New Baltimore

Peabody Heights Brewery, formerly called Charm City Brewing Company, has signed a lease this month for a bottling plant near Waverly , in the Abell neighborhood. The lease puts it one step closer to becoming the first large-scale brewery to open within city limits in over 30 years. Spearheaded by Stephen Demczuk, owner of Baltimore-Washington Beer Works, and entrepreneur J. Hollis Albert, the brewery expects to be open for business as early as May, though Demczuk says a June launch is more likely.  Peabody will have a 30-barrel brewhouse that its owners hope will eventually produce 40,000 barrels a year of several kinds of beers already made by some of Baltimore's microbrewers.

Baltimore's Urban Design & Architecture Review Panel gave approval Thursday to a revised design for the casino scheduled to be built near where Russell Street enters the heart of the city. The latest renderings show a modern-design building made of a golden-hued stone. In the new images, a garage that sits behind the casino - and therefore can be seen from Interstates 95 and 395 - has been redesigned to appear less bulky and more horizontal. It is also shown sitting within a robust grove of trees.

I think the new Baltimore Sun is very nice, very informative, very colorful. It will take me a while to get accustomed to where my favorite sections and features are. But the search is worthwhile. Keep up the great service. Marge Griffith, Pasadena I am deeply disheartened by the new format of the once-venerable Baltimore Sun. As a former newspaper reporter and long-time professor of journalism, I have lived through many of the changes major newspapers suffer: pressure to close foreign bureaus, pressure to shorten stories and pressure to mimic television by elevating celebrity news (and newscasters)

What if there was a guide to Baltimore's best restaurants, markets and specialty stores, broken down by neighborhood, that told you where the food-lovers' destinations were but didn't neglect the beloved landmarks? And what if you could put the guide in your purse - you know, like a book? On Thursday, Chazz: A Bronx Original will host a release party for “Food Lovers' Guide to Baltimore,” a just-published book from Globe Pequot Press written by Baltimore residents Kathy Wielech Patterson and Neal Patterson.

After months of waiting, supporters of a new Esskay plant in Baltimore have been told they will have to wait until financial conditions improve for Esskay's parent company.David B. McLaughlin, a spokesman for Esskay, said Smithfield Foods Inc. officials have decided that "until economic conditions improve, the corporation won't make any capital expenditures.""For the time being, it puts the situation on hold," Mr. McLaughlin said. Besides a bad hog market, Smithfield has also had to contend with problems at a new plant in North Carolina, he said.

The New BaltimoreCamerataProgram: works by Vivaldi, Haydn, Hindemith, Debussy and Weber.Where: Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, 5200 N. Charles St.When: Sunday at 5:30 p.m.Tickets: Free.Call: 433-8803.Robert Schumann was trained as a lawyer, Hector Berlioz as a doctor and Charles Ives was one of the 20th century's great innovators not just in music but in designing life insurance. So it's not exactly unheard of that the three members of the New Baltimore Camerata, who will give a concert at 5:30 p.m. Sunday at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, are more than "just" musicians: Flutist Ellen Finkelstein is a prosecutor for the city; pianist Frederick Minger is a computer scientist; and cellist Donald Watts, while he teaches music at Towson State University, is also a certified public accountant.

RICHMOND, Va. -- It may sound like a foolish lark for a highly paid school administrator to leave her secure job in Richmond to take a potentially short-term deal in Baltimore. But that doesn't bother Searetha Smith.Her credos defy the careerist guardrails that hold others back: Be flexible. Do good work. Go forth. Don't worry.Last night, the new Baltimore school board voted unanimously to let Smith put her philosophies to work for the city's children. On Jan. 26, Smith will leave her associate superintendent's post in Richmond to serve as chief academic officer in Baltimore.

The Greater Baltimore Committee is pursuing the construction of a new Baltimore Arena despite last month's demise of the Washington-Baltimore 2012 Olympics bid and the absence of a major league basketball or hockey team. "From the beginning, we've assumed a new arena needed to be built in Baltimore regardless of the Olympics," said Donald P. Hutchinson, president of the GBC, Baltimore's largest business organization that deals with public policy. "Winning the Olympics would have made everyone's decision easy.

New Economy entrepreneurs love working in funky old buildings. Travel industry leaders report an upsurge of interest in heritage tourism. Antiques dealers on Key Highway are busier than ever. Now there's even more evidence that history has a role to play in Baltimore's renaissance: The city is getting its own historical society. The Baltimore City Historical Society will hold its inaugural meeting at 4:30 p.m. tomorrow in City Hall, 100 N. Holliday St. The group was established to encourage public interest in Baltimore's history, serve as a gathering place for history buffs and support and promote the local museum community.

It's 8 a.m. on the first day of the new Baltimore Freedom Academy. The school's 105 pioneering ninth-graders will be arriving in minutes. The atmosphere is frenetic. "We're having a baby today! One hundred of them!" Tisha Edwards, the head of school, gushes to a parent volunteer in the cramped office of the academy, which for now is meeting at Baltimore City Community College downtown. For the next four years, Edwards, a woman with no background in education, will be momma to those babies.

Call it manifest restaurant destiny. In 2012, Baltimore-based restaurateurs set about expanding their empires, or at least their brands. Clementine opened a second location in the Creative Alliance in Highlandtown, the team behind Langermann's in Canton opened a second location in South Baltimore, and the owners of Mo's opened a new restaurant in Towson, in the old Hersh's Orchard Inn. And, in December, a version of Baltimore's estimable Prime...

The U.S. government should take over the Oakland Police Department — the California agency led for two years by Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts — because of a chronic failure to comply with a decade-old reform settlement, attorneys overseeing the case said in court papers. A motion, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in California, cites remarks from Batts among what it calls a "sorry trail of broken promises made to the court," and includes a transcript of a Sept.

Baltimore's next police commissioner is walking through a west-side neighborhood with some of the community's most engaged residents, but that's not enough for Anthony W. Batts. He wants to talk to a teacher sipping coffee on her porch. He jogs across the street to greet an older woman standing on her front lawn. "Thank you for being involved," Batts tells the group giving him a tour of Bridgeview/Greenlawn. The charm offensive is meant to convince Baltimoreans that a law enforcement career spent on the West Coast has prepared him to police one of the most dangerous cities in the East.

While the fight over redevelopment of the former Solo Cup property dominated public debate in Baltimore County's comprehensive zoning review, County Council members made nearly 300 other land-use decisions last week. The votes ended a yearlong process of meetings and local battles. The zoning overhaul - the reviews take place every four years - involved 296 issues, the fewest ever. The new maps are to take effect Sept. 10. Council members typically vote unanimously on such decisions, following the lead of the councilperson who represents the district in which the zoning petition is filed.

Baltimore's next police commissioner believes the drug trade is at the core of crime problems from car break-ins to gang killings. And it's an issue that Anthony W. Batts says he's seen up close. "I have relatives who have had addiction problems, and they didn't solve those problems until they got into treatment," he said, referring to family in the Baltimore area. "Trying to stem those issues will stem some of the property crime issues and some of the violence. I think it's all connected.

Five new speed cameras in Baltimore County are scheduled to go into service Wednesday, according to a police department statement. Motorists who exceed the speed limit by at least 12 mph will receive warnings for the first 30 days, then citations will be issued. Tickets can carry a $40 fine, but the citations do not add points to drivers' licenses. The cameras operate 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the year, even when school is out. The new speed camera sites are Southwest Academy on Johnnycake Road in Gwynn Oak; Loch Raven High on Cromwell Bridge Road in Hampton; Stoneleigh Elementary at Regester Avenue in Towson; Patapsco High at Wise Avenue in Dundalk; and Owings Mills Elementary at Reisterstown Road.

Don Shula, the all-time winningest coach in NFL history, has spurned an opportunity to come out of retirement and join the new Baltimore franchise as a coach or a member of the front office.Baltimore owner Art Modell spoke with Shula briefly yesterday morning, and Modell said Shula, 66, gave him no indication he was about to leave South Florida. Shula resigned from the Miami Dolphins last month after a 33-year coaching career.Shula's decision still leaves Baltimore's coaching situation in limbo.

Reinventing the ordinary has had an extraordinary impact on the bottom line of a new Baltimore company called 180s. Revenues at the company - best known for its ear warmers that wrap around the back of the head - grew 9,669 percent from 1998 to 2002. That remarkable pace has propelled it to the top spot on a new list of the 100 fastest-growing private companies in U.S. inner cities that was compiled by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a nonprofit business research organization in Boston, and Inc. magazine.

Gourmet burger joints have been popping up all over town. Some of them are regional and national chains like Five Guys Burger and Fries and Bobby's Burger Palace. A few independently owned burger boutiques like Baltimore Burger Bar in Hampden and Burger Brothers are competing for the burger-lovers dollar, too. Each one has its specialties and its fans. Charm City Burger opened Downtown on Baltimore Street a few months ago. It's an independently owned joint that you may mistake for a chain.