Redwood Street

Should Baltimore City sell virtually half of Redwood Street to promote the speculative real estate scheme of a private developer? This is the issue before municipal authorities in Leonard Attman's request to acquire two lanes of Redwood Street so he can build a 32-story office tower known as Baltimore Financial Centre.The sooner the city rejects this bid, the better.Since the days before World War I, when it was known as German Street, Redwood Street has been in the center of Baltimore's financial district.

Baltimore police made an emergency petition Thursday to the city's liquor board asking it to immediately suspend the alcohol license of the Velvet Rope nightclub after authorities said hundreds of patrons holding tickets were locked out of an oversold show and nearly rioted on a downtown street. Police said it took 50 officers, including several from the tactical unit and assistance from a police helicopter, to control the crowd that showed up late Wednesday night to hear Southern rapper Yo Gotti.

The city's planning commission has heard the arguments for and against the sale of Redwood Street, and it has decided to defer judgment. We would have preferred an outright rejection of the fatuous notion that the streets of downtown are up for grabs. Still, it may be true -- as opponents of the project claim -- that the commission's indecisiveness is a positive sign, at least in the sense that the problems raised at the hearing cast serious doubt on the wisdom of the current proposal.Indeed, there is more than enough reason to think so: The proposed plan would allow developer Leonard Attman to buy two lanes of Redwood Street, between Charles and Light, for a 32-story office complex.

T he father and son enjoying lunch at the Maryland Club in 1915 would not have attracted any attention. The Hilkens, Henry and Paul, were pillars of Baltimore's German community. The son, Paul Hilken, ran the Baltimore operations of the North German Lloyd Steamship Co., as his father did before him. The elder Hilken was such an outstanding citizen that his 1937 obituary called him "the dean of the local shipping men," and Baltimore Mayor Howard Jackson and the German ambassador were honorary pallbearers.

After listening to three hours of sometimes heated testimony, Baltimore's Planning Commission deferred for at least four weeks any decision on a developer's plan to acquire two lanes of Redwood Street so that he can build a 34-story office tower.The commissioners followed the recommendation of city planning director Ernest Freeman, who said both the proponents and opponents of the project made "compelling" arguments but that neither side presented a strong enough case to sway him one way or the other.

Undeterred by the recession, a group headed by developer Leonard Attman is making another effort to obtain permission to construct an office tower called the Baltimore Financial Centre at the southeast corner of Baltimore and Redwood streets and to use part of Redwood Street as its base.Baltimore's Planning Commission will consider June 27 a pending City Council bill that would allow the development team to acquire part of Redwood Street between Charles Street and Wine Alley and use it as part of the construction site for the 32-story office tower, designed by Ayers Saint Gross Inc.The plan has drawn opposition from neighboring property owners and others, who say the city would be setting a bad precedent by selling part of a city street so a developer can enlarge a construction site, especially when numerous other vacant lots downtown could be used without encroaching on a public thoroughfare.

Baltimore's Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals has joined with the city Planning Commission in opposing a plan by developer Leonard Attman to buy part of Redwood Street to build a $90 million office tower."

Five months after a City Council bill was introduced that would allow a local developer to acquire and use two lanes of Redwood Street to build a 34-story office tower downtown, Baltimore's Planning Commission is holding a public hearing this week to consider the pros and cons of the project.The hearing will be part of the planning commission meeting that begins at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow in the eighth-floor meeting room of the municipal office building at 417 E. Fayette St.It is part of the review process that a development group headed by Leonard Attman must go through if it wants to secure city permission to acquire two lanes of Redwood Street between Charles and Light streets.

Downtown Baltimore yesterday retreated to the year 1954 while a film crew for "Liberty Heights" commandeered Redwood Street, filling it with dozens of vintage cars, neon lights, gabardine suits, hats with veils and cameras on rolling tracks.Traffic congealed into a nonmoving glob, but few drivers complained as they caught a sideways view of star Joe Mantegna standing in a reconstructed world they had forgotten about or never knew."It was a little overcast this morning," said director Barry Levinson.

The old red bank at Calvert and Redwood streets survived the Great Fire of 1904, which destroyed most of Baltimore's financial district. But it seems to have caught fire this winter, after a $2.5 million renovation turned it into the city's hottest new nightclub and party palace. Every week, hundreds of revelers deposit $10 per person to venture inside Redwood Trust, the cavernous entertainment center created inside the old Mercantile-Safe Deposit and Trust Co. branch. What they find is a bank transformation unlike any other: Teller windows have given way to a well-stocked bar. The walk-in vault is a VIP lounge.

Baltimore's downtown would include designated districts that are defined by unique building structures, and regulations would prohibit blocking views of the city's iconic structures under a proposed vision for future development. City planners offered preliminary ideas on Thursday for new rules and guidelines to replace downtown's zoning regulations, which haven't been updated in nearly 40 years. The new zoning also would prohibit any new surface parking lots. The proposals will be incorporated into a new zoning code for the entire city through the Transform Baltimore initiative.

Baltimore's downtown would include designated districts that are defined by unique building structures, and regulations would prohibit blocking views of the city's iconic structures under a proposed vision for future development. City planners offered preliminary ideas on Thursday for new rules and guidelines to replace downtown's zoning regulations, which haven't been updated in nearly 40 years. The new zoning also would prohibit any new surface parking lots. The proposals will be incorporated into a new zoning code for the entire city through the Transform Baltimore initiative.

The historic USF&G Corp. building, once destined for demolition, will show off an extreme makeover Thursday as downtown Baltimore's newest hotel -- a Hampton Inn & Suites. The $22 million transformation of the 1906 building at Calvert and Redwood streets has been in progress for about three years. "Our concept was to take the historic building and restore the historic areas, and everywhere else to make sure that the customer had all the modern amenities that could be afforded into a hotel," said Rick Diehl, one of the principals of Baltimore-based Focus Development LLC, which developed the hotel.

I OFTEN lapse into a glowing feeling this time of the year, the one I like to call the season of hope. It's a time of beginnings, of thoughts of what can be accomplished, perhaps accentuated on my winter walks around our old city. My sense of the promise that the fresh new year holds is confirmed and strengthened as I observe Baltimore's orderly physical transformation. Just this week, while returning home from a Linthicum supper, I observed a dazzling show of light and felt the energy as the Ravens were defeating Pittsburgh on Russell Street.

Construction on the city's next Marriott will not begin by the end of the year, the target date set by its developer. Kevin Urgo, senior vice president of Bethesda-based Urgo Hotels, said he had hoped to get the 176-room Marriott Residence Inn under way on a fenced lot on Redwood Street before the end of this year. But a series of events and opposition has delayed his loans. "We'll have good news in January," Urgo said. Urgo has had both support from the city and opposition from preservationists and labor unions since he proposed the hotel about five years ago. The city approved last month a $3.2 million tax break called a PILOT, or payment in lieu of taxes, for the hotel.

I NEVER thought that Baltimore enjoyed much of the nightlife scene, but then again, I'm usually snoring by the time the disco set is deciding whether to wear their spandex or Lycra. And whoever thought the Saturday night rage would be stand in line to wait for admission to smoke cigars at a club? My friend, Marc Baladi, a veteran Red Ball cab driver, insists there is a 2 a.m. Sunday morning crowd out there unknown to the rest of the slumbering city. In his 26-plus years of cab driving, he says, he has never seen this aspect of the Baltimore scene change as much as it has in the past five years.

There are two ways downtown Baltimore could evolve over the next 20 years. It could become more like Atlanta, with glitzy office towers and hotels rising from a barren base of parking lots and public plazas. Or it could follow the model of San Francisco and Chicago, with well-preserved older buildings interspersed with contemporary structures. The path Baltimore takes may well depend on the outcome of a legal dispute involving Redwood Street, the one-time "Wall Street of the South" and heart of the city's historic financial district.

DOWNTOWN Baltimore's west side might have been named one of America's 11 most endangered places this week, but a portion of the city's financial district might disappear first if local officials don't stop the wrecking ball.Two vacant buildings on Redwood Street in danger of demolition are:The former Fairfax Savings and Loan Building, a four-story structure at 17 Light St. Designed by Charles E. Cassell, the building was one of the first constructed after the 1904 fire in downtown Baltimore.

At Allfirst Bank's 22-story downtown headquarters yesterday, employees went about their jobs in an atmosphere mixed with shock and concern - but also confidence that things will work out. "People are floored," said one employee who, like others interviewed outside on South Charles Street, would not give his name. Still, he said, "people are working." And while the ramifications of the suspected $750 million in fraudulent activities may not be felt for some time, at least one worker feared that the fallout could cost him his job. "It's a lot of damn money.