Santoni

A Highlandtown grocery store, shut down by the health department when mice feces were found on walls and shelves, was abruptly reopened after a city councilman threatened inspectors with cutting the agency's budget, health officials allege.First District Councilman Nicholas C. D'Adamo Jr., vice chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee, denied the allegations yesterday.Health inspectors said in a departmental report obtained by The Sun that D'Adamo interfered in the inspection of Santoni's Market on East Lombard Street as they were tallying violations.

Floyd E. Warriner, 93, owned several businessesFloyd E. Warriner, a longtime Baltimore resident who formerly owned two grocery stores, a cleaning business and a catering company, died Wednesday of lung failure while living in Orlando, Fla. He was 93.A native of Richmond, Va., Mr. Warriner came to Baltimore in 1926 and opened two grocery stores in West Baltimore. At the same time, he opened a commercial cleaning business -- Oriole xTC General Cleaning -- near Mount Royal and North avenues.

THERE ARE TIMES a city councilman should get involved in a problem to protect the best interests of his constituents. That does not include leaning on health inspectors to rescind an order closing a food store where mice feces has been found on the walls and shelves.Santoni's Market in Highlandtown was closed Feb. 24 by the city Health Department, and was supposed to remain closed until it had solved its mice problem.Instead it reopened as usual the next morning. It seems First District Councilman Nick D'Adamo called a health inspector and asked that Santoni's be allowed to reopen.

When Herb Wetherington looks at the fading hulk of a building at East Baltimore and Haven streets, he becomes nostalgic and hopeful all at once. The building is the long-dormant Esskay Quality Meats Co. processing plant, once one of Highlandtown's biggest employers but now a vacant, down-at-the-heels relic most noticeable for its smashed windows. "Because of the memories, it puts a bit of a hole in my stomach to see what's going to happen to this building," Wetherington said as he stood in the parking lot near the building yesterday.

IT IS GOOD for Baltimore that David F. Tufaro believes he can win. By campaigning hard, issuing position papers and spending money on commercials, he has become the first Republican mayoral candidate in more than three decades to earn more than a passing glance.Because Democrats outnumber Republicans in Baltimore nine to one, Mr. Tufaro would appear doomed in the Nov. 2 general election. Such conventional wisdom does not faze him.Declaring he entered the race "because I can no longer stand to sit on the sidelines and watch this city continue to decline," he is taking callers' questions on talk radio, pressing the flesh at ethnic festivals and holding fund-raisers even beyond the metropolitan area.

As if their lives couldn't get any fuller, Ira and Kelli Gilbert, winners of Saturday's $7.5 million Lotto jackpot, are expecting their second child today."

The day after a network news show charged scandalous abuses in food handling in some stores of Food Lion, a North Carolina-based grocery chain, Paul Santoni had an impromptu meeting with personnel of the Santoni's market he happened to be visiting that day."We just said, let's review our program and make sure what we're doing is right," said Mr. Santoni, who is vice president for operations of the three Santoni's markets in the Baltimore area.Also in the wake of the segment on ABC's "PrimeTime Live," other people who operate food stores in the Baltimore region are taking pains to assure customers that their policies and practices prevent abuses like those alleged against Food Lion.

In Baltimore City Board delays vote on loan to aid Santoni's expansion The Board of Estimates delayed yesterday its vote on a $300,000 loan to help Santoni's Super Market expand its Highlandtown store. The board agreed to defer the matter until next week because two of its members serve on the Baltimore Public Markets Corp.'s board of directors with Robert Santoni Sr., chief executive officer of Santoni's Super Market. The company, founded 73 years ago by Santoni's father, is embarking on a $2.4 million expansion of its grocery at East Lombard and South Eaton streets.

In the Region Malaria vaccine effort joins with Oxford U., Oxxon Pharmaccines The Rockville-based Malaria Vaccine Initiative announced yesterday a two-year, $1.5 million partnership with the University of Oxford and the biotechnology company Oxxon Pharmaccines for research and testing of a malaria vaccine. The alliance of the three entities will allow the development and testing in human volunteers of a vaccine based on Oxxon's "prime-boost" technology, said Dr. Regina Rabinovich, the initiative's director.