Projects

New London, Connecticut. UNTIL I WAS 7 years old my world was defined by the seven-story high-rise in which my family and I had an apartment. Others call the cluster of buildings where we lived low-income housing. We just called it the projects.Eight of us lived in a three-bedroom unit. We slept on mattresses on the floor until we could afford beds. The apartment was located on the seventh floor where the rent was cheaper. The reason why became obvious in the winter, when the top-floor units were buffeted by Buffalo winds and the rooms became frigid.

It was an opportunity no kid could pass up: a rare permission to spray-paint school property - with grown-ups watching, no less. Students at Bryant Woods Elementary weren't creating graffiti. Instead, they stenciled "DON'T DUMP, CHESAPEAKE BAY DRAINAGE" in green lettering on a white background atop a storm drain - part of the school's efforts to educate Howard County residents about ways to protect the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary. Bryant Woods' entire student body, as well as teachers, administrators and guests, gathered at one of the schools concrete-and-metal drains last week and cheered as a group of fifth-graders kicked off the Columbia school's Storm Drain Stenciling Project.

Baltimore County residents and developers expressed support Tuesday for a bill that would require public hearings on building projects to be held closer to the affected neighborhoods. The council will vote next week to require meetings to be held within three to eight miles of proposed developments. Meetings may be held in Towson if other sites are unavailable. The hearings, known as community input meetings, allow residents to get information about a proposed development's size and impact on traffic, schools and infrastructure before the plan is submitted for approval.

On Memorial Day weekends, Kim Yates and Albert Kullman measure success by speed. Yates steers her bright yellow tow truck toward trouble, with the goal of getting disabled vehicles out of the roadway or back in business before traffic has time to clog. From his toll booth at the Bay Bridge, Kullman can make change for a $10 or $20 in under 12 seconds. "We want you on your way," Yates said. "Safely. " The summer season kicks off this weekend when 718,200 Marylanders are expected to leave town for the beach or mountains, 1.2 percent fewer than a year ago, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic.

State Sen. Jim Rosapepe should be applauded for his statement on transportation funding ("Put transportation in voters' hands," April 11). Identifying funding streams for transportation investments is a national political debate. Many understand the extraordinary need to invest in rebuilding our transportation infrastructure, but no one has taken the initiative to Senator Rosapepe's level. It will take a great amount of political courage to achieve his vision. Three thoughts came to mind in response to his column.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved $101.3 million in federal funds for Aberdeen Proving Ground. The bill, approved 411-5 in the House of Representatives, is part of the Military Construction – Veterans Affairs Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 2012, which also includes funding for Fort Meade and other military facilities in Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger's Second Congressional District of Maryland. More than $101 million was awarded to Aberdeen Proving Ground: $15.5 million for Auto Technology Evaluation Facility, $63 million for Command and Control Facility and $22.8 million for U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense Replacement.

Silver Spring-based Choice Hotels International Inc. said Friday it's too soon to know whether two hotel projects planned for Haiti will move forward. Less than a week before Tuesday's earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince, the lodging company had announced plans to bring the first global hotel brand to the island in more than a decade. It had planned to open a Comfort Inn this year in the township of Jacmel and to start construction of an Ascend boutique hotel as part of a new luxury development of lodging, housing and shops, also in Jacmel.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. said it is offering new incentives for nonresidential electric customers' "combined heat and power" projects — up to $2 million apiece. Combined heat and power systems use waste heat from hot exhaust gases for space heating and other purposes, BGE said. Customers planning to install such a system could be eligible for the utility's new Combined Heat and Power Program incentives, available first come, first served. Proposals must be submitted by Dec. 21. BGE is holding a webinar about the incentive at 10 a.m. Thursday.

Here come the #HurricaneHackers . Take a peek at this online Google document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SGcfQz13ce4FfB-QHKF3WLwxHoCRGBouuvZn-3aoX0k/preview?sle=true Here you'll find the collaborative brainstorming of people -- hundreds? thousands? -- working to come up with ways to use the Internet to track, analyze, inform, as Hurricane Sandy bears down on the East Coast. For as long as we all have power. Already, you see the work of the crowd bearing fruit: Check out the Sandy Timeline (which is still in test mode.)

Annie Linskey's recent piece entitled "O'Malley touts progress on State Center project" (July 28) highlighted Maryland's move toward a more thoughtful approach to land redevelopment. Optimally, this significant transit-oriented development project will dramatically improve the character of what today is simply just a cluster of concrete office buildings. By reinventing State Center as a mixed-use development (consisting of commercial, residential and government buildings), Baltimore residents will benefit by having a broad mix of services available in a convenient location, accessible via multiple transit options.

When Anne Arundel County Sheriff Ron Bateman first suggested withholding state tax refunds from people who have open warrants nearly three years ago, critics said it was a foolish pursuit. "One of the criticisms I got was, 'How many criminals have jobs where they are going to get a tax refund?'" he recalled. He couldn't say. Now he can. "There were 396," he told the County Council during a recent budget hearing. This past tax season - the first with the program fully in effect - that's the number of letters the state comptroller's office sent, telling people if they wanted their money, they'd have to clear their open Anne Arundel County warrants.

The gas tax increase Gov. Martin O'Malley signed into law Thursday will pay for weekend MARC service between Baltimore and D.C., roads and bridges throughout the state and construction on the Red and Purple lines to begin as soon as 2015. The first phase of the tax increase - 4 cents per gallon - will arrive in July, but officials already decided how to spend an $1.2 billion it will generate over the next six years. The tax is expected to increase at least three more times until July 2016, bringing the total tax increase to as much as 19.5 cents per gallon, according to state estimates released Thursday.  Here is the list of 10 projects officials announced immediately after the gas tax bill was signed:  $100 million to add weekend service to the MARC Penn line beginning this winter, two more round-trips on the Camden line during the week by next spring and new locomotives this summer.

Construction has begun on more than 100 housing units for senior citizens in Dundalk. Baltimore County officials gathered this week for a ground breaking for the Greens at Logan Field, a 102-unit development being built on the site of Baltimore's first municipal airfield after World War I. The Enterprise Homes development, scheduled for completion in 2014, is for senior citizens who earn 60 percent or less of the area median income. The $15.2 million project is set to include mostly one-bedroom apartments, plus 18 two-bedroom units.

Since "Nixon in China," the 1987 masterwork by John Adams that launched what some wag described as a new genre labeled "CNN Opera," contemporary events have been fairer game than ever for composers and librettists. The list of newsy operas, which includes Adams' "The Death of Klinghoffer" and Stewart Wallace's "Harvey Milk," got a little longer with the premiere last weekend of "Camelot Requiem" as part of the Spire Series at First & Franklin Presbyterian Church. This intriguing and largely persuasive piece about the day of the Kennedy assassination, with text by Caitlin Vincent and music by Joshua Bornfield, received an admirable production from The Figaro Project, a plucky ensemble Vincent founded a few years ago. Treating iconic figures is a tricky business.

As Maryland awaits word from former Memphis point guard Antonio Barton regarding his possible transfer to College Park, it might be interesting to look at the lineups Mark Turgeon could put on the floor next season with or without the 6-2 senior from Baltimore. His three-season stats at Memphis might not accurately reflect how important a piece Barton could be for the Terps. How do you measure a player's basketball IQ, leadership and maturity? Think of what Logan Aronhalt gave Turgeon's team last season, but with Barton playing a much bigger role at a more key position.

Environmentalists and government officials dedicated a stormwater pollution control project near Annapolis on Wednesday that they say is an example of what can be done to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay. The $900,000 project was paid for by state and federal grants, but is the type of project that could be funded by Anne Arundel County's new stormwater fee, said Severn Riverkeeper Fred Kelly, who spearheaded the project. The project re-engineered a stormwater holding pond and 1,700 linear feet of Cabin Branch, a stream that flows from the intersection of Bestgate Road and Generals Highway near the Westfield Annapolis mall out to Saltworks Creek on the Severn River.

Nineteen development teams have applied to take advantage of $30.8 million in funding assistance available to construct or rehabilitate buildings within a newly created "recovery zone" in Baltimore. The Baltimore Development Corp. announced Friday that it received 19 applications for more than $185 million in loans. The agency said it was seeking to fund office buildings, hotels and other projects that have stalled amid the recession and might qualify for federal stimulus funds allocated to the city.

A Hagerstown man pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges of making a false statement by falsely certifying that precast concrete his company manufactured for two high-profile State Highway Administration projects met government standards. Santos Eliazar Rivas, 32, admitted guilt on three counts as part of a plea agreement with the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore. According to prosecutors, Rivas was the director of quality control for Frederick Precast Concrete at a time when the company delivered precast structures for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge replacement project and a project on Interstate 70 that were weaker than they should have been because corners were cut in the manufacturing process.

John Paterakis Sr. didn't believe it when Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke told him nearly two decades ago that Harbor East's Marriott Waterfront Hotel would spur revitalization from the Inner Harbor to Canton. The city had picked Paterakis' H&S Properties Development Corp. to build the hotel, launching a parallel career for the baker and developer. Today, Paterakis marvels at the upscale shops, luxurious living spaces and top-flight office space set to line the southeastern Baltimore waterfront - and already booming along it. "You have to give a lot of credit that he was right," said Paterakis, president of H&S Bakery Inc., which grew from a two-man operation that opened in 1943 to a baking empire spanning more than two dozen states.

Fifty years later, the assassination of John F. Kennedy remains a galvanizing event, studied by serious scholars and conspiracy fringers with equal intensity. People who were old enough in 1963 still remember everything about the news flash that something horrible had happened in Dallas to the nation's youthful president. Those born much later may also find themselves haunted by this dark history. They may even create an opera about it. "Camelot Requiem," which receives its world premiere this weekend with Baltimore area singers and instrumentalists, is the latest and perhaps most ambitious undertaking to date of the Figaro Project, a DIY organization founded by soprano Caitlin Vincent in 2009.