Real Estate Firm

Judith Ann Phelps, an accountant for a real estate firm, died Thursday of cancer at her Westminster home. She was 56. Born Judith Ann Robbins in Baltimore, she was raised in Pimlico and was a 1965 Western High School graduate. She studied photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art and business management and accounting at the former Catonsville Community College. She worked for the state Health Department, a Catonsville photographic studio and was a self-employed caterer. She also worked as a food service worker at Deer Park Elementary School in Randallstown.

A Howard County couple is suing one of the largest residential real estate brokerages in the state and a Columbia title company for more than $11 million, alleging that the firms had financial ties that violated federal law. The case is a proposed class action that could involve thousands of plaintiffs, all home buyers who bought a home with the Creig Northrop Team of Long & Foster Real Estate since 2000 and used a settlement firm called Lakeview Title...

Casey & Associates Inc., a leading Baltimore commercial real estate firm, has informed employees of a restructuring that will add management and result in an office consolidation.As part of the restructuring, over the next six months the real estate brokerage and property management firm intends to largely combine its Towson and downtown offices, which represent two of its three offices; create a five-member board of directors; retain a chief operating officer to manage daily operations, and establish an employee stock plan.

The New York real estate firm that purchased Harborplace in November paid close to $100 million for the iconic Inner Harbor shopping center, according to Baltimore land records. Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., through an affiliate company called AAC HP Realty LLC, spent $98.5 million to buy the two shopping pavilions from General Growth Properties, records show. AAC borrowed $76 million from UBS Real Estate Securities Inc. to finance the transaction, records show. Although news of the sale of Harborplace did not become public until last fall, Ashkenazy and General Growth, according to land records, entered into a sale agreement in March.

William Henry Valentine III, founder of a West Baltimore real estate firm, died of heart failure Sunday at Union Memorial Hospital. He was 72. Mr. Valentine was born and raised on Etting Street in Baltimore. He was a 1949 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School and attended Morgan State University. He served in the Army from 1950 to 1953. After he was discharged from the service, Mr. Valentine worked as a union organizer and later established and operated the Arkamie Furniture Store on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the Valentine Home Improvement Co. He began working as a Realtor for the R. L. Johnson Realty Co. until founding Valentine & Associates Realty Co. in Northwest Baltimore.

Herman L. Saunders Sr., a former barber and founder of a West Baltimore real estate firm, died of cancer Monday at Sinai Hospital. He was 70. Mr. Saunders was born and raised in Danville, Va., and moved to Baltimore after his 1952 graduation from high school. He worked as a barber in his cousin's West North Avenue shop, and later purchased the business, which he renamed Saunders House of Style. After earning his real estate and brokerage license, he established Herm Saunders Realty in the 1700 block of W. North Ave. in 1967, and operated it until his death.

David Oakley Vanderpoel Barroll, a retired former owner of an Eastern Shore real estate firm, died Tuesday in his sleep at Chester River Manor, a Chestertown assisted-living facility. He was 75. The native and lifelong resident of Chestertown was a 1950 graduate of St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Del. He attended Washington College and was a private in the Army from 1953 to 1955. He sold automobiles and farm equipment before becoming a real estate salesman in the late 1960s. In 1972, he established Cooper-Barroll Realty in Chestertown, of which he later became president.

Commercial leasing near Baltimore-Washington International Airport should start to pick up after hitting an all-time low, a commercial real estate firm reports.In a survey of the Baltimore area, CB Commercial Real Estate Group Inc. found that vacancies near BWI rose from 20.2 percent to 25.3 percent during the first half of the year.The high vacancy rate can be attributed, for the most part, to just one tenant, said Gary G. Dewey, senior vice president of the leasing and management company.

Herbert Davis Associates, a 10-year-old real estate firm based in Brooklandville, recently became a partnership between Lois Schenck and Herbert Davis.Ms. Schenck and Mr. Davis first became associated in 1973, when Mr. Davis headed a firm then known as Chase, Fitzgerald, Davis and Roland.Ms. Schenck moved to New York and operated Lois Schenck Real Estate in New York City from 1982 to 1988. She sold that company before returning to Baltimore.Ms. Schenck is married to symphony conductor Andrew Schenck, music director of the Nassau Symphony and the Atlantic Sinfnietta in New York.

Russell T. Baker Sr., founder of the Russell T. Baker & Co. real estate firm and an advocate of open housing laws, died Thursday of heart disease at Union Memorial Hospital. He was 85.Mr. Baker, who recently had moved into the Roland Park Place Retirement Community, had lived for more than three decades on Tunbridge Road in Homeland.Mr. Baker's career as a salesman had an inauspicious beginning. After earning a degree in German from Hobart College in 1935, Mr. Baker took a job as a salesman with Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. in New York City, where his boss told him he'd never become a successful salesman.

The Baltimore waterfront's iconic Harborplace is being sold to a New York real estate investment firm that has a reputation for purchasing distinctive retail centers, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced Tuesday. Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., which is collecting unique commercial landmarks like Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, Union Station in Washington and Rivercenter in San Antonio, purchased the Inner Harbor mall from General Growth Properties, Rawlings-Blake said in a statement.

Corporate Office Properties Trust, a real estate investment and development firm based in Columbia, is offering 7.5 million new common stock shares for $24.75 apiece, the company announced Thursday. An additional 1.1 million shares have been offered to the underwriters, who must exercise their purchase option within 30 days, COPT said in a statement. The firm expects to raise at least $178.2 million on the stock sale, the statement said. If the underwriters purchase all of the shares available to them, the earnings could go as high as $204.9 million, COPT said.

Manekin LLC, a Columbia-based real estate firm, has formed a partnership with Chicago-based Brennan Investment Group to acquire, develop and manage industrial properties in the Mid-Atlantic region. Manekin, a commercial real estate company with expertise in the Mid-Atlantic, will find and evaluate potential deals, while Brennan will provide capital, the companies said Tuesday. The alliance allows Manekin to work with a nationally focused company with access to capital at a time when a "wealth of opportunities" exists in the mid-Atlantic region, said Owen Rouse, Manekin senior vice president.

Baltimore-based Yerman Witman Gaines & Conklin Realty said Friday that it has been acquired by a Pennsylvania residential real estate company for an undisclosed amount. The merger brings together Prudential Homesale Services Group's 950 real estate agents in 21 Pennsylvania locations with YWGC's 190 agents in five offices. The new company will be called Prudential Homesale YWGC Realty and will have dual headquarters in Lancaster and Baltimore. Prudential Homesale saw the acquisition as a way to break into the Maryland market, while YWGC expects "significantly more exposure" for its listings, company officials said in statements.

Mary Suzanne Beck Keech, a corporate managing director of Studley Inc., a Washington commercial real estate firm, who was also an active alumna of Garrison Forest School, died of cancer Monday at Georgetown University Hospital. The former Catonsville resident had celebrated her 46th birthday last month. The daughter of Rea Keech, a former Buick automobile dealer, and Mary Keech, a Talbots Cross Keys sales associate, Mary Suzanne Beck Keech was born in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville.

Ethel S. Braun, president of the Baltimore real estate brokerage E.G. Rock Inc. for 55 years, died Jan. 6 of heart failure at her Glen Arm home. She was 98. Ethel Segerman was born in Baltimore and raised on Mount Royal Terrace. After graduating from the old Mount St. Agnes High School in 1930, she moved to California, where she lived for two years in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. She returned in 1932 to Baltimore, and six years later married Wilson J.C. Braun Sr., who worked for the old Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River.

The New York real estate firm that purchased Harborplace in November paid close to $100 million for the iconic Inner Harbor shopping center, according to Baltimore land records. Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., through an affiliate company called AAC HP Realty LLC, spent $98.5 million to buy the two shopping pavilions from General Growth Properties, records show. AAC borrowed $76 million from UBS Real Estate Securities Inc. to finance the transaction, records show. Although news of the sale of Harborplace did not become public until last fall, Ashkenazy and General Growth, according to land records, entered into a sale agreement in March.

Its landlord overwhelmed by his debt in the apartment complex, Woodland Springs had deteriorated into more of a haven for drugs and despair than a home for 3,000 Prince George's residents. It was 1992, decades after the complex was built for soldiers returning from World War II, and county and federal housing officials decided to seek professional help. The job fell to Marilynn K. Duker, whose transformation of the troubled property has helped propel her reputation in real estate circles and her career at a growing Baltimore-based real estate firm, the Shelter Group.