Omni

He started off slowly, staying late to tidy up loose ends. But Greg Vaughan soon became a classic workaholic, spending up to 60 hours a week at his job. Then the stress caught up with him.Under constantpressure working as a security guard in Baltimore, he suffered a breakdown brought on by a chemical imbalance. The 38-year-old Linthicum resident briefly checked himself into a hospital before he found refuge at Omni House, a non-profit rehabilitation program for the mentally ill.Seven months later, Vaughan is back on his feet again.

Two weeks ago, a 26-year-old mental patient from a Glen Burnie rehabilitation program walked into a local bank and held 11 people hostage at knifepoint for four hours.Four weeks earlier, a patient from Omni House who had once been charged with child sexual assault was forced by police to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after allegedly offering neighborhood boys money to accompany him into nearby woods.Omni House is now being investigated by the state and could lose its license to operate, but some mental health activists and professionals say the blame may lie with the state and courts, which release unfit patients to community-based programs.

How white hot is investor interest in Baltimore hotels? Look no further than the Omni Inner Harbor Hotel.As part of a deal to buy a pair of hotel and casino operating companies, a Dallas real estate investment trust has for the second time in four years acquired the twin-towered Omni, and ratcheted up the prices by which future sellers will measure downtown lodging property sales at the same time.That's because in the four years since Patriot American Hospitality Inc. first bought the 707-room project for $17.5 million in September 1993, the price to buy the Omni has more than tripled.

Two companies are warning state regulators that they will collectively be laying off about 150 employees, the state said Monday. Capital One Financial Corp. told the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation that it planned to cut 54 jobs from its information technology department in Laurel, with layoffs starting in October and continuing into January. The company is based in McLean, Va. Separately, federal contractor Omni Corp., which provides property maintenance, repair and other services, said it would lay off 97 employees in the Frederick County community of Emmitsburg Oct. 1. New Mexico-based Omni told the state that its contract to provide services at the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg would not be renewed because the work is moving in-house.

When Catonsville High School signed a contract in February 1997 for its May 1998 senior prom, students, teachers and administrators thought they had secured the ballroom of the Omni Inner Harbor.But weeks ago, the school learned of a scheduling conflict: The Omni had booked a large corporate convention for the same Saturday night in May. And the high school prom was the event that was going to get bumped."It's our fault," acknowledged Omni general manager Peter Bheda, who said the hotel will pay more than $4,000 to help make it up to the school.

A Houston company is negotiating to buy the 703-room Omni Inner Harbor Hotel for roughly $24 million, a move that could result in the second sale of the city's largest hotel in as many years.If the sale to the Gencom Group reaches fruition, it would cap a year of frenzied activity provoked by improved occupancy and room rates at hotel properties in the area.Analysts also attributed the renewed interest in local hotels to planned or nearly completed expansions of tourist attractions. These are expected to greatly enhance the city's $1 billion annual tourism industry.

A prominent Glen Burnie developer cost a program for the mentally ill more than $12,500 and upset patients at Crownsville Hospital Centerby refusing to sell 12 promised condominiums, witnesses testified infederal court Friday.Administrators for Omni House, a non-profitrehabilitation program, said they lost fees and spent hours in meetings and counseling worried patients at Crownsville after developer Frank J. Scott abruptly canceled a $1.4 million sales agreement last April.Omni House and one of its clients, James G., a 27-year-old patient at Crownsville, fought back by suing Scott for housing discrimination.

Although her roommates know about her mental illness, and in fact have their own afflictions, 27-year-old Kathy Livingstone prefers to meet at the nearby Hardee's to talk, rather than her apartment.Thisis her first time talking publicly about her illness, which has plagued her for nine years, and she feels more comfortable meeting at a public place."It's hard to talk in front of my roommates," she says.Sipping coffee, still dressed in her security guard uniform from work at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Livingstone tries to explain what it's like to have schizophrenia while refusing to live in a secluded world of mental illness.

Omni House, the struggling Glen Burnie mental health care provider, has received an emergency grant of $49,000 from state health officials to keep its doors open - at least temporarily - and hold off additional service cutbacks. The community-based clinic is one of many around the state trying to cope with a lack of funding and with administrative problems, such as delays in payment, in the state's public mental health system. Several clinics have closed, including two in Anne Arundel, and financial pressures forced Omni House to shut down two of its programs in December.

The NAACP called yesterday for a boycott of three hotel chains that failed on the group's report card monitoring the lodging industry. The companies are crying foul over the grading process.Best Western International Inc., Adam's Mark Hotels and Omni Hotels Corp. brought up the bottom of the list of 14 chains with grades of D+, D and D-, respectively. The companies were evaluated on their performance concerning diversity and minority business development.The lodging industry review, begun in 1996, judges companies according to the participation of blacks in management, franchising and supply of materials.