Master Plan

Meeting set on master plan A public meeting on the proposed 2007-2016 educational facilities master plan will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Cranberry Station Elementary School, 505 N. Center St., Westminster. The superintendent's staff will present the report and take public comment. The facilities master plan will be presented to the Board of Education for approval at 5 p.m. June 13. Information: 410-751-3177. School board to meet Wednesday The Carroll County Board of Education will meet at 1 p.m. Wednesday in the boardroom at 125 N. Court St., Westminster, to approve the fiscal year 2008 operating budget categorical totals.

The city of Annapolis will break ground today on a 60,000-square-foot recreation center at Truxtun Park, 20 years after it was first recommended in a master plan for the city. The $12.5 million facility, named for former Mayor Roger "Pip" Moyer, will be accompanied by a $1 million maintenance building and will replace the 15,000 square-foot Annapolis Recreation Center downtown. "It gives us a single location to get the entire city together for recreation, whether it's indoor basketball or a crafts class," said Ward 6 Alderman Julie Stankivic, whose district includes Truxtun Park.

Responding to concerns that critical decisions about Baltimore County's future were being rushed, the County Council postponed last night approval of a 10-year master plan for at least a month."

Fears of suburban sprawl had Anne Arundel County leaders poised last night for debate over a long-range plan for extending public water and sewer pipes.The detailed proposal had been headed for defeat before the County Council, but heavy lobbying from County Executive Janet S. Owens appeared to give the measure enough support to at least win a temporary reprieve.Several council members said they wanted to postpone last night's scheduled vote in order to give planners time to revise the proposal.

LOOKING AHEAD with a strategic plan is a good idea. So is following the plan.That's the catch in the eight-goal document the Carroll County commissioners recently adopted to guide them through the remaining three years of their term.Like the land-use Master Plan overhaul -- remember that shelved document? -- and other goals embraced by the commissioners, the proof is in actions, not in words.Indeed, this strategy is a compendium of the three commissioners' campaign promises. It does not account for their differing perspectives on some major issues.

The state's second-highest court has upheld a Baltimore Circuit Court ruling that said the 31-story Wyndham Inner Harbor East hotel does not violate a master plan created to guide development in the area near Little Italy.The Court of Special Appeals' ruling on a lawsuit challenging a city ordinance permitting the Wyndham essentially ends a community group's chances to further stall or derail the $134 million project on planning grounds.John C. Murphy, an attorney for the Waterfront Coalition Inc., said the group intends to petition Maryland's highest court to hear the case.

BALTIMORE County's master plans have typically concentrated on ways to cope with growth. And no wonder.Since 1950, the population has swelled from 270,273 to 725,780, propelling the county past the city as the region's biggest governmental subdivision. In the past decade, though, the momentum has slowed as newer, more distant suburban counties became popular.This spring, a new blueprint called Master Plan 2010 is slated for County Council approval. Instead of focusing on where to channel additional growth, this version calls needed attention to broader societal issues and recommends steps to improve education, public safety, health, social services and economic development.

A POTENTIALLY contentious election year in Baltimore -- with a lame-duck mayor and contests for City Council -- may not be the ideal time to execute a major redevelopment program. Yet a downtown revitalization strategy has to be implemented this year. Any delay may doom the city's best chance in decades to remake the old Howard Street retail corridor."Westside" is something of a misnomer for the Westside Master Plan, financed by the Weinberg Foundation. When it was released in June it involved 18 downtown blocks.

Meeting with Charles Village leaders last night, the Johns Hopkins University unveiled a draft of a new master plan for the Homewood campus in North Baltimore, featuring new parking garages and a pedestrian bridge over Charles Street.The first update of the university's master plan in 95 years, the document is expected to be complete in May.The main problem with the campus, Hopkins officials said, is that it is hard to navigate and uninviting."We hope the campus is an amenity, but many neighbors don't take advantage of it," said Janet Sanfilippo, the university's director of city and community relations.

Growth-control bill would fill sketch work of county master planThe Sun's editorial "Baltimore County in the `post-growth' era" (Jan. 5) about Baltimore County's master plan accurately noted that the draft of this plan is full of generalities. The master plan, however, is a plan; plans are meant to be general.Master Plan 2010 will be loosely interpreted as the current master plan has been, leading to continued community disarray and continued erosion of trust that Baltimore County citizens have in their government's ability to maintain a desirable environment for themselves and their families.

An affiliate of the National Aquarium plans to start an environmental cleanup of nearly 13 acres along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River this fall and open a public park late next year, but has put on hold more elaborate plans to build an animal care facility. The aquarium's Center for Aquatic Life and Conservation Inc. said today it is seeking a contractor to clean up its contaminated waterfront property in South Baltimore, along Baltimore's lesser-known harbor. The two-phase project will create a park with walking trails, some of which will connect to the Gwynns Falls trail, a 100-foot fishing pier and some wooded areas, said Tim Pula, the aquarium's senior director of capital planning.

It has sometimes been referred to as a biotech center or "biopark," as if it's only for scientists. Its largest building is filled with laboratory space. But it's more accurate to describe the 88-acre redevelopment area north of the Johns Hopkins Hospital as a full-fledged, mixed-use neighborhood. Besides laboratory space for life sciences companies and others that want to be near Hopkins, this East Baltimore community, informally called the New Eastside, has been designed to contain townhouses, condominiums, rental apartments, stores, a school, churches, professional services, parking and open space - everything found in older urban neighborhoods.

When the Howard County Council begins taking public testimony Monday night on a bill that would create a new way to redevelop Columbia village centers, a somewhat-reluctant Columbia Association board of directors will be ready. After a nearly five-hour, two-part meeting that lasted until 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, the board adopted a slightly altered version of its December position. Still, some expressed concern that the county is rushing things, or that adopting a new redevelopment zoning process would give developers an advantage, while others said the problem is immediate and needs attention now. Columbia resident Joel Broida noted that Kimco, which owns the half-vacant Wilde Lake Village Center and four others, has given up its plan to demolish it in favor of 500 apartments and a retail center.

Land-use plans that officials consider crucial to the future of two Baltimore County communities are likely to be delayed or scaled back until the county Office of Planning completes its mandatory comprehensive master plan. The queue for various community plans, including Middle River and Rosewood in Owings Mills, is growing so long that one Planning Board member suggested last week that the office accept no more requests until the 2010 completion of the master plan. The board delayed action on that recommendation.

Legionnaires' bug at hospital Employees and patients at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson are being warned not to use the water at the hospital after routine tests showed the presence of the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease in the hot water supply. Hospital officials said the type of Legionella pneumophila found in the hospital's water is the kind that is less likely to make people sick and that there have been no cases of hospital-acquired Legionella at St. Joseph. Officials said they hope to have the situation remedied by this afternoon.

Baltimore County Council members authorized the creation of a master plan to guide development of a state hospital property in Owings Mills last night, saying they want the document in place before the Rosewood Center is made available for development. The state announced in December 2007 its plans to close the hospital for the severely disabled. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has been relocating the remaining nearly 150 patients to community placements and will shutter the facility July 1. After its review, the state will likely declare as surplus the nearly 225-acre property near Reisterstown Road and begin accepting proposals from the public and private sectors for its use. Rosewood, which opened in 1888, housed nearly 3,700 people at its peak.

When Towson University officials unveil plans for a new campus arena at a community meeting tomorrow, they are likely to find many residents dismayed by the prospect of a 5,000-seat auditorium in their backyards. Officials, planners and architects for the $45 million Towson Center expansion project, which is included in the 10-year master plan for the campus, will present drawings and discuss a timetable - construction is scheduled for later this year - during the session. The proposal includes a new arena and renovations that would make the current arena's gymnasium into practice courts, mostly for basketball and volleyball teams.

Developers of the Uplands, planned as one of the biggest new-home developments in Baltimore in decades, showed a city panel yesterday their vision of the economically diverse neighborhood they want to build that would blend suburban and urban elements. Work could start by the end of next year to transform 100 acres of boarded-up apartments near Edmondson Avenue in Southwest Baltimore into a mix of 1,100 apartments, condominiums and single-family attached and detached homes that would be for sale and rent, developers said.

Almost everyone in Columbia agrees that settling on a master plan to guide an energizing makeover of the city's 40-year-old town center is an urgent priority. But some residents are concerned that the wrong plan could do serious harm. The Howard County government should proceed cautiously on this matter. The proposed redevelopment may be the biggest project since Columbia's birth, and its impact will be felt for decades to come. General Growth Properties, which owns the Columbia Mall and much of the land around it, has submitted a proposal to the county to build 1 million square feet of retail space, 4.9 million square feet of office space and 5,500 townhouses and apartments, as well as hotel rooms and cultural amenities.

At the first of two public hearings on the county's zoning code rewrite, questions and concerns with a proposed transfer of development rights dominated the discussion. The hearing drew such a large crowd that officials will continue the session Tuesday evening at North Harford High School. While county officials consider the sale of agricultural development rights to property owners in designated growth areas a giant step in land preservation, many residents fear it will create sprawl in rural enclaves, such as Fallston and Joppa.