Planning And Housing

REMARKS BY Howard County Executive James N. Robey in support of the need to increase affordable housing were pleasing to those who agree. What was left unsaid, however, may be more important. Mr. Robey last week endorsed a goal of the county housing department to increase affordable housing, but he offered no suggestions about how to proceed.In years past, affordable-housing proponents suggested requiring developers to include a percentage of units for low- and middle-income families in their subdivisions.

TODAY, Baltimore-area leaders are to officially approve a $16 billion plan for highway and transit projects that will increase sprawl, double traffic congestion, erode transit ridership and worsen air and water pollution.The plan, which is to receive final approval from the Transportation Steering Committee of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, the regional planning organization that drafted it, should be redrawn immediately."We cannot build ourselves out of [congestion]," said Harvey S. Bloom, the BMC's transportation planning director, in a Sun story last week.

AS COMPLEX as the vacant housing crisis in Baltimore may be, it is not unique. At a recent conference sponsored by the Citizens Planning and Housing Association, Yale University professor Douglas Rae said many American cities have become "undercrowded." Like Baltimore, these cities must face the fact that never again will they have a population nearing a million.Baltimore is down to 675,000 residents. It has at least "16,000 properties too many," by Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III's estimate.

The Real Estate Watch column in the Real Estate section of yesterday's editions gave an incorrect date for a meeting of the Baltimore Campaign, an initiative to promote the city that is coordinated by the Citizens Planning and Housing Association.The meeting is scheduled from 8 a.m. to 10: 30 a.m. July 18 at the Baltimore Urban League.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 6/17/96

Frances Morton Froelicher, a social activist who campaigned to make Baltimoreans aware of the living conditions of the city's poor, died Saturday of pneumonia at Franklin Square Hospital Center. She was 82.Sally Morton, Mrs. Froelicher's niece, said yesterday her aunt described herself as a crusader."She told me that you never give up, just try harder," Ms. Morton said. "If the cause is worth the fight, keep fighting."As a founder and the executive director of the privately supported Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA)

When members of Baltimore's Housing Authority met last month to view blueprints for new public housing at Lafayette Courts, they saw comfortable apartments in two-story rowhouses, private fenced yards and secure walkways throughout the community.But will those new houses become the slums of the 21st century?Although local housing and planning experts praise the Housing Authority's proposal to tear down five of the six high-rise public housing towers, many also question its plan to replace the towers with two-story housing rather than move residents to sites scattered throughout the community.

HOUSING FORUMSCPHA offers program on development issuesThe Citizens Planning and Housing Association will hold a forum on "Community Development," the second in a series on "Housing for the '90s," from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday at the Robert Coleman Elementary School, 2400 Windsor Ave.The forum will feature Robert Hill and Elva Tillman of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. Amy Glorioso, a city planner with Baltimore's Department of Housing and Community Development, will be the closing speaker.

Boisclair Advertising Inc., which owns hundreds of illegal billboards around Baltimore, has decided not to appeal a court ruling ordering it to remove the signs.Leaders in the predominantly low-income, black neighborhoods where most of the billboards are found have long protested them, saying they are eyesores and undermine community values by glorifying liquor and cigarettes."Great!" Sylvia D. Fulwood, director of East Baltimore Midway/Barclay Community Organization, said yesterday. "This means they have to come down."

HOUSING FORUMSCPHA offers program on development issuesThe Citizens Planning and Housing Association will hold a forum on "Community Development," the second in a series on (( "Housing for the '90s," June 26 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Robert Coleman Elementary School, 2400 Windsor Ave.The forum will feature Robert Hill and Elva Tillman of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. Amy Glorioso, a city planner with Baltimore's Department of Housing and Community Development, will be the closing speaker.

HOUSING FORUMSPlanning group offers series on '90s housing"Housing for the '90s" will be explored in a series of forums sponsored by the Citizens Planning and Housing Association. Each forum will include talks and panel discussions by city officials and community experts.The first forum, "Code Enforcement and Vacant Housing," will be held Saturday. It features John Huppert and Bob Dengler from Baltimore's housing inspection agency. The forum will include a panel discussion on code enforcement and alternatives to enforcement.

Marjorie Gordon, a former president of a paper box manufacturing business who was active in numerous civic organizations, died of pancreatic cancer Aug. 5 at her north Baltimore home. She was 80. Born Marjorie Jane Chor in Baltimore, she was a 1946 graduate of Forest Park High School and attended the Women's College of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before earning a philosophy degree at Goucher College. She received a master's degree in education from the Johns Hopkins University.

They went from a parking garage in Owings Mills to a mall in Northwest Baltimore to an eco-friendly, upscale development in Hampden. The sites, vastly different in character and location, all had one common element: a transit stop, be it a Metro subway or light rail station. That was the ultimate theme of a tour sponsored yesterday by the Citizens Planning and Housing Association. More than 50 people walked around six transit stations that are sites for redevelopment projects in various stages, taking public transportation to reach each destination.

Franz Josef Vidor, a retired city planning and housing official who helped oversee Baltimore's urban renewal efforts 35 years ago, died of lung disease Tuesday at St. Agnes Hospital. A resident of the Charlestown retirement community, he was 87. Born in Vienna, Austria, he studied at the Vienna Technical College for a year. In a biographical sketch he prepared, Mr. Vidor said he believed in "individual freedom" and left Austria at 19 for England after his home country had been annexed by Nazi Germany.

A panel discussion on notable developments in the Baltimore area will be part of the 65th annual meeting of the nonprofit Citizens Planning and Housing Association. The event - to be held from 5:15 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Wednesday at Gutierrez Studio, 2010 Clipper Park Road, in the new Clipper Mill development - will highlight the location's redevelopment of old mill buildings into new homes, offices and artist space near the Woodberry light rail station. Food and drink from restaurants along the light rail line will be served.

Joyce Smith, who owns a house in Baltimore's Franklin Square neighborhood, has watched her daughter, a 29-year-old professional and single mother, search in earnest for a home in the city. She recently checked out a house in the 1700 block of W. Lombard St., and the price sent her reeling: $275,000. "Why should my granddaughter have to move outside the Beltway and not be able to spend a night at her grandmother's house?" Smith asked last night at a City Council hearing on affordable housing.

WITH SEVERAL suburban counties about to impose limits on residential building, land in Baltimore's depopulating neighborhoods could offer tempting redevelopment opportunities -- if the city plays its cards right. This is why it is mystifying that Mayor Martin O'Malley apparently wants to further weaken the planning department -- which has been without a permanent director since November -- by transferring six community planners. They will go to the housing department, which is hoping to extend its development capacity beyond its traditional responsibility of designated urban renewal areas.

Edward A. Supplee Sr., 81, bank vice president Edward Arthurs Supplee Sr., a retired Mercantile-Safe Deposit and Trust Co. vice president who had been an influential member of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association, died of heart failure Sunday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Roland Park resident was 81. Born and raised in Guilford, Mr. Supplee was a 1939 graduate of Gilman School. After earning his bachelor's degree in Latin from Princeton University in 1943, he served with an Army artillery company in the Pacific and also in the occupation of Japan.

The Morris Goldseker Foundation of Maryland Inc. has issued 24 new grants, totaling about $1,150,000, to local and statewide organizations ranging from the Citizens Planning and Housing Association to Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore Inc. Timothy D. Armbruster, president of the foundation, said that the foundation wanted to donate larger sums to a smaller number of Baltimore neighborhoods. The foundation also wanted to make donations specifically to help nonprofit organizations better themselves by, for example, hiring new management or improving technology.

Baltimore County's ambitious vision for revitalizing long-neglected neighborhoods is drawing criticism from housing activists troubled by its apparent exclusion of the poor. Hoping to spur economic growth in areas bypassed by the current economic boom, Baltimore County is seeking the power to condemn property across large swaths of Essex-Middle River, Dundalk and Randallstown. In each neighborhood, the county plans to obtain and clear land, then look for developers to build upscale homes, offices, stores and restaurants.

REMARKS BY Howard County Executive James N. Robey in support of the need to increase affordable housing were pleasing to those who agree. What was left unsaid, however, may be more important. Mr. Robey last week endorsed a goal of the county housing department to increase affordable housing, but he offered no suggestions about how to proceed.In years past, affordable-housing proponents suggested requiring developers to include a percentage of units for low- and middle-income families in their subdivisions.