Shopping Center

The Harford County Development Advisory Committee serves as a forum for the review of subdivision and site plans submitted to the Department of Planning and Zoning by those seeking building permits. The committee will review the following proposals at 9 a.m. Wednesday in the second-floor conference room of the Harford County government building, 220 S. Main St., Bel Air: 3303 Philadelphia Road Location: South side of Philadelphia Road (Route 7), east of Abingdon Road. Developer: Gerard & Dennis Amedora/Charles & Jacqueline Morkosky/Harold & Diane rose/Crouse Construction/Bay State Land Services.

Only a few cars are parked on the cracked and faded asphalt at the Liberty Plaza shopping center. The Valu Food is long gone. Plywood covers storefront windows, under faded signs that mark what had been a coffee shop, a pharmacy, a dry cleaner. And Randallstown's gleaming new community center exists only on blueprints - three years after elected leaders gathered at the shopping center to say one would be built. "All these promises were made. Meanwhile, we've seen little evidence of anything," said Ella White Campbell, a community organizer who attended the May 2004 announcement.

The Mount Airy Planning and Zoning Committee unanimously approved a site plan last night for an 11,068-square-foot Rite Aid drugstore. The freestanding building with a drive-up pharmacy would replace a smaller store in the Mount Airy Shopping center.The five-member panel met with engineers from Linthicum-based BL Companies for 90 minutes before the vote, discussing entrances and exits for the proposed store facing Ridge- ville Boulevard along Route 27 and Ridgeside Drive."It's the most dangerous intersection we've got," said Keith Gehle, committee chairman.

Three men with handguns robbed an armored-car guard and stole her weapon yesterday afternoon after she made a pickup at a Middle River shopping center, Baltimore County police said.The unidentified Dunbar guard was approached from behind by the gunmen moments after she left a McDonald's at the Martin Plaza Shopping Center in the 1300 block of Martin Blvd., said county police spokesman Bill Toohey.He said the guard was accosted after she entered the back of her truck with money from the restaurant shortly before 3 p.m. The men ordered the woman to lie on the floor of the truck and then fled with the undisclosed sum and the woman's gun, Toohey said.

For the second time in less than a week, a group of young men in southern Howard County has ended a dispute with gunfire, police say, leaving an 18-year-old Beltsville man in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head.The 18-year-old and a 20-year-old man were shot Wednesday night behind Whiskey Bottom Shopping Center in the 9100 block of All Saints Road in North Laurel. The night of Aug. 27, two 17-year-olds were shot several times in Savage. A 16-year-old has been charged in that incident, police said.

Ritchie Highway Shopping Center used to have it all -- Woolworth's, a White Coffee Pot restaurant, Myrtle Allen's women's clothing store and Jerry's for the men. For nearly 40 years, the center was where much of Brooklyn Park shopped, ate and socialized.But about five years ago, as key tenants went out of business or moved, the shopping complex quickly deteriorated."That was the beginning of the end," said Carol Leishear, assistant manger at M. J.'s Card and Gift Shop, a 16-year tenant in the center at Ritchie Highway and Hammonds Lane.

Although a handful of Ellicott City residents raised some minor concerns yesterday about a proposed face lift of Chatham Mall on U.S. 40, many seemed to agree that a renovation is long overdue for one of the oldest shopping centers in Howard County."

Baltimore County's zoning commissioner has ruled against a plan to add as many as six new businesses to Towson's Ravenwood Shopping Center because of the parking headaches such an expansion would create.Commissioner Lawrence E. Schmidt denied a variance for the plan Friday, saying the plan for new businesses at the popular Ravenwood at "Four Corners" -- the busy intersection of Loch Raven Boulevard and Taylor Avenue -- would eliminate existing parking spaces while creating a need for more.

LEE DOVE, Archbishop Spalding High School director of athletics, has won the 1999 National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association's State Award of Merit.The award is presented annually to one NIAAA member in each state in recognition of service, leadership and outstanding contributions to interscholastic athletics.He will receive the award in April at the NIAAA Convention in Ocean City.During his 13 years at Spalding, Dove has added tennis, golf, cross country, and indoor and outdoor track to the sports program.

Today is the last day of business for the Coffee Mill in Belvedere Square, a bitter end that husband-and-wife owners Rosemary and Tom Thompson did everything to avoid.The Coffee Mill is the last of the original tenants of the North Baltimore shopping center, which opened behind the former Hochschild Kohn department store in 1986.The Thompsons say the closing -- and that of nearly every other retailer and merchant who once did business at the square -- is symbolic of Baltimore's decline in the 1990s.

The new Watersedge Community Center in eastern Baltimore County means the youngest soccer hopefuls in the neighborhood can play the game indoors year-round. The $2.4 million brick building, which the county's Department of Recreation and Parks officially opened April 17, puts a long anticipated basketball program on a court in a school-sized gymnasium, and it gives the Watersedge Dancers a studio to call their own. "Basically, we can bring the whole council under one roof and expand our programs," said Todd Smith, president of the Watersedge Recreation Council.

Maryland lawmakers decried a proposal that would strip Pimlico Race Course of the historic Preakness Stakes, a day after a Pikesville developer revealed plans to bid on the Baltimore racetrack and replace it with a shopping center. On Friday, some officials called for exploring other legal means to ensure that the Preakness remain at Pimlico, which is up for sale, along with Laurel Park, by its bankrupt owner. Still others welcomed the idea of a shopping center, though a city zoning law would need to be changed to allow the removal of a racetrack from the historic Pimlico property.

Citigroup Inc. moved to seize one of General Growth Properties Inc.'s shopping malls in Louisiana after the Chicago-based shopping mall operator missed payment on a $95 million loan. General Growth owns most of the Baltimore area's regional malls, including Harborplace and Towson Town Center, and is Columbia's master developer. It operates more than 200 malls nationwide and has been warning investors since November that it may have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection if it cannot renegotiate its debts.

Janet Middlebrooks and her sister-in-law were always trying to diet, so when they met for weekly excursions at Harundale Mall half a century ago, they always ordered the Waldorf salad at the upstairs cafeteria. From the get-go, Middlebrooks, now 81, was a devotee of the Glen Burnie shopping center, the first enclosed mall east of the Mississippi. She saw the governor cut the ribbon at the mobbed opening, bought groceries and clothes, and occasionally participated in evening square-dancing demonstrations.

Adrienne Wood came because she believes former City Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr.'s killing was "senseless." Buddy Conwell wanted to support his community. And Ann Costlow thought that showing up might, in some small way, help end the violence. All three stood in a crowd of about 150 people at the Northwood Shopping Plaza yesterday evening, listening to elected leaders articulate what Harris stood for and struggling to place his weekend slaying there in a broader context. "I'm angry," said state Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, a Baltimore Democrat.

Thanks to Bob Heaton and other Ten Hills-Hunting Ridge-Academy Heights readers for adding to the popular traditions surrounding the Edmondson Village Shopping Center. Last week, I rattled off a listing of 1950s stores in the center and managed to forget about Edmondson Sporting Goods, where Heaton "dropped a small fortune" on toy locomotives and cars for his model railroad layout. "I was in a syndicate with five other guys, and the 8-foot layout was in my basement. When we reached 16, our interest suddenly switched to automobiles on a scale of 12 inches to the foot.

Cataclysmic comparisons came quick and easy yesterday for business owners recovering from a torrent of water and mud that descended on a Lutherville shopping center. "At its worst, it was like Niagara Falls," said Sheila Landers, manager of the Maytag Store in Yorkridge Shopping Center, part of which was slimed Saturday by a wall of cascading mud churned up by a broken water main on York Road. Landers - who described the water as "nasty muddy" - and other business people on the shopping center's eastern perimeter were forced to plug their rear doorways with trash bags and whatever else came to hand in an effort to stop the treacly mess from seeping in. Some succeeded, some did not. Yesterday, the task turned toward cleaning up, both inside some of the stores and in a parking lot behind them, where a Baltimore County Bureau of Utilities crew used bulldozers, excavators and a huge vacuum-cleaner truck to get rid of the mud, much of it now dried, caked and almost impenetrable in the heat.

A mostly closed shopping center in Essex could become the home of big-box retailers and a supermarket. The Diamond Point Plaza, which has struggled since losing Sam's Club and Ames stores, is under contract to a Pikesville developer who is lining up retailers. America's Realty LLC, which turns around distressed shopping centers, expects to close on the $18 million purchase of the center and 6 additional acres on Eastern Boulevard and Diamond Point Road within 60 days, said Carl Verstandig, company chief executive officer.

A 14-screen movie theater with reserved seating and a full-service restaurant with leather seats has been added to the projects planned for the expansion of Village South at Waugh Chapel shopping center. Developers of the 80-acre Gambrills complex said the theater will bring a much-needed moviegoing option for area residents, who now have to go to Annapolis or Hanover to see the latest blockbuster. It will join Wegmans Food Market and Target amid a mix of homes, office and retail space that will be built on top of a fly ash dump, an expansion that has drawn local opposition.

Only a few cars are parked on the cracked and faded asphalt at the Liberty Plaza shopping center. The Valu Food is long gone. Plywood covers storefront windows, under faded signs that mark what had been a coffee shop, a pharmacy, a dry cleaner. And Randallstown's gleaming new community center exists only on blueprints - three years after elected leaders gathered at the shopping center to say one would be built. "All these promises were made. Meanwhile, we've seen little evidence of anything," said Ella White Campbell, a community organizer who attended the May 2004 announcement.