Mall Of America

Nicolette Felts and her friends are looking to "chill" on a cool autumn night. All freshmen at Dulaney High, they might wander the makeup aisles at the cosmetic shop, or grab a table at the cheeseburger joint. And they can always just lounge around a gazebo trimmed with white lights - there's even an outdoor fireplace near it, though some grown-ups with coffee are crowding the warmest spot. But as the night goes on, and Nicolette and her friends walk across a faux Main Street, a security guard calls to them: "Ladies and gentleman, where are you going?"

Locating fitness clubs in urban entertainment centers may be fast becoming a hot development trend, especially if the past few days in the Baltimore area are any indication.The Cordish Co. has announced that Gold's Gym Maryland will build a 15,000-square-foot fitness complex at the Power Plant in the Inner Harbor, with equipment positioned so exercisers have dramatic views of the harbor as they work out.On Wednesday, Cordish announced that Bally Total Fitness will open a health club next spring to anchor the Towson Circle project in the former Hutzler's department store.

WASHINGTON -- Mills Corp., a Chevy Chase shopping-mall developer that has lost more than half its market value this year, has secured financing for its Meadowlands Xanadu project in New Jersey, clearing the way for a possible sale of the company. Colony Capital, based in Los Angeles, will provide as much as $500 million of equity financing and arrange for construction loans to fund the balance of the expected $2 billion cost of the Xanadu project, Mills said yesterday. Mills' shares jumped 15.3 percent on the announcement, which comes less than a week after New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine said the state would try to help save Xanadu.

On the cusp of the 1950s social revolution stood Margaret Davidson. And the picture before her was quite unsettling.Her teen-age son and his Highlandtown friends were applying grease to their hair, listening to rock 'n' roll music, fighting in the streets and getting chased by the cops."

DETROIT - Tired of teen-agers who intimidate other shoppers, a major mall in metro Detroit is clamping down with a curfew that aims to keep unruly kids out and eager consumers in. Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, Mich., the second-largest mall in Michigan, plans to prohibit all patrons ages 17 and younger from entering its center after 5 p.m. daily unless they're accompanied by an adult 21 or older. The ban goes into effect June 1 and is part of a nationwide trend of curfews for kids at shopping malls.

NEW YORK -- A top investor in Mills Corp., the developer behind the stalled $2 billion New Jersey mall project known as Meadowlands Xanadu, sued to force the company to hold its annual meeting and again warned it not to pursue a sale. The Delaware suit was filed by Gazit-Globe Ltd., Israel's largest real estate investment company, which recently increased its stake in Mills to 9.7 percent. Gazit-Globe said in a regulatory filing that it wants the meeting because management has ignored Gazit's proposal to invest as much as $1.2 billion in the company.

Let courts do work Bill Kline The Morning Call Let's get this straight. The people of Arizona elect their legislators and their governor and they in turn establish a law — for Arizona only — that enforces something that already is illegal. And now others across this nation are calling for Major League Baseball to bigfoot the people of Arizona by pulling the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix. What's next? Should baseball pull the Twins out of Minnesota because the Mall of America emits too much carbon dioxide?

Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, EnglandThe city of Hereford, in Great Britain, shoehorned into the soft English hillside between the Cotswold Hills and the Welsh border, is playing host to Europe's oldest choir festival, the 267-year-old Three Choirs Festival, to take place Aug. 21-26.The annual event, which rotates between Hereford and the nearby cities of Gloucester and Worcester, has highlighted English choral music since its inception, listing among its first performances the works of Sir Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams, both of whom were born in the region.

You may live in Columbia, Dundalk or Aberdeen, but so far as the federal government is concerned, you're now a resident of America's newest twin-cities: Baltimore-Towson. Nearly 150 years after voters chose Towson as headquarters for the new Baltimore County government to keep county leaders away from the corrupting influences and high taxes of Baltimore, Maryland's biggest city and the nation's largest unincorporated county seat find themselves yoked together again. When the federal Office of Management and Budget completed its once-a-decade review of the classifications it uses in naming metropolitan statistical areas this year, it decided to give more recognition to suburban communities with major employment centers.

Development Design Group Inc., an international architecturaland planning firm with projects valued at more than $1 billion under way worldwide, has elected to remain downtown rather than relocate its expanding headquarters to another city.Prior to an agreement with the owners of the 19-story Signet Tower, a transaction approved late Wednesday, Development Design had considered moving to either Washington, D.C., or Orlando, Fla., because those cities offered attractive amenities, easy airplane access and a higher profile image for the firm's international clients.