Moving To Baltimore

Seeking to make a strong statement about the way its business has grown and changed, the 15-year-old architectural and urban design firm known as Columbia Design Collective is changing its name and moving from Columbia to downtown Baltimore.Principals of the company signed a lease this month to occupy the 14th floor of 100 E. Pratt St., an office tower that overlooks the Inner Harbor.From their drafting tables, employees will be able to see many of the projects on which they are working, including 100 HarborView Drive, the 28-story first tower of the HarborView community; the conversion of the Pier 4 Power Plant to a sports-oriented museum and entertainment complex; and a new health sciences library for the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus.

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.

This weekend NBC unveiled another new sitcom set in Baltimore. That makes three network shows this fall that will be set in the city. Baltimore has never enjoyed such prime-time television prominence.The rush of Baltimore shows is mainly just coincidence, say the producers -- some of whom have never been to the city and have no plans to visit. But, they add, Baltimore's image makes it an attractive fictional setting."Baltimore is a town you can get a concept on," said Lawrence Gay, an executive producer of "Flesh 'N' Blood," the new NBC sitcom.

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.

Phi Alpha Delta law fraternity, a nonprofit professional association of lawyers, students and others with links to the law profession, will move its international headquarters to Baltimore this spring.The association has purchased a four-story office building at 345 N. Charles St. and plans to relocate from Granada Hills, Calif.The move will take several months, and the association will briefly operate in both locations.But the Baltimore headquarters will ultimately house all of Phi Alpha Delta's administrative offices -- including about 12 employees -- and the association's Public Service Center, dedicated to law-related education of elementary and high school students.

When Warner T. McGuinn, a black attorney, Yale Law School graduate and former Baltimore City Council member, died in 1937, a report in The Sun provided this epitaph: "No member [of the council] has been more effective or more earnest in endeavoring to promote public welfare." "Mr. McGuinn ... set an example in his recent service of nonpartisanship in consideration of measures before the Council and when he spoke upon them he showed that he had taken pains to inform himself. His record deserves commendation," the newspaper said.

As the chief operating officer for Washington's Chamber of Commerce, F. T. Burden's job is to promote and attract business to the nation's capital. Just don't ask where he's moving. The district? Nope. Gaithersburg? Wrong again. Rockville? Must be kidding. How about a 7,500-square-foot Victorian in the 1900 block of St. Paul St. purchased for $57,500, a fantasy price in Washington. Although the house needed tens of thousands of dollars of rehab work, a similar Washington property might have cost Burden hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Shsh. Lots of Baltimore City poor are moving to Baltimore County without any government help. Don't tell.Boris Yeltsin stands revealed as a sexual harasser but even that may not save him in Russian politics."

BERNARD L. EISLER "Bert" died on May 2, 2005. He resided at Atrium Village after moving to Baltimore from Lynchburg, VA. He is survived by two sons, Joel R. and Kim I. and one granddaughter. Services on Sunday, May 8, at 9:30 A.M. and 7:30 P.M. at 1808 Courtyard Circle, Pikesville. Contributions can be made to Agudath Shalom Congregation, P.O. Box 2262, Lynchburg, VA 24501.

Joan M. Smick, a retired bookkeeper for a Baltimore machine shop, died Oct. 5 of cancer at a hospital in St. Augustine, Fla.Mrs. Smick, who was 70, moved to Palm Coast, Fla., after her retirement in 1978 from the Slaysman Co. in Baltimore, where she had worked for 36 years.Her husband, Russell L. Smick, who survives her, is a retired machinist with the company.A native of Manchester, England, the former Joan M. Kenworthy came to this country as a child with her family and lived in Philadelphia until moving to Baltimore in 1941.

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.

Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White, fighting to keep the Browns from moving to Baltimore, is looking for support in the oddest of places.All of Maryland's delegates and senators in Annapolis received packets from White this week, addressed to "Dear Concerned Citizen."The packet included a copy of the temporary stop-moving order issued last week by a Cleveland judge as well as various slogans, such as "You Can't Take Cleveland out of the Browns" (( and "No Team, No Peace" printed on orange paper.

Mildred Louise Baugher, a retired grocery store cash clerk, died Monday of lung disease at her granddaughter's Douglasville, Ga., home, where she had lived for nearly three years. The former Northwest Baltimore resident was 74. She was born Mildred Louise Carrier in Harrisonburg, Va., and attended schools there before moving to Baltimore in the 1950s. After working as a secretary at the Marlboro Shirt Co. in downtown Baltimore, she became a cash clerk at the business offices of several grocery chains, including the Penn Fruit Co., Food-a-Rama, Big Value and Basics.

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?