Parking Garage

Four trucks laden with 100 slot machines arrived early Wednesday morning at the nearly completed casino at Arundel Mills mall. For the next two hours, workers wheeled banks of the gleaming new machines, one by one, inside on hand trucks. Installation of the first set of slots moved Maryland Live! Casino, the state's largest, another step closer to its scheduled opening in three months. That's progress for Maryland's lackluster gambling program, which has yet to be fully implemented more than three years after voters approved five slots locations statewide.

A developer has filed for a permit to demolish theMorris A. Mechanic Theatre, a decades-old venue that has sat unused for eight years in the heart of downtown Baltimore, and replace it with a $150 million-to-$200 million mixed-use development. OneWest LLC plans to build two 30-story towers containing 600 market-rate apartments, 150,000 square feet of retail space and an underground parking garage on the site at 1 NorthCharles St., the partnership said. "The market is ripe and the financing is available for apartments," said Howard S. Brown, a partner in OneWest and chairman and president of Owings Mills-based David S. Brown Enterprises Ltd., which is managing the development.

A new parking garage will open Monday at The Fitzgerald at UB Midtown in Baltimore as the first completed phase of the $76 million mixed-use apartment project, developer the Bozzuto Group said Wednesday. The 1,245-space garage, adjacent to the University of Baltimore, will increase public parking in the Mount Vernon neighborhood and serve the university, cultural venues and residents of the Fitzgerald, which will have 275 luxury apartments and street-level shops including a Barnes & Noble College Booksellers Superstore.

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.

A Virginia-based developer's quest to build a parking garage at 18 W. Saratoga St. received a key endorsement Thursday when Baltimore's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel gave "revised schematic approval" to the latest design for the project. The plan by David and Richard Hillman of Southern Management Corp. calls for a 12-level, 375-space garage to be buried mostly underground, with just 24 spaces above street level. The top of the building would be 26 feet above the sidewalk.

A man was shot several times in the back just before 6 p.m. on a lower level of an underground parking garage in the heart of the University of Maryland, Baltimore and UM Medical Center campus, police said. The victim, who appeared to be in his mid-40s, is in critical but stable condition at a local hospital, said Detective Kevin Brown, a police spokesman. After the shooting, the assailant fled, he said. No description of the shooter was available last evening. Officers were still conducting an investigation of the scene an hour after the shooting, Brown said, and surveillance footage will be reviewed.

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.

A Baltimore City Police officer was shot in the leg about a block away from the Central District office Tuesday night. The officer was shot in a parking garage in the unit block of South Frederick Street, police spokesman Donny Moses said. The unidentified officer was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center. His condition was not immediately available. The garage is open to the public but police officers in the Central District often use the garage, which is a block from the station, to park their off-duty vehicles.

Architect and scholar Shannon Sanders McDonald stepped out on a recent afternoon into a building that in her view stands as one of the most significant forms in architecture, an "It" structure, a hub around which today's urban development revolves. A nationally recognized authority on parking garages, McDonald walked from the Towson Town Center food court to Level C4 East, where she had parked her Mazda Miata. From here she would begin the tour of nearby examples of the architectural form she's been studying for nearly 20 years.

After a three-year struggle involving state officials and city merchants, the new Bladen Street parking garage is open to the public on weekday evenings and weekends, Annapolis officials announced. The 725-space garage, which was completed last month at the corner of Calvert Street, will offer free parking on weekends and from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. weekdays. Any vehicles left after 6 a.m. will be towed. Local business owners were pleased with the Friday announcement. "I think it's fantastic," said Chance Walgran, a member of the Annapolis Business Association.

The new John Hopkins Hospital opens this weekend and that means there is a new emergency room for adults and children. Beginning Sunday at 7 a.m., the public, police, ambulance crews and others will need to go to 1800 Orleans Street. The current entrances on East Monument Street will close. The new entrances are next to the front entrance to the new hospital. Patients also are being moved this weekend from the old hospital buildings. A parking garage is directly across the street from the entrance for non-emergency visitors.

A "high-security" event celebrating the opening of new facilities at Johns Hopkins Hospital will close part of Orleans Street to traffic on April 11 and 12, according to hospital officials. The opening of the hospital's new Sheikh Zayed Tower and The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children's Center will also impact parking accessibility at the Orleans Garage, officials said. On both days, the westbound lane of Orleans Street in front of the hospital buildings will be closed between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., officials said.

The Social Security Administration office at 110 West Road in Towson will officially relocate to the fourth floor of 28 Allegheny Ave., next week. The final day the office will be open on West Road is Friday, March 2. The new office will be open for business Tuesday, March 6. Office hours at the new location will remain weekdays, 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Free parking is available to Social Security office visitors on the fifth floor of the parking garage on Washington Avenue.

Editor: I find it very disturbing that the Town of Bel Air is paying nearly $1.3 million to create 33-metered parking spaces [Bel Air Building Passing into History, The Aegis Jan. 11, 2012]. That is the cost for purchasing and subsequently demolishing the old BB&T Building that abuts the Harford County Sheriff's Office in Bel Air. In total, this amounts to just under $38,900 per parking spot. How many years does the lot have to be in use to even break even? Will the meters be in use 24/7 or will this result in free nighttime parking for those establishments adjacent to the property?

At the January meeting of the Roland Park Civic League, residential parking permits were on the agenda. West University Parkway homeowners near The Carlyle are having trouble finding spaces to park. Residents on the southbound side of University Parkway, near Keswick Road, are too. While The Carlyle has a parking garage, it is not free. Some renters choose on-street parking instead. On a street where parking is tight, the lane (as alleys are called in Roland Park) is narrow and garages are few, parking becomes problematic.

The finally finished parking garage by the Roland Park post office has been bustling with cars all holiday season. The renovations brought no improvement in the careful navigation required there. It is still tight, with caution required not to broadside another car when making a turn or to sideswipe a cement pillar when parking.   When the renovations were complete, new lights created a brighter and safer space than it had been previously.  Now only a few lights work. During the longest and darkest days of the years, most of the parking garage is pitch black after 4:30 p.m. and on rainy days.

An Ellicott City woman was assaulted Thursday by an unknown assailant while approaching her car in the parking garage at Wincopin Circle,said county police spokesman Sgt. Gary L. Gardner.Police said the man ran when the victim screamed and elbowed him in the stomach. She escaped unharmed.The woman told officers she had left the Columbia Inn and walked across the street to the garage at about 9:40 p.m. when she was grabbed from behind around the waist by a man who was hiding between two cars in the garage, police said.

The state Board of Public Works brushed aside concerns of transit advocates and an Annapolis neighborhood group yesterday by endorsing a five-story parking garage at the gateway to the city's historic downtown. The 732-space garage, planned at Bladen and Calvert streets, has long been envisioned as a replacement for more than 400 state employee parking spots that were lost when a nearby parking lot was used for public housing. Expected to be completed in 2006, the garage will cost at least $24 million and will be paid for through revenue bonds.

As shoppers made last-minute stops before Christmas at the Towson Town Center Monday night, a body lay under a sheet outside Nordstrom. A man was fatally shot about 6:22 p.m. on a parking lot sidewalk outside a service entrance to the department store, Baltimore County police said. Police said Monday night they had no suspects, and did not release the identity of the victim, described only as a black man. With six days until Christmas, shoppers appeared unaware of the incident.

The problem: A traffic signal near the Owings Mills Metro stopped cars at a road closed for construction. The back story: Through many years of serving the greater Baltimore region, Watchdog has developed a strong appreciation for properly calibrated — and located — traffic control devices. That's why Susan T. Brooks' email about a traffic signal that was stopping vehicles at a road closed for construction caught Watchdog's attention. Brooks regularly takes the subway to her job at the VA Medical Center in downtown Baltimore.