Private Club

Days after it opened in a Randallstown shopping center, the private club M.I.S.T. has been closed by Baltimore County zoning inspectors who found that owners had violated their permit.The club, in the Savoy Plaza shopping center in the 8500 block of Liberty Road, was ordered closed last weekend by Arnold Jablon, director of the county's Department of Permits and Development Management, after inspectors concluded the establishment had made renovations not in compliance with the permit issued March 13 to operate a banquet hall.

When the United States Golf Association packed up its corporate tents after the 2002 Senior Open concluded, Caves Valley returned to its roots as a private club that was selective in the tournaments it hosted. Mandated to promote the amateur ranks, the Owings Mills club welcomed a handful of events in the intervening years - none involving professionals. That will change in the summer of 2014, when the Ladies Professional Golf Association's inaugural International Crown comes to Baltimore County for a four-day, match-play event featuring four-player teams from eight different countries.

The Public Course players played the Private Club members on nearly even terms in singles yesterday at Hayfields Country Club, but it was not nearly enough to offset a first-day deficit, and the Private team finished with a 15 1/2 -8 1/2 victory in the annual Challenge Cup. The winners had a 6 1/2 -5 1/2 margin in singles, with six of the pairings going at least 17 holes. In the closest one, Eddie Lipski of Hillendale CC and Greg Ruark of Mount Pleasant halved their match. Lipski rallied from 3 down to get even in the middle of the round, Ruark went 1 up at the 16th, Lipski birdied the 17th and they halved the last hole.

Atholton Swim Club lives up to its part as a nonprofit organization. Using our volunteers we exist to serve our members and the public in many ways for close to 50 years. The relief we would feel from the proposed tax reduction would allow us to continue to offer our many programs to the community. For a non-Columbia Association resident, you will find that our annual dues and fees are less expensive than those of the surrounding CA pools. Our swim club is an affordable alternative for the hard-working middle-class families who find the CA fees out of reach.

It's not quite party time again on little St. Helena Island, but a businessman's plan to turn his mansion there into a private club has won a key victory from the Anne Arundel County Board of Appeals.Overturning a hearing officer's decision, the board ruled, to the dismay of neighbors, that Keith J. Osborne could operate a club on the island in Little Round Bay without meeting on-site parking requirements.The island is inaccessible to cars, the board noted, and guest parking would be accommodated on a private lot on the mainland.

The owner of Charlotte's, a private club in the White Marsh area that features nude dancing, has been charged with violating a new law that bans alcoholic beverages at nude dancing clubs.Charlotte E. Walter, 70, who operates the club in the 10000 block of Pulaski Highway, was issued a summons yesterday charging her with having beer and whiskey on the premises early Sunday morning. She must appear for trial July 9 in Essex District Court, said Baltimore County police spokesman E. Jay Miller.

On party nights, the crowd of young people at North Avenue and Charles Street begins to swell before midnight, around the time the people inside Odell's are beginning to bust a few moves on the dance floor.By the time the popular nightspot closes in the early morning hours, the streets outside the club are often thronged with more than a thousand people. Men in slow-moving cars cruise by, radios blaring, in an attempt to impress women. Others crowd the sidewalk, eyeing girls in spandex and slick hairdos.

When the United States Golf Association packed up its corporate tents after the 2002 Senior Open concluded, Caves Valley returned to its roots as a private club that was selective in the tournaments it hosted. Mandated to promote the amateur ranks, the Owings Mills club welcomed a handful of events in the intervening years - none involving professionals. That will change in the summer of 2014, when the Ladies Professional Golf Association's inaugural International Crown comes to Baltimore County for a four-day, match-play event featuring four-player teams from eight different countries.

The 2 a.m. shooting where five people were wounded outside Odell's early Monday does not surprise us at all. Since 1976, when the late Odell Brock opened his night club in the first block of East North Avenue, half a dozen people have been slain outside, often in arguments over narcotics.In 1987, federal agents padlocked and confiscated the club after its then owner, Philip A. Murray, was arrested and convicted for his involvement in a major West Baltimore heroin ring. Much of that ring's money had been laundered through Odell's, prosecutors said.

One Saturday in the near future, amateur golfer Mike Ford will tee it up for the first time this spring. If all goes according to plan, he will arrive at the course early, stretch, take a few practice swings and, when it's his turn, try to smack one down the middle of the fairway. The only difference is this year, for the first time since 1997, Ford won't be doing it at the Hillendale Country Club. Instead, having recently surrendered his membership, he'll be playing at one of the 120-plus Maryland golf courses open to the public.

County Councilwoman Courtney Watson said at a public hearing Monday night that she would support including the Columbia Association's 26 swimming pools in her bill to forgive local property taxes for six private, nonprofit Howard swim clubs — if it is legally possible. The question of Columbia's pools has complicated Watson's otherwise straightforward attempt to use state enabling law to give six older, financially struggling community pools a break on county property taxes to help them stay open.

Underage college students, working undercover with police and the county liquor board, walked into seven different private clubs in Harford County on separate occasions over the weekend and were sold an alcoholic drink. At one club, a law officer accompanying the student was asked to leave because of his attire, and initially refused, according to a liquor inspector who was present. The students were also sold alcoholic beverages at four different liquor stores or restaurants, including one in Havre de Grace, on back-to-back nights.

Give clubs the power Sam Farmer Los Angeles Times Of course the NFL should be able to fine players for what and when they post something on Twitter. Playing professional football isn't an inalienable right, it's a privilege. And the league — like a private club — can lay down reasonable rules to protect its product. That said, it should be the individual clubs in most cases, and not league headquarters, issuing the fines. For the most part, the NFL can and does recognize many forms of social media as effective marketing tools.

Salary: $52,000 Age: 49 Years on the job: 11 How he got started: Andreas Doulamatis moved from Greece to Ohio to attend the University of Toledo. He majored in economics and campaign management, but while still in school began working at a private club as a supervisor. He didn't finish school and instead decided to relocate to the Baltimore/Washington area after accepting a job as maitre d' with the former International Club of Washington. He worked there for almost 10 years. When the commute became too much, he looked for work closer to home and became the maitre d' at the Center Club, on the 15th and 16th floors of the Legg Mason building.

One Saturday in the near future, amateur golfer Mike Ford will tee it up for the first time this spring. If all goes according to plan, he will arrive at the course early, stretch, take a few practice swings and, when it's his turn, try to smack one down the middle of the fairway. The only difference is this year, for the first time since 1997, Ford won't be doing it at the Hillendale Country Club. Instead, having recently surrendered his membership, he'll be playing at one of the 120-plus Maryland golf courses open to the public.

Amanda Koss has grown accustomed to almost daily phone calls from people seeking a public swimming pool in Harford County. They ask where they can go if they just want to swim outdoors for the day with their family. She tells them Pennsylvania. "At least three or four times a week, more when it's really hot outside, people call me looking for public swimming pools," said Koss, who has managed the private North Harford Swim Club in Jarrettsville the past three years. "I tell them the closest one that I know is Shanbergers Pool in Fawn Grove."

The Hagerstown Moose Lodge, which saw its charter revoked and its doors shut last month after rejecting a black applicant, has agreed to sell its building and close permanently to settle a two-year-old racial discrimination suit.Although some lodge members had talked of starting a new organization, the agreement prohibits that. The lodge was the Moose's largest in the nation, with 7,500 members.The settlement, approved by Senior U.S. District Judge John R. Hargrove, resolves a complaint filed in 1992 by the American Civil Liberties Union.

More than 40 angry Crownsville residents showed up at an Anne Arundel County hearing yesterday to rail against an Annapolis businessman's plan to turn part of a secluded island in Little Round Bay into a private club for weddings and parties.The residents, and Annapolis Alderman Louise Hammond and Gregory C. Pinkard, a Baltimore businessman whose family owns a third of St. Helena Island, which lies just off the Severn River, voiced their opposition during a three-hour hearing before Stephen M. LeGendre, the county administrative hearing officer.

So whose idea was it anyway to throw a mini-Woodstock in the middle of Maryland's swankest social event? I ask because the Pimlico infield, long an enclave of depravity within the garden party called Preakness, reached new bacchanalian heights last weekend with "The Running of the Urinals." There was a long line of portable potties, and young men raced across the rooftops while fellow revelers pelted them with open cans of beer. You can see the video, shot by The Sun's Karl Merton Ferron, on YouTube.

A top Maryland senator predicted yesterday that a statewide smoking ban would not exempt private clubs such as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, even though his chamber has approved such a provision. Sen. Thomas M. Middleton, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which handled the legislation, said senators would likely agree to drop language exempting private clubs with employees. But clubs where members or volunteers serve themselves beverages or food still wouldn't fall under the smoking ban. Members of the Senate and House of Delegates are set to negotiate a compromise measure after both chambers in recent days passed bills to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.