New Facility

After a quarter-century of feeding the hungry next to the heart of Baltimore's Roman Catholic community, Our Daily Bread is about to move to a new home - on the edge of downtown, adjacent to the city's jail. Renamed the Our Daily Bread Employment Center, the $15 million, 52,000-square- foot facility will expand the offerings of the city's largest soup kitchen far beyond feeding Baltimore's homeless and poor to provide such services as job training. Patrons will "basically see the same meal, but they'll have increased opportunities," says Dennis Murphy, director of the new facility.

County schools officials are working on plans to modernize the 36-year-old John Archer School, the only public facility in the county dedicated solely to providing education services for children with disabilities. The school board has been discussing whether to undertake a full-scale renovation of the building or move its functions to a new facility, said Don Morrison, a spokesman for the school system. Schools officials are favoring a new facility, which would be built onto an existing county school in accordance with state requirements, said Ann-Marie Spakowski, the director of special education for county schools.

ClarificationLast week's column on the merits of replacing rather than upgrading Pimlico Race Course used a figure of $60 million. That is the overall cost of a plan that would also improve Laurel Park, the off-track-betting system and their marketing. Refurbishing Pimlico is projected to cost $18.2 million.Right now, Pimlico Race Course needs to be saved from itself, or what president Joe De Francis wants to do to it. Maybe the governor, Parris N. Glendening, can introduce some basic common sense and point out a more plausible course of action.

Human Genome Sciences Inc. said yesterday that it completed financing for a new $40 million human protein production plant in Rockville.The deal saves the company from tapping into its own cash reserves or issuing new stock to raise capital for the project, company officials said.The company has signed a long term lease for the $40 million facility with the Maryland Economic Development Corp. The quasi-state agency will own the 80,000-square-foot building and land.Human Genome has the option to purchase the building during the lease period, state and company officials said.

A growing distribution company yesterday opened the area's first full-service truck-fueling facility yesterday -- a $4.4 million project in Southeast Baltimore.Efficiency Enterprises Inc., a wholesale distributor of wine and spirits based in New York City, developed the facility in support of its recent acquisition of Churchill Distributors, Maryland's largest wine distributor.Trucks from Churchill and two other wine distribution companies Efficiency owns will be serviced at the new facility in Hawkins Point, said Joseph Martarella, president of Efficiency Enterprises.

"I love this place," said Patrick R. Aldridge, expressing a seemingly strange sentiment about his current home, the county's new Ordnance Road Correctional Center."If I've got to do jail, I want to do it here," said Aldridge, 24, of Crofton, who arrived in February on a drunken driving conviction and is serving a concurrent one-year sentence on another charge.Yesterday, he and 59 other inmates marched into the center's gleaming gymnasium to the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" to be honored for completing drug treatment and academic programs.

Westminster Postmaster Kathleen Schultz said she's stopped predicting when the postal service might move from its 1930s building on East Main Street to the large new facility that's sitting empty at the edge of town.Several moving dates in November, January and February were scrubbed, as U.S. Postal Service real estate officials conducted a series of walk-throughs -- drawing up lists of things to be corrected, such as counter tops, window caulking, electrical outlets and patches of flooring.

City officials will meet next week with U.S. Postal Service representatives to discuss the future of the downtown Westminster post office, which is scheduled to close on July 18."We're meeting to see what's going to happen with that building," said Thomas B. Beyard, the city's director of planning and public works. "We'd like to see some retail, like the sale of stamps, continue at that site."R. Douglas Mathias, executive director of the Greater Westminster Development Corp., has received several proposals to operate the retail service on a contract basis.

Chesapeake Biological Laboratories Inc. said yesterday that its net loss widened to $392,000, or 7 cents a share, in its first quarter ended June 30, compared with a $75,000 loss, or 2 cents a share, in the first quarter last year.The company said revenue also declined for the first three months to $1.1 million, compared with $1.7 million in the year-earlier quarter.CBL's president, John C. Weiss III, said the increased loss was expected.The Baltimore-based provider of contract manufacturing and testing services to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries attributed most of the loss to the fact that a former top customer, Allergan Inc., terminated its use of CBL's services, Weiss said.

Genetic Therapy Inc. began construction yesterday of a new $20 million state-of-the art research facility in Gaithersburg.The company, which is developing gene therapies for cancer, vascular and other diseases, hopes to occupy the new building in late 1999, said Rachel King, chief executive officer of GTI, which is owned by drug-giant Novartis of Basel, Switzerland.King said the 70,000 square-foot, two-story project is a sign of the company's commitment to remaining headquartered in Maryland and of Novartis' commitment to advancing gene therapy.

Contracts for a new Towson elementary school are to come before the Baltimore County Board of Education on Tuesday, including bids for site improvements and excavation. "This is just the next big step," said Michael Sines, the school system's executive director of physical facilities. "We are exactly where we want to be." The three contracts - for testing site materials, excavation and concrete work, among other things - are "simply the first group" of more than a dozen contracts that will be brought to the board as the project progresses, Sines said.

Baltimore County schools officials proposed last night that a new school be called West Towson Elementary. The name was suggested after a review of historical records of the area where the facility is to be built, and with input from the five school communities that will be affected by it, said Lyle Patzkowsky, an assistant superintendent. The recommendation was made to the Board of Education during a work session. School officials settled on West Towson because the new building, to be constructed next to Ridge Ruxton School on Charles Street, will serve greater Towson, Patzkowsky said.

Biotechnical Institute of Md. awarded Bauer grant The nonprofit Biotechnical Institute of Maryland, which trains unemployed and underemployed workers for entry-level technician jobs at bio-pharmaceutical companies, has been given a four-year, $1 million grant from the Charles T. Bauer Foundation. The institute has placed more than 200 graduates in life sciences organizations and companies throughout the Baltimore area, including the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland Baltimore, Osiris Therapeutics and Human Genome Sciences.

The Anne Arundel Medical Center Auxiliary has pledged $3 million to support the expansion of the Annapolis hospital campus, officials announced this week. The pledge, the largest in the volunteer group's 64-year history, will help fund the $400 million "Vision 2010" project at AAMC, which includes two new buildings, four parking facilities and two bridges. "The Vision 2010 Auxiliary Pledge is a big source of pride for us," said Ann Kier, president of the auxiliary. "Every volunteer wants to contribute, leaving our mark on the hospital we believe in."

Tempers flared yesterday as neighbors of a Baltimore County youth jail told the state's juvenile services secretary that they don't like a plan to build a new facility on the 220-acre site and instead want the place shuttered as they said they had been promised. They spoke of years of worrying about dangerous teens escaping the decrepit, poorly secured Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Cub Hill, of many a night being awakened by police helicopters with searchlights looking for those who had run away.

Gov. Martin O'Malley will announce today plans to construct a new youth jail in Baltimore County, part of a sweeping $200 million overhaul of the state's long-troubled juvenile justice facilities, according to those familiar with the initiative. If approved by the legislature, the $37 million modern detention facility would be built on the grounds of the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Cub Hill, which was partly closed under Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s administration because of dilapidated buildings and chronic security problems.

Whirring white-noise machines sit outside each office door to prevent confidential conversations from being overhead through paper-thin walls. A maze of narrow hallways leads to the small office suites in the cramped commercial building. And because of a shortage of staff and space, more than 400 requests for mental health treatment had to be denied last year. Such conditions make it difficult for the nonprofit Carroll County Youth Service Bureau to do its work - providing outpatient mental health services to families and their children, many of whom receive medical assistance.

County schools officials are working on plans to modernize the 36-year-old John Archer School, the only public facility in the county dedicated solely to providing education services for children with disabilities. The school board has been discussing whether to undertake a full-scale renovation of the building or move its functions to a new facility, said Don Morrison, a spokesman for the school system. Schools officials are favoring a new facility, which would be built onto an existing county school in accordance with state requirements, said Ann-Marie Spakowski, the director of special education for county schools.

After a quarter-century of feeding the hungry next to the heart of Baltimore's Roman Catholic community, Our Daily Bread is about to move to a new home - on the edge of downtown, adjacent to the city's jail. Renamed the Our Daily Bread Employment Center, the $15 million, 52,000-square- foot facility will expand the offerings of the city's largest soup kitchen far beyond feeding Baltimore's homeless and poor to provide such services as job training. Patrons will "basically see the same meal, but they'll have increased opportunities," says Dennis Murphy, director of the new facility.

To some residents in the Chatterleigh neighborhood of Baltimore County, the Baltimore Lutheran School's new facility is a tent, an unsightly and unwelcome edifice that sprang up with little warning behind older buildings on the campus. To school officials, the structure provides much-needed space for athletic events and practices. They call it a field house. For the two sides, that was just the beginning of the dispute. Since the school constructed the building in May, neighbors have complained that it was built without proper government approval.