Property

New energy-efficient, single-family homes could soon fill the site of a demolished apartment complex in the heart of Dundalk. The Baltimore County Council is expected to review plans tonight for the 66-home, planned unit development of Yorkway that officials and community groups are hailing for its potential to revitalize and enhance the once-blighted area. "We are going from blocks of run-down homes that generated as many as 3,000 police calls a year," said Councilman John Olszewski Sr., who represents the district and will introduce the resolution tonight.

When Howard County threatened in July 2003 to condemn James and Maria Oliver's 3.2-acre homestead for a developer to build a road into the emerging Maple Lawn development, the Olivers were told that any of their land left over would be commercially worthless. But now, with the road complete, Maple Lawn developer Stuart J. Greenebaum confirmed that a Sun Trust bank is set to rise on a portion of the Olivers' former property as part of a new shopping center along the east side of Maple Lawn Boulevard, a major thoroughfare through the neo-traditional community.

Calling the system "fundamentally unfair and unjust," Gov. Martin O'Malley joined a group of state legislators yesterday in supporting new laws to prevent homeowners from losing their houses over unpaid ground rents. "It's a horrible injustice when you can be thrown out in the cold for $24," O'Malley said, standing in front of the Canton rowhouse of a man who nearly lost his property before Christmas over just such a debt. While O'Malley earlier backed proposed emergency legislation to ban new ground rents, the news conference marked the first time the governor had publicly supported a broad range of specific ground rent reforms.

The Baltimore Board of Estimates took a decisive step yesterday to begin redevelopment of the stalled superblock project on the city's west side, agreeing to sell 37 properties to Lexington Square Partners LLC, a New York developer. The move brings the city closer to a legal fight with the charitable organization that owns more than half the buildings. The five-member Board of Estimates, the city's spending panel, unanimously approved a $21.6 million sale of buildings that occupy 3.6 acres on West Fayette, Howard, Lexington and Liberty streets and Park Avenue.

Baltimore County officials are seeking permission to condemn nine apartment buildings in a Dundalk neighborhood to make way for new housing - the first time in years county government would seize private property in the cause of economic development. The county's land acquisition chief asked County Council members yesterday for the authority to condemn the buildings in the crime-ridden Yorkway neighborhood. The council is scheduled to vote on the request Monday. With council approval, the administration would have to go to court before seizing the properties.

Tuscany-Canterbury's long-standing aggravation with the lone fraternity house in its midst has come to an end, Baltimore's zoning board ruled last night. Phi Kappa Psi, among the last of the Johns Hopkins University's Greeks with a true fraternity house, has lost the right to remain in the mansion at 3906 Canterbury Road, its home for about 30 years. The zoning board unanimously agreed, after a heated two-hour hearing, that the fraternity cannot remain grandfathered in the residential neighborhood after it vacated the property for more than a year to fix a laundry list of code violations.

In a decision likely to force Baltimore to rethink its economic development strategy, Maryland's highest court ruled yesterday that the city cannot continue using eminent domain to "run roughshod over the owners of private property." The state Court of Appeals, in a blunt opinion that harshly criticized the city's favored property seizure technique, found Baltimore had no good reason to take a Charles North bar called The Magnet last year with a sped-up version of eminent domain called "quick take."

On the steps of a downtown courthouse yesterday, under gray skies and a morning chill that had yet to burn off, Yvonne Palmer's house was sold. She wasn't even there as an auctioneer, in the rapid-fire delivery of his trade, rattled off the legal description of the property and the terms of the sale. About a dozen potential bidders listened, affecting the kind of desultory, I-could-take-it-or-leave-it air that you see at any auction, whether at Sotheby's or outside a courthouse. It's an odd little sidewalk drama - an alfresco auction is a strange thing to pass as you enter the courthouse for jury duty or make your way to the corner hot dog vendor for lunch - but one that is on the rise nationwide.

When it opened in 1933, the Scottish Rite Temple of Freemasonry featured a banquet hall that could accommodate 665 people for dinner and dancing. Its bronze front doors were 28 feet high and weighed 3 tons each. Later came a 1,065-seat auditorium with one of the largest stages between New York and Washington. But after nearly 75 years, the charitable foundation that owns the building at Charles and 39th streets wants to sell it and move to smaller quarters in Baltimore County. A representative of the Scottish Rite Charitable Foundation, the owner, recently confirmed at a Tuscany-Canterbury Neighborhood Association meeting that his group is starting to look for a buyer for the property -- 2 1/2 acres in all. "I won't deny ... that we are considering selling it," said Marlin Mills, assistant personal representative to the Masonic order's sovereign grand inspector general.

It has long been recognized that those on the political left are more articulate than their opponents. The words they choose for the things they are for or against make it easy to decide whether to be for or against those things. Are you for or against "social justice"? A no-brainer. Who is going to be for injustice? What about a "living wage"? Who wants people not to have enough money to live on? Then there is "affordable housing" and "affordable health care." Who would want people to be unable to afford to put a roof over their heads or go to a doctor when they are sick?

Preliminary design plans were revealed last week for a complex of mixed-use buildings that could be up to 10 stories high on a 64-acre property wedged between U.S. 1 and the Laurel Park racetrack in southern Howard County. The plans for the North Laurel parcel were presented at a public information meeting Wednesday by Jeff Hayes, development manager at Walter Lynch AIA, a Washington-based consulting firm. The property owners intend to submit a site plan to the county by year's end that tentatively calls for 775 residential units and 650,000 square feet of office space to be built above 120,000 square feet of first-floor retail shops, Hayes told an audience of 20 people.

Preliminary design plans were revealed last week for a complex of mixed-use buildings that could be up to 10 stories high on a 64-acre property wedged between U.S. 1 and the Laurel Park racetrack in southern Howard County. The plans for the North Laurel parcel were presented at a public information meeting Wednesday by Jeff Hayes, development manager at Walter Lynch AIA, a Washington-based consulting firm. The property owners intend to submit a site plan to the county by year's end that tentatively calls for 775 residential units and 650,000 square feet of office space to be built above 120,000 square feet of first-floor retail shops, Hayes told an audience of 20 people.

Baltimore County will buy industrial land in Sparrows Point from the state at a bargain price and lease the property to a local union for a training school. Recent reconfiguring of highways and access ramps along the Baltimore Beltway and Interstate 95 corridor left the State Highway Administration with nearly 12 acres of industrial land and no use for it. With the International Union of Operating Engineers, the county has found a tenant ready to take over the property and build on it. "We are getting property in an industrial area," said Councilman Kevin Kamenetz.

Volunteer lawyers and land experts will hold two workshops this week on the Eastern Shore on how to deal with issues of what is known as "heirs' property," or property that has been passed down through so many generations that it is owned by dozens of family members. "One of the biggest reasons that African-Americans have not been able to hang onto family property and family farms is because of a lack of education," said Vince Leggett, director of the African-American Land Trust. Many people do not know what options they have through wills and trusts to protect family ownership, he said.

Legislative auditors have criticized the State Highway Administration for lax controls over its contracts, equipment and spending in a report that found continuing problems in the way the agency keeps track of public property. The report, released late last week, found that the agency maintained inadequate controls over about $25.7 million in materials and supplies during the budget year that ended June 30, leaving auditors unable to account for articles worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Now that Baltimore City has had its first wind turbine zoning case, it's time for metropolitan Baltimore to get serious about a regional advisory panel on renewable energy resources. Baltimore County has been grappling with this issue since last year, when a farmer in Phoenix wanted to erect a 120-foot windmill on his 97-acre property - far larger than the 8-foot turbine a city zoning panel rejected for a rowhouse rooftop in Federal Hill. In the county, which, like Baltimore, had no regulations to provide guidance, the zoning commissioner granted the request.

To clarify residential construction standards, prevent unnecessary disturbance of land and ease the present financial burden on the beleaguered housing industry, the Baltimore County Council is considering a bill that would make a building permit viable for nine years. If the landowner has not invested money in the property within that time frame, the permit becomes void and the project would have to go through the building review process again. The bill, which the council is to consider Monday, would eliminate the "forever" status for an approved development plan in which the property owner has invested even minimally within four years of receiving a permit.

THE PROBLEM: : Overgrown bushes and weeds block pedestrians' path on a sidewalk in Northeast Baltimore. THE BACK STORY: : The grass is green and lush on Sinclair Lane. Unfortunately, so are the weeds and shrubs. Lottie Sweat walks north on Sinclair Lane, in neighborhood of Frankford, to get to the post office at least once a week. But for months, weeds and other greenery growing taller and wider have encroached on the sidewalk along a short stretch between Parkside Drive and Bowleys Lane, requiring pedestrians to detour into the roadway.

A development aimed at revitalizing a blighted area of Dundalk won planning approval last week and is making its way through Baltimore County's review process. "Everyone is ready to see this project move forward and have these houses constructed," said Arnold "Pat" Keller, Baltimore County director of planning. Yorkway will bring about 66 energy-efficient, single-family homes to a demolition site, where 20 multi-unit apartment buildings were built shortly after World War II. In recent years, those buildings, in the heart of the eastern county community, generated as many as 3,000 police calls a year, officials said.

An Essex family staved off eviction Monday when a District Court judge declined Baltimore County's request that he order the family off the property. Judge Norman R. Stone III told an attorney representing the county that the issues involved in the case were too complex for easy resolution and that county officials had not proved they were entitled to remove James M. Schneider, his wife and their children from their home without helping them relocate. "I wish I could put a stake through the heart of this case," Stone said, "but I can't."