New Building

After a seven-year delay, Randallstown residents cheered Monday over an announcement that a Walmart will open on Liberty Road next year. Officials and residents have long hoped that the store — a planned $9 million, 160,000-square-foot supercenter with groceries and a pharmacy — would revitalize the aging commercial corridor, encouraging other national retailers and restaurants to set up shop in the affluent, largely black community....

Editor: This letter is written with regard to The Aegis article on April 6 about the PNC Bank at 140 N. Main St. in Bel Air closing this summer. The article mentions that this bank, which was originally a branch of the Forest Hill State Bank, was Forest Hill's "first expansion beyond its namesake community. " This is definitely not the case. The Forest Hill State Bank first ventured outside of Forest Hill when they opened the original Jarrettsville branch in, I believe, 1964.

The walls came tumbling down as long-vacant buildings were demolished Aug. 30 to make way for a new Walmart Supercenter in the Liberty Plaza shopping center in Randallstown. According to a Baltimore County government news release, the 160,000-square-foot Walmart Supercenter will bring 350 new jobs to Randallstown and will include a full grocery, bakery, deli, pharmacy, and outdoor living department. The new building will replace a strip of long-vacant stores at the rear of the shopping center at Liberty and Brenbrook Roads.

T. Rowe Price will likely occupy two new buildings at its Owings Mills campus next year, more than three years after the Baltimore money manager put its expansion plans on hold during the recession, the company's chief executive said Tuesday. James A.C. Kennedy said Tuesday that the company would make a decision about opening the two buildings in the next month or so. "So the likelihood is sometime in the second half of 2013 we're moving in," he said after Price's annual shareholder meeting at its Owings Mills campus.

State and local leaders joined the community of Violetville Elementary/Middle School on Thursday to celebrate the opening of the school's brand-new building, which is the first new school facility to be constructed in Baltimore in more than a decade. The $14 million building opened to students Monday, and officials including Gov. Martin O'Malley attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday, where members of the community described how the original 81-year-old, deteriorating facility has long had a negative effect on students.

True to their word, developers of $90 million Commerce Place office tower at Baltimore and South streets have re-erected the former entrance of the old Safe Deposit and Trust Co. building, which previously stood on the site, as part of the base of the new tower.Contractors finished work several weeks ago on the reconstructed entrance portal, which was dismantled piece by piece and placed in storage when the Beaux Arts-style bank at 13 South St. was razed four years ago to make way for the replacement project.

Children will move into the new Marley Elementary School after spring break next year, Anne Arundel school facilities officials told school board members yesterday. "I think spring break is an appropriate time because it doesn't interfere with testing schedules," said Bill Wise, assistant superintendent for facilities planning, construction and management. Originally, pupils were to move from the old Marley building in Glen Burnie to the adjacent new building after the winter holiday vacation.

Corridors doubling as waiting rooms and crowded surgical preparation rooms are about to become things of the past at St. Joseph as the Towson hospital prepares to open its South Building on Monday.The hospital's staff is praising -- and its patients will soon discover -- how much good $10 million can do."It's like moving to a new hospital for us," said Sherry Eldridge, senior director of nursing for the 460-bed Catholic hospital.The new building is designed to help St. Joseph deal better with patients who must move in and out of the hospital quickly, largely because of pressure from Medicare and other insurers that are trying to keep health care costs down.

WESTMINSTER -- For many students, going to Carroll Community College used to be like going to high school. Or even worse, elementary school."I felt like I was in high school," recalled 19-year-old David Watson of classes CCC previously conducted in its South Center Street building, a former elementary school. "There were even lockers."But the recently opened Washington Road campus -- with its $13.5 million Great Hall -- has changed all that."It's like going to a real college now," said Lisa Love, an early-childhood education major who attends CCC full time.

A new church for the St. Joseph Catholic Community in Sykesville has received preliminary approval from the Baltimore archdiocese.The approval came as the pastor, members of the parish Renovation Committee and architects met Thursday with Archbishop William Keeler."

The Baltimore skyline is iconic: The National Aquarium's blue waves and the World Trade Center's five-sided building have been depicted in places as varied as Robert McClintock paintings and local body art. The Domino Sugar sign is - well, it's the Domino Sugar sign. It's priceless. Exelon Corp.'s Baltimore office, proposed to be built on the old Allied Chemical site in Harbor Point, would alter that skyline forever. In that context, it too needs to be iconic. The proposed office building has been treated by the mayor's office as simply a necessity of the Exelon merger with Constellation Energy.

William Smith has been a member at the Towson Family Center Y since he moved to the area in 1997.There's no doubt in his mind that the facility - built in the 1950s - needs to be replaced. It's the location and size of the proposed new building that has Smith and several of his neighbors concerned. "I don't think it is a good site for the building," Smith said of plans to build the new Towson Y along the northern boundary of the center's property. "We're not interested in stopping the building.

I am writing to support two construction projects proposed for greater Catonsville. The first is the Southwest Physicians Pavilion, a project of Whalen Properties, to be built on the corner of Wilkens and Kenwood avenues at the Baltimore Beltway. The second project is a senior housing facility on the grounds of the Catonsville Y on Rolling Road. I write from the perspective of a recent candidate for Baltimore County Council and a lifelong resident, along with my wife and sons, of this community.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory dedicated a new building in November on its South Campus. The five-story, 200,000-square-foot glass, brick and steel structure on 35 acres provides an array of modern offices, laboratories and conference areas. Designed with green features such as a reflective roof and energy-saver lighting, Building 200 houses scientists, engineers and support staff from APL's Space Department, who advance the knowledge of the space environment and the planets in the solar system, and address many other challenges faced by NASA and the Department of Defense, the primary sponsors of APL's space research.

If it has been a while since you've driven through the heart of this Eastern Shore city, the buildings might come as a shock. One after another, they tower shiny and modern above the chain restaurants and strip-mall shops that dominate Route 13. The buildings, three of them with a combined price tag of $165 million, are the outward manifestation of Salisbury University's changing self-image. For years, Salisbury was known for its proximity to the beach and for the ease with which its name (then Salisbury State)

Last week I attended Columbia Association's public meeting to hear presentations by the four finalists being considered as architects for the renovation or replacement of the Hobbit's Glen clubhouse. I found the presentations very disappointing. They focused on how good each firm is at responding to their clients' needs, on being team players, working within budgets and meeting schedules. All were cautious not to say anything that might jeopardize their chances of getting this job. Consequently, they were noncommittal and vague when asked about the style of architecture that they considered appropriate for a renovated or new clubhouse.

Edgewood Hall, Harford Community College's newest classroom building, adds a distinctive Frank Lloyd Wright look to the 1960s campus.It captures the architect's influence with pitched, overhanging roofs, vertical arrangement of windows and doors, glass corners and an octagonal ceiling on a lecture hall."

After seven years of planning, Anne Arundel Community College broke ground yesterday for an Allied Health and Public Services building, the first step in the development of the western end of the Arnold campus.Standing under cloud-filled skies and braving a frigid wind, Thomas E. Florestano, the school's president, joked that he was "here today to announce the new site of the jail."It was a joke that especially amused County Executive Robert R. Neall, who attended the college in its early years and was among local politicians who attended the ceremony.

The Home Builders Association of Maryland is moving from its Woodlawn home to a new headquarters in Howard County. The trade organization has sent out invitations for a Nov. 21 groundbreaking ceremony for its two-story, 10,000-square-foot building, which will be called the Maryland Center for Housing. The building is scheduled to open next summer in the commercial district of Maple Lawn, a mixed-use community in Fulton in southwestern Howard County. In addition to the association, it will house the organization's nonprofit arm, the Building Industries Foundation, which will own the building.

When it opened in 1962, the Charles E. Miller branch was the flagship of Howard County's library system — the first and only permanent branch in the county Nearly 50 years later, the Ellicott City location is once again leading a transition, as the library system replaces the original Miller branch with a $29 million, state-of-the art structure that will serve the county seat. It will be the largest of six library branches in the county. Along with space to hold 58 percent more books and other materials, the new library will have features the others don't, including an "Enchanted Garden " for outdoor classes and activities focused on health, nutrition, gardening and the environment, and a large area containing the library, archives and offices of the Howard County Historical Society.