Gambrills, with the County Council's approval of a 30-year lease with the U.S. Navy. Under the terms of the lease, which goes into effect Feb. 1, the county will pay $240,000 a year for the 857-acre property, which had been considered for a state horse farm, a recreational community center and a sand-and-gravel operation. "This is the best we could hope for at the dairy farm," Councilman Jamie Benoit, a Democrat who represents Gambrills, said on Monday before the 7-0 vote to approve the resolution.

In one of his first official acts as Baltimore's mayor, Martin O'Malley will push today for approval of a more than $5 million redevelopment project that would transform a vacant mall near the Inner Harbor into an entertainment complex.O'Malley said he will urge the city Board of Estimates to approve a 75-year low-rent lease to allow the Cordish Co. to put restaurants and nightclubs in the city-owned Brokerage at 34 Market Place.Advocates say the project would spread the Inner Harbor's success north, bringing thousands of visitors to outdoor cafes in what is now a little-used plaza in front of the Port Discovery children's museum.

Black & Decker Corp. has a tentative deal to sell its huge Hampstead warehouse and factory complex and lease part of it back in an agreement that could create new jobs for the area, the Towson-based maker of power tools confirmed yesterday.The company said the pact calls for it to sell its 800,000-square-foot factory and distribution center to Goodman Industrial Equities LLC, a Boston-based industrial-property redeveloper. Black & Decker will lease back about half the building, allowing Goodman Industrial to modernize and find tenants for the rest of the facility.

The owners of a Mount Airy shopping center want a Carroll County judge to order a current tenant, Rite Aid of Maryland Inc., to accept a new Wal-Mart there.Apparently, the Mount Airy Wal-Mart isn't the sure thing town planners and opponents thought it was.A provision in the drugstore's January 1972 lease -- when the Rite Aid was a Drug Fair -- states that the shopping center owners cannot lease space to or permit a competing business within a two-mile radius, according to the lawsuit filed this week.

Anne Arundel County officials granted two politically connected businessmen a deeply discounted lease for a cellular phone tower -- a deal that could end up costing the county $300,000 in lost revenue by 2006.Some County Council members now are criticizing the lease, which is unlike any other the county has signed.Developer Jay Winer and land-use lawyer Fred Delavan, volunteer members of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp., signed a five-year lease in June 1996 for $4,000 a year. The county's 14 other lease customers pay at least $22,000 a year.

In one of the area's largest office deals in a year, a fast-growing credit-card collections company has leased half of the five-story AAI Building in Hunt Valley and says it hopes to hire up to 1,500 employees.Creditrust Corp.'s lease of the space appears to settle a simmering feud between Baltimore County and the company, which threatened to leave Maryland last year after failing to get $850,000 in economic incentives that it claimed were promised but never received.Creditrust did not seek financial incentives in making the commitment to expand into the building at 10150 York Road, which will be renamed the Creditrust Building.

Just when Annapolis officials thought they had quelled the storm over a charter vessel that sought a long-term slip at the City Dock, new clouds are looming.This time, the tempest is not over longtime watermen losing their moorings. It's over the notion that an upstart charter company will get prime-time harbor placement that might have been denied to others."We have for years had people with charter vessels asking to rent slips from the city, and for years they've been turned down," said Alderman Louise Hammond.

Over the objections of some top city officials, the Board of Estimates approved a contract yesterday that will allow the construction of a $26 million retail and office building with a restaurant in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.The city gave the Cordish Company a 72-year lease for the Pier 4 waterfront property, currently the site of the Chart House Restaurant. Cordish, which runs the nearby Power Plant, plans to construct an eight-story, 160,000-square-foot building with a new Chart House Restaurant.

London Fog Industries Inc.'s bankruptcy filing puts the company in a much better position to drastically shrink its retail presence by getting out of its store leases, analysts said yesterday.The 77-year-old Eldersburg rainwear maker filed for Chapter 11 reorganization Monday in Wilmington, Del., saying it would close 115 of its 140 stores nationwide. London Fog officials said the company had made a strategic error in embarking on a retail expansion."Absolutely, that's one of the primary reasons they filed," said Mark Millman, president of retail consulting firm Millman Search Group Inc. in Lutherville.

Nobody asked me, but ... The prospect of a "Baltimore Grand Prix," with race cars zooming through downtown at 190 miles per hour, a la Monaco or Long Beach, is certainly exciting. And if Mayor Sheila Dixon is concerned that such an event conflicts with her goal of a "cleaner, greener Baltimore," please note: The 650-horse power IndyCar vehicles use 100 percent fuel-grade ethanol, and IndyCar fans have become really good about recycling their beer cans. No, really. Nobody asked me, but ... When a politician wants to be your "friend" on Facebook, it's time to log off and take your dog for a walk.

Everyman Theatre signed a new three-year lease Friday at its current location at 1727 N. Charles St. But a theater spokesman said the company still plans to move into its new home in Town Theatre in the fall of 2011. "The move isn't being delayed," Managing Director Ian Tresselt says. "We're still very much on track." In November 2006, Everyman announced that it would move into the renovated vaudeville house at 315 W. Fayette St., doubling the current number of seats to about 300. Initially, that move was projected to occur in the fall of 2009.

BITTINGER - Henry Bowser has seen it before: outsiders converging on Garrett County eager to dig deep beneath its mineral-rich soil and promising local residents a bounty of fossil fuel fortunes. While waiting last week to sign a lucrative lease allowing a natural gas company to drill on his 120-plus acres, Bowser recalled that his late father, George, had leased the land 40 years ago - for annual payments of $1 per acre - to a company convinced it would find gas underneath. Nothing turned up, and the lease was dropped after 20 years.

Just as they did in the 1980s, human ingenuity and Mother Nature are working together to solve the energy crisis. There is an Appalachian energy boom from West Virginia to New York, exemplified by a group of farmers and other landowners who expect to lease nearly a tenth of Maryland's Garrett County next week to natural-gas prospectors for $36 million. "People are coming out of the woodwork trying to sign people up" for drilling rights, says state Sen. George C. Edwards, who represents Garrett and Allegany counties in Western Maryland.

The owner of downtown Baltimore's tallest office building, at 100 Light St., has agreed to an early termination of a lease with USF&G Financial Services Corp. - which has been subleasing to money manager Legg Mason Inc. - in a deal valued at $27 million. As part of the agreement with tower owner Lexington Realty Trust, USF&G, now a subsidiary of St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co., also will transfer ownership of land under the tower valued at $16 million to Lexington, the real estate investment trust said in a news release issued late Monday.

Anne Arundel County took the final step toward acquiring control of the former Naval Academy Dairy Farm in Gambrills, with the County Council's approval of a 30-year lease with the U.S. Navy. Under the terms of the lease, which goes into effect Feb. 1, the county will pay $240,000 a year for the 857-acre property, which had been considered for a state horse farm, a recreational community center and a sand-and-gravel operation. "This is the best we could hope for at the dairy farm," Councilman Jamie Benoit, a Democrat who represents Gambrills, said on Monday before the 7-0 vote to approve the resolution.

Howard County housing officials are seeking developers to transform Guilford Gardens, the 100-unit county-owned apartments and townhouses next to Guilford Elementary School, into a sparkling mixture of new market-rate housing and renovated or replaced subsidized homes. "We want it to look like a world-class, high-quality development," said Stacy L. Spann, county housing director. Spann's department took control of Guilford Gardens in April, alleging that a management company that administered the tenant-run affordable-housing complex had not done a good job, allowing debts, record-keeping problems and maintenance issues to accumulate.

Thomas Gross leased a Toyota Sequoia last year, which was fine until his job as a ice hockey trainer recently changed and he began logging an extra 1,500 miles per month on the SUV. Suddenly, he was paying $70 more a week for gas. "It was like every other day I was filling up," says the 32-year-old from Oceanside, N.Y. "It was a nightmare." But Gross still had four years to go on his lease, and getting out of it early would cost $7,000. So he posted his lease online at LeaseTrader.com, which matches drivers wanting out of leases and those seeking one. Within four days, Gross found someone who lived 10 miles away to assume his lease.

Advertising.com Inc., the Baltimore company that started with an idea in a college dormitory room and was bought three years ago by America Online Inc., will remain a corporate fixture along the city's waterfront - though it might also expand elsewhere as it grows, the company said yesterday. The online marketing and advertising company has reached an agreement to extend its lease at its Tide Point headquarters in Locust Point. With its lease set to expire late this year, the growing technology company underwent a competitive search process that included Baltimore and the surrounding area, as well as in the Washington area, said Lynda M. Clarizio, president of Advertising.

After sitting empty for eight months, a $1.2 million renovation is scheduled to begin next month that will transform a former Ellicott City auto dealership into a central garage for Howard County government. Construction at the 6-acre site of the former O'Donnell Pontiac facility on Ridge Road will be in two phases. The first will include a vehicle repair and maintenance hub for county police, fire and general government vehicles, and for the school board. "We pretty much have to redo the whole place," said County Executive James N. Robey.