Live Entertainment

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge ruled Monday that a Federal Hill magic bar will be allowed to keep its live entertainment license, despite objections from the 300-member neighborhood association. The Federal Hill Neighborhood Association challenged Illusions Magic Bar & Lounge's live entertainment license, which was granted by the city in June, claiming that residents' lives have been disrupted by the noise, parking and crime from Illusions and other nearby bars and clubs. Ken Horsman, who owns Illusions with his son, Spencer, applied for the license last year under the city's new live-entertainment zoning rules in order to host vaudeville-style acts, such as jugglers and comedians, he said.

A collective "Oh!" greeted restaurateur Chris Spann's announcement to the Hampden Village Merchants Association on Wednesday that he plans to take over the former Dogwood restaurant space on The Avenue. Spann, owner of the well-reviewed restaurant The Wine Market Bistro in Locust Point, said he plans to open an upscale restaurant in the old Dogwood. Spann said he is still developing the concept of the new restaurant. "It's not going to be The Wine Market Bistro II, but it's going to appeal to the same people," Spann said.

Don't forget to get your tickets for the roast beef dinner sponsored by the United Methodist Men of Brooklyn Heights United Methodist Church, 110 Townsend Ave. Dinner will be served from 3 p.m. until 7 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $8 for adults, $4 for children ages 6 to 12. Children age 5 and under get in free. The meal includes sliced roast beef, potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn, an unlimited salad bar, bread, dessert and beverages. Live entertainment will be provided by the Sons of the Severn and the Baltimore Harbor Chorus and Quartet.

The dancing days are over at Milan . The Little Italy establishment is now prohibited from allowing or providing live entertainment, including disc jockeys, on its premises. The May 31 decision was made in the District Court of Maryland for Baltimore City in what amounted to a default hearing. No one representing Milan showed up. Milan's opponents have long claimed that the establishment was a nightclub masquerading as a restaurant, and they have repeatedly pressed the Baltimore City Liquor License Board to take action.

Baltimore's night scene, from dance clubs and karaoke bars to stand-up comedy and poetry slams, could get a boost under a bill expected to be introduced today in the City Council. The proposal, sponsored by City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, would ease zoning restrictions on restaurants and taverns offering live entertainment. Instead, the bill would create a five-member board that would license the businesses. Rawlings-Blake, who has long championed the city's entertainment sector, said she hopes the measure will encourage restaurants and taverns to offer customers something more than drinking games - but also protect residents who live near bars.

One member of the development team served as the volunteer owner's rep for a $30 million expansion of Baltimore's School for the Arts. Two others recently turned the dilapidated Census Building on Howard Street into Miller's Court, a $20 million center with affordable housing for teachers and offices for local nonprofits. Now they've joined forces in an effort to save one of the most prominent landmarks in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, the historic but dormant Parkway Theatre at 3-5 W. North Ave. Samuel Polakoff, managing director of Cormony Development and a member of the Board of Overseers at the School for the Arts, and Donald and Thibault Manekin of Seawall Development Corp.

Frustrated by uneven zoning rules that let some bars in Fells Point hire classical guitarists and singers but prohibit live entertainment at other establishments, neighborhood tavern owners begged the City Council to make the code fairer and more consistent. Their councilman suggested changing Baltimore zoning rules so that many more bars and restaurants could offer live performances as long as communities supported their efforts. But neighbors balked, fearing that bars would blare music and attract throngs of inebriated concert-goers, and the bill died.

Clear Channel Communications Inc. joined the growing ranks of big media companies electing to break themselves up yesterday, posing the question of whether being so big was such a good idea after all. The answer is not clear, but the hype that drove media conglomeration in the 1990s has not lived up to its promise. San Antonio-based Clear Channel, the world's largest radio broadcaster, plans to spin off its live entertainment business and sell 10 percent of its outdoor advertising segment in a stock offering.

Baltimore's zoning board could gain new authority under legislation Councilwoman Rochelle "Rikki" Spector plans to introduce Monday that supports a controversial live entertainment bill. Spector's measure would allow the Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals to reverse the property-use permission known as "conditional use" that the city currently grants but can never revoke. "What is given can be taken," Spector said. The bill says that exemptions to underlying zoning rules are not "out there for perpetuity," she said.

Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood has 34 bars in a three-block radius, and on weekends those add up to one big party. There's dancing, drinking, and, inevitably, fighting and clashes with police. At the outskirts of this alcohol-infused blur is a magic bar. With chandeliers and leather seats, Illusions Bar & Lounge might seem an unlikely target for the ire of the local community association, when compared with the rowdy behavior of some of its neighbors. Yet Monday, Illusions and the Federal Hill Neighborhood Association will be headed to Baltimore City Circuit Court as the association attempts to get the bar's entertainment license revoked.

The Maryland Film Festival would transform the historic and long-shuttered Parkway Theatre into a venue for small independent films and concerts under one of three proposals to enliven a key intersection in Baltimore's Charles North neighborhood. Two other developers also hope to restore the former movie palace, where vaudeville acts also once played, and bring in live music, theater and other performances, the Baltimore Development Corp. said Tuesday. The BDC, the city's economic development agency, said it had received three proposals to redevelop the theater at 3 W. North Ave. and adjacent buildings at 1 W. North Ave. and 1820 N. Charles St. in response to a request by the agency in December.

Picture a narrow lane on the Assawoman Bay in North Ocean City, where mansions of differing styles are year-round residences. Dr. Bill Allen, an Ocean City dentist, lives in one of these homes with an exterior design of his own choosing. "I wanted a Northern Atlantic, Nantucket-style cottage — coastal but not beach-y," he said. To build his dream home, Allen hired the Salisbury architectural and construction firm of Becker Morgan Group, which began work in July 2007 on the third of an acre he had been holding onto for 15 years.

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge ruled Monday that a Federal Hill magic bar will be allowed to keep its live entertainment license, despite objections from the 300-member neighborhood association. The Federal Hill Neighborhood Association challenged Illusions Magic Bar & Lounge's live entertainment license, which was granted by the city in June, claiming that residents' lives have been disrupted by the noise, parking and crime from Illusions and other nearby bars and clubs. Ken Horsman, who owns Illusions with his son, Spencer, applied for the license last year under the city's new live-entertainment zoning rules in order to host vaudeville-style acts, such as jugglers and comedians, he said.

Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood has 34 bars in a three-block radius, and on weekends those add up to one big party. There's dancing, drinking, and, inevitably, fighting and clashes with police. At the outskirts of this alcohol-infused blur is a magic bar. With chandeliers and leather seats, Illusions Bar & Lounge might seem an unlikely target for the ire of the local community association, when compared with the rowdy behavior of some of its neighbors. Yet Monday, Illusions and the Federal Hill Neighborhood Association will be headed to Baltimore City Circuit Court as the association attempts to get the bar's entertainment license revoked.

The city's zoning board told a father-and-son team of magicians Tuesday to produce more details on the acts they plan to offer at their bar before deciding whether to approve their application for a live entertainment license. Ken and Spencer Horsman, the owners of Illusions Magic Bar, are the first Federal Hill business owners to appear before the board to request the license under a program recently created by Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake to invigorate the city's nightlife.

Name a city that doesn't boast a vibrant and varied night life, and we'll show you a place that is probably very dull indeed. When work is done and people flock to their favorite restaurants and bars to meet and greet, they want a range of entertainment to grease the social whirl. That's why the Baltimore City Council took an important step Monday when it overturned a decades-old restriction on live music and other entertainment in bars and restaurants in some of the city's trendiest neighborhoods.

In a town as lively and full of talent as Baltimore, it's a shame the night life isn't all it could be. There are plenty of venues that would gladly trade their juke boxes for live musical acts, poetry readings and performance art, thus burnishing their image as local watering holes. It not need all be high-decibel, heavy-metal garage band fare. We recall a time when a bookstore-cafe along Charles Street served up string quartets performed by Peabody Institute students, lute concerts by a local early music group and ragtime piano played on an old upright.

For years, customers at the trendy Harbor East restaurant Pazo could get up and dance if they liked the house music. That stopped about 18 months ago, when city officials threatened to shut down the restaurant if the dancing continued, according to co-owner Tony Foreman. Pazo operates in a B-2 business district, where live entertainment is not allowed. Technically, when Foreman's patrons got up and danced, it was considered live entertainment. Foreman was shocked. "We were warned that playing music and people getting up and dancing to music - we're talking about grown-ups dancing to a little bit of music after dinner - is illegal and we'd be shut down and lose our [liquor]

One member of the development team served as the volunteer owner's rep for a $30 million expansion of Baltimore's School for the Arts. Two others recently turned the dilapidated Census Building on Howard Street into Miller's Court, a $20 million center with affordable housing for teachers and offices for local nonprofits. Now they've joined forces in an effort to save one of the most prominent landmarks in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, the historic but dormant Parkway Theatre at 3-5 W. North Ave. Samuel Polakoff, managing director of Cormony Development and a member of the Board of Overseers at the School for the Arts, and Donald and Thibault Manekin of Seawall Development Corp.

Baltimore's zoning board could gain new authority under legislation Councilwoman Rochelle "Rikki" Spector plans to introduce Monday that supports a controversial live entertainment bill. Spector's measure would allow the Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals to reverse the property-use permission known as "conditional use" that the city currently grants but can never revoke. "What is given can be taken," Spector said. The bill says that exemptions to underlying zoning rules are not "out there for perpetuity," she said.