Move To Baltimore

Last week's announcement of the Cleveland Browns' move to Baltimore generated plenty of response, both about the move itself and about The Sun's coverage of it. Some of those letters follow:Coverage on the markIf they gave a Pulitzer Prize for intelligent, reasoned, non-"homer" coverage of a sports franchise move, your people would win it in a walk this year.As I read John Eisenberg, Ken Rosenthal, John Steadman, et al. after the Glendening/Modell announcement, I kept thinking about how rare it is to see a spirit of tough journalistic inquiry and a sense of perspective brought to one of these moments when many fans -- and sports reporters -- just want to cheer.

State corrections secretary Gary D. Maynard ordered polygraph tests Friday of top administrators and "integrity reviews" of every employee at the Baltimore City Detention Center in an effort to root out corruption at the jail. Maynard has moved his office to the facility from Towson to oversee a review of leadership, staff and operations amid allegations that the Black Guerrilla Family gang developed broad power inside the jail, a spokesman said. More than two dozen inmates and correctional officers in the city jail are charged in a scheme that officials say involved the smuggling of drugs and other contraband, including cellphones, into the facility.

Going against the tide, an Italian-owned plastics manufacturer is moving from the suburbs into Baltimore, praising the cheap rent, the access to transportation and the availability of labor."

Selling a house is rarely easy and quick, but the transaction for the three-story end-of-group brick rowhouse at 200 Warren Ave.e in Federal Hill was just that. The property listed and sold simultaneously, closing for $950,000 after being offered at $995,000. Little wonder. The home was built just five years ago in the same architectural style and detail as the older homes around it. Additionally, it is within walking distance to the Inner Harbor and shops and restaurants on Light and Charles streets.

A Connecticut-based philanthropy specializing in child-oriented policy research will move its headquarters to Baltimore next year, city officials and the Annie E. Casey Foundation said yesterday.The $923 million foundation, founded by the family of one of the founders of United Parcel Service, expects to move from Greenwich, Conn., in September 1994. It is one of the 25 largest philanthropic foundations in America and the largest devoted exclusively to poor children and families, spokesman Bill Rust said.

The move of the headquarters of Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation's oldest and largest black Greek letter organization, from Chicago to Baltimore almost did not happen.When the group's national search team came to Baltimore last year, the building it eventually decided to buy, the Goucher Mansion, was not for sale, said Wilbert L. Walker, a member of Baltimore's Delta Lambda chapter of the fraternity who worked with the search committee.Soon after the committee left Baltimore, the Goucher Mansion, a state historical landmark, became available.

When he heard the Cleveland Browns were bringing the NFL back to Baltimore last week, Stallions owner Jim Speros said he would move his Canadian Football League team rather than try to compete with the NFL.Speros still is leaning that way. But, after receiving phone calls yesterday from Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and Gov. Parris N. Glendening asking him to stay, Speros left open the possibility that he might remain in Baltimore.Speros said he plans to meet with them next week to discuss how that could happen.

Insurance company Zurich American is moving its operations and hundreds of workers from Baltimore to an office complex in Owings Mills, company and city leaders said Thursday. The Switzerland-based company put its two office buildings on Keswick Road in the Hampden neighborhood up for sale late last year, saying it was looking for smaller quarters. The Baltimore buildings, which total about 462,000 square feet, have vacant space because the staff has been significantly reduced over the years, said spokesman Steve McKay.

Roger Goodell, the National Football League's vice president of business development, says he does not know if the Los Angeles Rams would qualify for a franchise move under the league's relocation rules. His views were misrepresented in reports in The Sun last week.The Rams have not asked, and the league has not considered, whether the team would meet the requirements. The team is among a handful reported to be considering a move to Baltimore.

After a two-year detour to New York City, the ceremony to announce the winner of the nation's most lucrative undergraduate literary award, the Sophie Kerr Prize, will be held in Baltimore this year. The decision marks the second time in three years that Washington College officials have moved the event, which was a staple of commencement on the school's Chestertown campus for the competition's first 43 years. The event was so successful in New York the past two years that chapters of the college's alumni association around the country put in bids to host future announcements, Washington College President Mitchell Reiss said.

Major League Soccer's D.C. United is no longer exploring the possibility of moving to Baltimore, according to The Washington Post. The franchise had flirted with the city as it attempted to convince some government entity to give it a favorable deal on a new stadium. But the team's managing partner, Jason Levien, told The Post that "the stars are aligning in a good way for us" in D.C. and that the team would focus on financing a project there with city assistance on infrastructure costs.

Hey, everybody -- give a warm welcome to Yvonne Wenger , a new Baltimore Sun reporter who will be joining me here to blog about (appropriately enough) newcomer issues. She'll take us along as she looks for a place to settle, gets to know the city and navigates the system (MVA registration, anyone?). We hope her experiences will help other newbies and give natives a new way to look at things we've seen a thousand times before. (If you're a new buyer, check out this collection of information and resources while you're at it.)

Ken Malone and the board members of his startup biotech company gathered in a conference room at the University of Southern Mississippi last October to make a gut-wrenching decision. Ablitech Inc.'s funding was slowly drying up, and it couldn't find new sources in Mississippi. If the company stayed, it would wither away. The only option left for Ablitech, they decided, was for the fledgling company to move. "We called our shareholders together and said, 'Look, if we stay here, we're going to die,'" Malone recalled recently.

I grew up in Baltimore, attended school here, and after graduating Hopkins, moved to New York City. I've spent my adult life working in New York, and I'm thinking of retirement in several years. The excitement and glamour of New York are counterbalanced by the high cost of participating in that excitement and glamour. Then there's the astronomical rents. Rents in Baltimore are retiree-friendly. There's the symphony, art museums and my extended family who live here. I am seriously considering Baltimore.

OK, Madame Mayor: Count us in. You've pledged to increase Baltimore's population by 10,000 households over the next decade. My wife and I have just bought a charming city condo, and we're happy to put you one step closer to your goal. You should be happy, too, because we're in a key demographic. We're DILKs: dual income, launched kids. Because Maryland jurisdictions collect piggy-back income taxes on the basis of residential location rather than where wages are earned, our relocation decision carries a nice fiscal dividend.

Pixelligent Technologies LLC will relocate its headquarters and manufacturing facility to Baltimore from College Park with the help of a $200,000 loan from the Baltimore Development Corp. The company, which manufactures nanocrystal additives for the electronics and semiconductor markets, will move into the Holabird Business Park. The Baltimore Board of Estimates approved the five-year loan with a 5 percent interest rate at a meeting Wednesday. Pixelligent said it plans to employ 25 people by the end of the year and 150 by the end of 2015.

Wow! A Baltimore County resident who pays less in property taxes than her city neighbor can send her child to one of Baltimore's premiere schools for $4,235. That's an opportunity that doesn't exist for city residents who may wish to have their children attend a magnet Baltimore County school. Now the premium has been raised a whopping 10 percent ("City school board raises tuition for non-city residents," March 23). Why not raise it 200 percent so that tuition is on par with the private schools in the area?