Parking Garage

The Baltimore Development Corp. yesterday asked companies interested in redeveloping Rash Field into a harborside parking garage and recreational area to submit credentials and cost estimates for planning by Feb. 15. Plans for the park - on the north side of Key Highway across from Federal Hill Park - call for raising it high enough to accommodate a parking garage below, with the park covering the garage. The BDC's request yesterday called for interested companies to present past projects and approximate design costs.

WHILE BALTIMORE preservationists are already upset about possibly losing historic buildings as part of the city's campaign to redevelop downtown's west side, the Schmoke administration is exploring plans to demolish historic buildings along Charles Street to make way for a parking garage.Baltimore's Planning Commission approved a City Council bill last month that would authorize the city to acquire buildings "in the vicinity of" Charles and Fayette streets to make way for a $10 million, 500-car parking garage.

For almost 100 years, the hospital in the heart of downtown Annapolis has had a largely peaceful coexistence with its neighbors.Skirmishes have occurred over expansion -- such as its successful fight 10 years ago to build a five-story parking garage -- and downtown residents say they felt a little betrayed when Anne Arundel Medical Center officials announced two years ago they would move to a new, much larger building west of the city in 2001.But the most contentious disagreement might occur as hospital officials and residents try to work out what will happen to the building after the hospital is gone.

For almost 100 years, the hospital in the heart of downtown Annapolis has had a largely peaceful coexistence with its neighbors.Skirmishes have occurred over expansion -- such as its successful fight 10 years ago to build a five-story parking garage -- but downtown residents say they felt a little betrayed when Anne Arundel Medical Center officials announced two years ago they would move to a new, much larger building west of the city in 2001.But the potentially most contentious disagreement looms as hospital officials and residents try to work out what will happen to the building after the hospital is gone.

IS THE restoration of Baltimore's Hippodrome Theater in trouble -- or just a pawn that Gov. Parris N. Glendening keeps using against antagonists like Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke?Late last month, the governor withheld a $1.8 million capital budget allocation for planning the Hippodrome's transformation into a performing arts center. Citing "unanswered questions," the governor asked for firmer cost figures and details about city plans to revitalize the vicinity of the theater at Eutaw and Fayette streets.

Annapolis will build a 500-space garage on West Street in an effort to ease the parking crunch and spur downtown reinvestment, Mayor Dean L. Johnson announced yesterday.The city offered $1.1 million for a 37,000-square foot property that covers nearly a block, starting at the corner of West Street and Colonial Avenue. The deal is set to close tomorrow.City officials praised Cecil Claggett Knighton for shearing $625,000 off the property's appraised value in making the deal."By virtue of his philanthropic gesture, we are now in the position to move forward with plans to build a state-of-the-art parking garage on inner West Street," Johnson said in a statement.

City officials are considering three proposals that would replace a Fells Point parking lot with a bed-and-breakfast, an office building or retail shops.Baltimore Development Corp., the city's economic development agency, said yesterday that it received two unsolicited proposals in April to develop the city-owned site at South Caroline and Lancaster streets, about a block north of the harbor, then, abiding by city policy, issued a request for additional plans.One plan envisions offices and retail shops with a 425-space parking garage and 30 private garages that could be leased by area residents.

PHILADELPHIA -- The first mystery we have to crack is the parking garage.We have been circling 20 minutes beneath the Franklin Institute, looking in vain for a parking space. We deduce, elementarily, that the lot would have been marked "full" if there were no spaces available.It could be a labyrinth, says Sujata Massey, her imagination automatically drawn to the possibilities of boxwood mazes in English countrysides, where one might stumble on a poisoned vicar or two.Is it possible we're going in circles, asks Laura Lippman, who is beginning to feel distinctly queasy.

Preservationists, downtown residents and aldermen urged Annapolis Mayor Dean L. Johnson last night to postpone today's scheduled demolition of four 100-year-old buildings along West Street until a public hearing can be held on the plan.Annapolis officials plan to tear down four buildings in the 100 block of West St. this morning to construct a temporary 89-space parking lot while a design is commissioned for a parking garage with retail and office space.City officials have publicly discussed building a parking garage on the 37,000-square-foot site since they purchased it in June, but Alderman Louise Hammond said residents and preservationists were not informed of the date the demolition would take place.

The Florida developer proposing to build a Ritz-Carlton hotel south of the Inner Harbor said yesterday that he is "committed" to develop the $100 million luxury hotel project and hopes to break ground by the end of the year, despite community reservations.Neil Fisher's comments regarding the 250-room hotel and condominium project, which came after a meeting with city Planning Department officials, stand in stark contrast to earlier statements about the necessity of community support for the project to go forward.

An effort by some members of the Anne Arundel County Council to move a proposed slots parlor away from Arundel Mills mall has left the retail giant feeling "confused, disappointed and frustrated," a top company executive said Monday. Joining a chorus of critics chastising the County Council for delaying zoning changes for a slots facility near the mall, Gregg M. Goodman, an executive with Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group Inc., urged council members to allow the project to go forward on "the one site that actually submitted everything correctly and by the rules.

Members of the state commission considering whether to grant a slots license to Baltimore-based Cordish Cos. expressed frustration Wednesday with continuing delays by Anne Arundel County officials in approving a rezoning measure that would allow the proposed billion-dollar entertainment complex to be built. The Video Lottery Facility Location Commission toured the site of the proposed slots parlor at Arundel Mills, followed by a public meeting and hearing on the Cordish proposal for the state's most lucrative slots license.

The Johns Hopkins University hopes to buy a vacant block in Charles Village once planned for luxury condos and transform it into a mixed development of parking, shops and other university uses once the economy rebounds. A Hopkins spokesman said Wednesday that the university is in talks with a joint venture of Baltimore-based Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc. and Canyon Johnson Urban Funds to purchase the property in the 3200 block of St. Paul St. Struever and Canyon Johnson had proposed The Olmsted as luxury condos with price tags as high as $700,000, then shifted to smaller, market-rate and affordable apartments amid the housing slowdown.

A plan to allow builders to sell up to 20 percent of condominiums in designated senior communities to younger people was defeated in a unanimous County Council vote that came after strong opposition from older residents. The bill was requested by Brantly Development Group as a way to attract more buyers during the recession. But council members sided with county planners and scores of older residents who protested that they bought the specially zoned units because they were restricted for seniors.

Though the perception might be otherwise, historic Ellicott City doesn't need a parking garage or more spaces - at least not yet. What's needed is better management of existing parking, according to a consultant's study for the Howard County revenue authority. Michael Connor said that the recommendation is preliminary and that his study won't be complete until next month. But he gave three members of the revenue authority a preview at a meeting last week. The study by Desman Associates of McLean, Va., examined parking in the congested Main Street area on a Friday and Saturday in October.

The new parking garage at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center will open for visitor parking tomorrow. The Family Birthplace entrance also will reopen tomorrow and the Ambulatory Care Center entrance will revert back to its original location on the opposite side of the building, adjacent to the new parking garage. Valet parking for patients has stopped. Patients can now self-park in designated lots or the parking garage. The parking garage is free for patrons for the first 90 minutes, $2 for 90 minutes to 2 hours, $3 for 2 to 3 hours, $4 for 3 to 7 hours and a maximum of $5 for 7 hours or more.

At 7:30 last Sunday morning, the 10-story Mercy Medical Center parking garage that filled nearly a block at the northwest corner of Calvert and Pleasant Streets in downtown Baltimore vanished behind great billowing clouds of ivory dust to the accompaniment of a jarring series of percussive blasts. A few minutes later, when the air had cleared, the garage was gone, reduced to a massive heap of broken concrete, twisted steel and mangled wire destined to be cleared to make way for construction of a new hospital building.

Police chased a man driving a stolen car through downtown Baltimore yesterday morning, a pursuit that ended with an arrest after an officer fired into the vehicle on a busy street near a hospital just west of downtown, police said. The driver was not struck by the bullet, but shattered glass injured the finger of another officer. A civilian woman was slightly injured when her vehicle was hit by the car police were chasing, said police spokesman Donny Moses. She was being treated at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

The last big development parcel in Baltimore's superblock project would be filled with 152 new apartments, shops, some offices and a parking garage, under a proposal by a west-side property owner and a former city housing official. Baltimore Development Corp. said yesterday that it received one proposal for the block of parking lots and vacant buildings bounded by Park Avenue and Clay, Liberty and Lexington streets. The BDC, the city's development arm, had offered the site for redevelopment in April in hopes of continuing momentum in revitalizing the deteriorated heart of the city's old retail district.

With its logjam of chain restaurants, kitschy knick-knack vendors and congested tourist haunts, Baltimore's Inner Harbor, acclaimed as it might be, sorely lacks a spot where things are not. Tranquillity is just not one of the main attractions. However, a long-anticipated renovation of Rash Field, an underwhelming mish-mash on the harbor's southern side, could transform a significant swath of the waterfront into a 9-acre park with sweeping fields for picnicking, shaded promenades, water features and an educational playground for kids, and with a fenced-in area where dogs could run leash-free.