Paterakis

The city Board of Estimates gave a development group led by businessman John Paterakis Sr. $10 million yesterday for the construction of a hotel east of the Inner Harbor, despite questions about financing and other critical components of the 750-room project.The action marked a sweeping change from the agreement the city made with Paterakis' H&S Properties Development Co. two years ago. That contract stipulated that the Inner Harbor East hotel carry the Wyndham International Inc. flag and be financed by a Dallas hotelier.

With the backdrop of clanging hammers and whirring cranes, mayoral candidate A. Robert Kaufman criticized his opponents' fund-raising efforts yesterday and their alleged ties to big business.Kaufman, the Democrat founder of the City Wide Coalition, delivered his comments at President and Fleet streets, the site of the under-construction Wyndham International Inner Harbor East Hotel. Kaufman, 68, criticized the city's plans to grant its owners an estimated $85 million in property tax breaks as evidence for campaign contribution reform.

Legislation that would give millions in tax breaks to developers of downtown Baltimore hotels and other major city projects received approval from the House of Delegates yesterday by a vote of 95 to 28.The bill now returns to the Senate, where its prospects are uncertain. A key Senate committee chairwoman refuses to accept changes the House made that would benefit two development projects backed by bakery magnate John Paterakis Sr. and Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos."I'm not going to do it," said Democratic Sen. Barbara A. Hoffman, chairwoman of the Budget and Taxation Committee.

Legislation giving lucrative tax breaks to developers of hotels and other major projects in downtown Baltimore cleared the General Assembly last night in the waning hours of the 90-day session.The measure, a priority of downtown development advocates, received overwhelming approval from the Senate and House of Delegates, despite complaints from some Baltimore community groups about the bill's favored treatment of politically connected developers, such as bakery magnate John Paterakis Sr.The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 46-1, with Baltimore Democrat Perry Sfikas the lone dissenter, and the House by 115-19.

Marriott International Inc. will replace troubled hotel chain Wyndham International Inc. as the operator of a 31-story hotel east of the Inner Harbor, ending months of speculation about the brand of the city's only major lodging project under construction.City officials said yesterday that the involvement by Bethesda-based Marriott in the 750-room hotel will significantly boost the marketing of the Baltimore Convention Center, which, despite a $151 million expansion and upgrade, has been struggling with a lack of bookings.

TWO OF the Inner Harbor's most aggressive developers -- John Paterakis and David Cordish -- want to remake piers 5 and 6.Individually or jointly, they are talking about building a garage and retail shops on city-owned land around the Columbus Center and razing the concert pavilion to expand the 65-room Harbor Inn hotel and restaurant complex.Except for the garage, for which Mr. Cordish has submitted a written proposal, the ideas are only at the talking stage.This developer interest is not surprising: Piers 5 and 6 contain some of the last vacant or underutilized Inner Harbor land.

In a full-page advertisement in The Sun business section Friday, friends and business associates of John Paterakis criticized this newspaper for its coverage of the downtown hotel controversy in which he's embroiled and defended Paterakis as a good man - "some might even say a great man" - and solid citizen of Baltimore. They, of course, endorsed his plan for major hotel at Inner Harbor East.There's no disputing Paterakis' good citizenship. He has maintained his successful bakery business here, purchased property here, supported charities here, invested in political campaigns here.

Wyndham hotel deal casts a showdow over urban livingUnfortunately, those of us opposed to the Wyndham hotel project can't afford full-page ads in The Sun like the one published April 3. Anyway, its appearance made it look impressive, but it lacked substance.The Sun's reporting of the controversy over location of the hotel needs no defense. Any regular reader of the paper will recognize how ludicrous the statement was that the subject has received more coverage than any other in recent memory.

I called Harvey Schulweis, the real estate tycoon, at his 50th-floor office in New York City early yesterday morning, and he answered the phone himself. And then he answered my first question: "Can you really do this, Harvey Schulweis?""Yes," he said. "We believe in the project."Without benefit of subsidy from the city of Baltimore or a high-five from our mayor, Schulweis plans to build a 600-room, four-star Westin Hotel across from the Inner Harbor. This, of course, separates him from the two other multimillionaires who want to build hotels here with millions of dollars from taxpayers.

The Harbor Inn Pier 5, which reopened last year after a $12 million renovation but got caught in the web of its principal owner's bankruptcy, is scheduled to fall under the gavel later this month.The 65-room hotel, part of the once-burgeoning empire of Michael W. Lasky until his Inphomation Communications Inc. television infomercial business filed for bankruptcy protection in February, is set to be auctioned at noon Sept. 18.The scheduled foreclosure auction of the three-story hotel is being brought by a group controlled by H&S Bakery Inc. co-owner John Paterakis Sr., which bought $9 million in debt on the lodging project several months ago."

The plea deal had been negotiated long before John Paterakis Sr. made it official in a Baltimore courtroom on Friday. And the bread man turned Harbor East honcho seemed more than ready to sign off on his guilty plea to a couple of campaign finance violations and move on. Judge Dennis M. Sweeney had just started listing the terms of the agreement and the details of Paterakis' sentence. He had barely ordered the first fine, for $1,000 - and had yet to mete out a second, $25,000 penalty and probation - when Paterakis reached into a pants pocket, pulled out two blank checks and had a pen poised to fill them out. It was an impressively quick draw for the 80-year-old Paterakis, but then, he's written a lot of checks over the years.

John Paterakis Sr., the baker and well-connected developer who bankrolled Harbor East, pleaded guilty Friday afternoon to two misdemeanor campaign finance violations and will pay $26,000 in fines and be barred from donating to Baltimore politicians until his probation ends in January 2012. Paterakis had been indicted on charges that he exceeded the allowable donations limits by contributing $6,000 toward a re-election poll commissioned by City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton. A major political and business power broker, Paterakis usually stays behind the scenes and on Friday declined Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney's offer to address the court.

Back when I first joined The Baltimore Sun, a photographer and I were coming back from an assignment in Fells Point, and he was doing what all good old-timers do - pointing out significant sites along the way for a newbie. That's where Grace Hartigan paints, that's where the body turned up the other day. Waving toward some low-slung nondescript buildings where tractor-trailers were maneuvering on and off a narrow street, he said something like, "And that's owned by one of the most powerful men in town.

The furs are back. So's the Ritz in Colorado. The $3,200 weekend getaway to New York's Trump International. The $8,400 spending spree at Chicago's Armani, Coach and St. John Boutique. The state prosecutor's do-over indictment puts the bling back into the case against Mayor Sheila Dixon. But the new charges don't just restore the glitzy travel and Jimmy Choos that a Circuit Court judge tossed out on a technicality in May. It also gives us Dixon doing what big-city mayors do best: begging for cash.

Armchair analysts will no doubt try to play down the significance of the indictments State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh has brought this week against Mayor Sheila Dixon, City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton and bakery magnate, developer and political kingmaker John Paterakis. Mr. Rohrbaugh will be cast as a rogue, Kenneth Starr-like prosecutor bent on taking down Baltimore's powerful Democrats and willing to grasp at any legal technicalities to do it. But the issues raised by those indictments - whether Ms. Dixon perjured herself by failing to disclose thousands of dollars in gifts from someone doing business with the city and whether Mr. Paterakis and Ms. Holton broke campaign finance laws when he helped fund her re-election poll - are fundamental to our trust in our elected officials.

He was the millionaire businessman Mayor William Donald Schaefer called on more than two decades ago to help out with a big problem. Some 20 acres of lumberyards and warehouses between the then-newly redeveloped Inner Harbor and Fells Point faced an uncertain future. Schaefer wanted John Paterakis Sr., bakery magnate and campaign contributor, to do the city a favor and buy the land. For $11 million, Paterakis did, but the city backed down on a promise to buy back the industrial stretch later.

John Paterakis Sr., the self-made baking magnate and developer of the Harbor East complex, was indicted Tuesday on two counts of campaign finance violations accusing him of contributing $6,000 to help pay for a city councilwoman's political poll. The councilwoman, Helen L. Holton, also was indicted for alleged campaign violations, after winning a dismissal two months ago of bribery charges in connection with the political survey. The new charges were handed up by a Baltimore grand jury at the request of State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh, whose three-year investigation of alleged corruption at City Hall has reached the highest rungs of the city's business community.

Finally, somebody in Baltimore starts snitching. Ron Lipscomb seems to have flipped on girlfriend and bread man alike. In a plea bargain this week, Lipscomb admitted to violating campaign finance laws and agreed to help state prosecutors in their corruption case against Mayor Sheila Dixon, an old flame who showered the developer with favors (municipal and otherwise). Lipscomb turned on someone else he's been in bed with: John Paterakis, the baking-and-development magnate who made his fortune baking McDonald's buns.

A developer scheduled to go to trial Monday on charges of bribing a city councilwoman instead pleaded guilty to a lesser violation and agreed to cooperate with the state prosecutor's case against Mayor Sheila Dixon. Ronald H. Lipscomb acknowledged violating campaign finance laws, and prosecutors dropped charges that he paid for a poll for City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton in exchange for her help in securing tax credits for an Inner Harbor East project that he partially owns. State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh said that as part of the plea agreement, Lipscomb will cooperate in his continuing City Hall corruption investigation, including any grand jury proceedings.

Ronald H. Lipscomb loved being part of the development team behind the high-end Four Seasons hotel and condominium tower now rising on Baltimore's transformed Harbor East waterfront. Years before the first shovel of dirt, he mused about buying a seven-figure penthouse there - a move that, like his role in the project itself, would drive home his arrival as an elite developer. Now, the Four Seasons is at the heart of a one-count bribery indictment against Lipscomb, who has intertwined hard work and political ties to move well beyond humble roots as a dirt hauler.