Office Space

After years of watching Lynn Weisberg purchase garment after garment, boutique manager Karen Ciurca-Weiner finally told her loyal customer a hard truth — she needed to stop buying and start looking at what she had. Ciurca-Weiner suggested that what Weisberg really needed was to organize her closet. "She kept buying all these clothes," Ciurca-Weiner said as she stood inside her client's closet, a 9-by-12-foot converted office space that now has shelving and drawers to accommodate Weisberg's clothes.

A Baltimore County councilman withdrew a bill Thursday that would have given a wide range of exemptions on development regulations to the Metro Centre at Owings Mills. Councilman Kenneth Oliver plans to reintroduce the measure June 4. It would give special exceptions to the huge project on matters including building sizes, parking, open space requirements and signage. Oliver, a Randallstown Democrat, said he did not have enough votes on the council to pass the bill. Some on the council and in the community had called the bill a "blank check" for the project's developer, Howard Brown of David S. Brown Enterprises.

The Baltimore County Planning Board voted unanimously Thursday to allow the former Solo Cup property in Owings Mills to be redeveloped as an office and retail hub called Foundry Row. The 385,000 square foot development is expected to be anchored by a Wegmans grocery store, a fitness chain, and a sporting goods store. There will also be restaurants, more retail stores and 40,000 square feet of office space. The re-development of the 52-acre property will cost $140 million, according to a Thursday statement from project developer Greenberg Gibbons.

The Della Rose's Tavern at Canton Crossing has closed. Its last night was last Friday. The closing announcement was made on the tavern's Facebook page. Written by Tony DellaRose, it's one of the best closing notices I've seen, absent of self-pity, just honest. And funny. DellaRose told me that he wrote the notice the same night he broke the news to his staff. "It was from the heart," he said. The Della Rose's on The Avenue in White Marsh remains open. "I'm looking at things from this day forward, DellaRose said.

On a sunny spring afternoon, children continue a tradition in the downtown playground next to Annapolis Elementary School: shooting hoops, kicking a ball around, riding the swings. Adults, meanwhile, pursue another generations-old practice: arguing the future of the little park, long considered the keystone to waterfront revitalization. "This is as big for Annapolis as Harborplace was for Baltimore," said Alderman Ross H. Arnett III, who days ago joined a 6-3 majority voting to let the city pursue plans to wipe most parking spaces off City Dock and move them to the playground site, enabling the city to make better use of what some say is the most valuable piece of real estate in town, if not in Maryland.

Merritt Properties announced that four companies recently became tenants at bwtech@UMBC, adjacent to the campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Communications Scientific International, an aerospace technology and services company that provides communications and information systems for satellite, airborne and ground applications to the Department of Defense signed a lease for 2,804 square feet of office space at 5523 Research Park Drive. Tech Edge USA, an IT solutions company, signed a lease for 2,825 square feet of office space at 5523 Research Park Drive.

St. John Properties, Inc. has initiated construction on 6190 Guardian Gateway, a new three-story, 75,000 square foot Class "A" office building located within The Government and Technology Enterprise project, a 416-acre business community located inside Aberdeen Proving Ground. Upon the building's completion this November, St. John Properties will have completed ten office and research and development buildings within the past three years, totaling more than 625,000 square feet of space, the developer said in a news release earlier this week.

When Barbara Huston took a look at the dilapidated Pasadena building that had been offered as new offices to the nonprofit organization she heads, she was taken aback. "It was very dark, and there was a lot of mold. When I walked through, the carpet — it was like walking through a golf green after it rained. " recalled the chief executive officer of Partners In Care, a 19-year-old agency devoted to helping senior citizens remain in their own homes. "I thought, 'Oh, my God,'" That was last year.

Baltimore prosecutors might soon be packing up and leaving their cramped digs in the city's 112-year-old courthouse for a newer downtown office building. A plan being pushed by leaders in Baltimore and Annapolis would provide up to $1 million for the Baltimore state's attorney's office to rent space a few blocks from the courthouse, moving about 200 lawyers and support staff into their own quarters for the first time since the city courthouse opened in January 1900. State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein pitched the idea Friday to lawmakers in Annapolis, saying that the current configuration contributes to inefficiencies and poses public safety problems.

St. John Properties announced last week that it has acquired a building on a 1-acre site at 56 Timonium Road, and will redevelop it into a 10,000-square-foot retail strip center, Timonium Exchange. The site is located between Interstate-83 and York Road. Bill Holzman, assistant vice president or retail leasing for St. John, said the property is currently home to a 7,200-square-foot office and warehouse building, which will be modified and renovated to create the new center.