Shopping Center

The walls came tumbling down as long-vacant buildings were demolished Aug. 30 to make way for a new Walmart Supercenter in the Liberty Plaza shopping center in Randallstown. According to a Baltimore County government news release, the 160,000-square-foot Walmart Supercenter will bring 350 new jobs to Randallstown and will include a full grocery, bakery, deli, pharmacy, and outdoor living department. The new building will replace a strip of long-vacant stores at the rear of the shopping center at Liberty and Brenbrook Roads.

Eastpoint Mall, in southeast Baltimore County, is being sold at auction on May 29, the auctioneer announced. Tidewater Auctions LLC will conduct the foreclosure sale at 11 a.m. in front of the Bosley Avenue entrance of the Baltimore County Circuit Court in Towson. The auction is the result of a lender's lawsuit against Thor Equities LLC, the New York-based investment firm that bought the mall in 2006. There is 850,000 square feet of leasable space in the shopping center, situated on a 67-acre parcel between Eastern Avenue and North Point Boulevard.

Three years after losing its anchor tenant, a Baltimore County shopping center might soon find new life as home to a community college, job training and government offices. Officials say Randallstown Shopping Plaza, which has lost Giant Food and several other businesses in recent years, meets the requirements for a satellite campus of Baltimore County Community College, a trade school, administrative offices for the county Department of Social Services, the Office of Sustainability and a center to assist and train job-seekers.

Baltimore County police are making another plea for help in finding the killer of Joann "Jody" LeCornu, a 23-year-old Towson University student who was shot in the back near her car in a shopping center on York Road in 1996. Metro Crime Stoppers has upped an reward to more than $30,000 in the 15-year-old case. The student was killed about 3:40 a.m. March 2, 1996 in the back of the Drumcastle Shopping Center, and managed to drive across the street to what was then York Road Plaza, where she died.

One could think of the electric vehicle charging station at Westminster's College Square shopping center as a single point in a widening state-, region- and nation-wide grid. The two plug-in devices, installed in January, have had very little use so far - literally just a few charges. But advocates of the electric vehicle market believe that will change. "The (two) charging stations are part of our overall sustainability and efficiency initiative," said Garrett Giusti, of Owings Mills-based Black Oak Associates, which owns and developed College Square.

By a 3-1 vote, Marc Norman lost his latest appeal of plans for a shopping center and supermarket at Turf Valley. The Howard County Board of Appeals discussed Turf Valley residents' fears about the potential for added traffic on the narrow residential road within the 809-acre Ellicott City development for nearly two hours Tuesday night at the George Howard Building. Board member Henry Eigles championed their cause by arguing that the case should be sent back to the Planning Board for more traffic reviews.

Plans for a large shopping center in the Remington neighborhood of Baltimore, including a Walmart store, cleared a major hurdle Wednesday with approval by a key City Council committee. The land use committee voted unanimously to approve zoning plans for the 25th Street Station project, planned for the current site of Anderson Automotive, near Howard and 25th streets. Councilwoman Belinda Conaway expressed misgivings about the proposal. She said there was no guarantee the full council would approve it when it comes up for a vote next month.

Anita Ward says she's not closing the Roland Park Bakery and Deli — she's moving it. But in a town as location-loyal and change-adverse as Baltimore, news that the deli would be leaving the historic Roland Park Shopping Center after 27 years has drawn reactions that run a fairly narrow gamut: from "tragic" to "terrible. " Or, rather, "terrible, terrible, terrible," in the words of Tish Brooks, lunching at the deli earlier this week with her daughter and granddaughter.

The site of the Ritchie Motel, a dilapidated Brooklyn Park landmark that became notorious as a hangout for prostitutes and was attacked as an eyesore by angry neighbors before it was closed in April 1991, has been transformed into a strip shopping center -- and neighbors could not be happier."

A 75,000-square-foot shopping center is scheduled to open next week at the intersection of U.S. 1 and Montgomery Road in east Howard County.The $8 million development is anchored by a 40,000-square-foot A&P Super Fresh supermarket, which is to open next Wednesday.The shopping center is located next to an existing Elkridge National Bank. In addition to the supermarket, other tenants are a Rite Aid Discount Pharmacy, Blockbuster Video, Pizza Hut, Elkridge Cleaners and Shear Brothers, a hair-stying salon.

Thomas Joseph Lopresti, a longtime Towson barber and volunteer at Our Daily Bread, died April 12 of leukemia at Mercy Medical Center. The Timonium resident was 72. He was raised in East Baltimore, the son of Italian immigrants Carmello and Innocenta Lopresti. He attended Baltimore City College, and took a few courses in barbering but basically learned the trade from his father, who owned a shop in Greektown. Except for a stint in the Coast Guard, he worked as a barber nearly all of his life.

Tucked behind trees off a street in Glen Burnie are about a dozen mostly makeshift tents and a small trailer, forming a small community of homeless people who have been there off and on for several years. Now, Anne Arundel County has ordered the homeless to leave the site by April 3 — the second time in about a year there's been a push to clear the site. County agencies and nonprofit organizations — the Department of Social Services and the nonprofit Arundel House of Hope among them — are trying to connect the homeless people there with shelters and other services.

The Village of Cross Keys, an upscale North Baltimore shopping center and one of the earliest projects of Columbia founder James W. Rouse, has been sold by General Growth Properties to Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., a retail and office property investor, according to a notice to tenants delivered Wednesday. The center on Falls Road is now being managed by Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., according to the memo to retailers from the center's management office. The open-air shopping center has about 30 shops and restaurants, including Williams-Sonoma, Talbots, Ruth Shaw and Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa. Chicago-based General Growth, which owns most of the malls in the Baltimore area, has been selling off noncore assets to boost its balance sheet since emerging from bankruptcy in 2010.

A man standing inside a Greenmount Avenue dollar store was fatally shot Monday night by a gunman outside the store, police said. The shooting was reported about 5:45 p.m. at a shopping center in the 2800 block of Greenmount Ave. in North Baltimore's Harwood neighborhood. Police said the gunman shot through a door, striking the victim inside. He was later pronounced dead. Police did not immediately identify the victim and did not give a description of the shooter or motive. The shopping center where the shooting occurred is a block south of a Chinese carryout that has been the site of four killings since 2009.

News that the Giant at the Rotunda is moving west to the old Superfresh store is good news. It will be great to have a Giant that's larger and comparable to the one on York Road north of Gittings Avenue.   The bad news is that the supermarket site at the Rotunda will be vacant. Those who work at the Rotunda and  those who shop at the other stores in that once bustling shopping center will miss having a handy grocery in the building. So will the residents of Roland Park Place and the senior high rises on Roland Avenue south of 40th street.    While the Giant will not be far away, it will be down a hill and farther from those seniors than it was before.

The recent robbery of two women at the Roland Park Shopping Center created a media stir. Although I have lived in Roland Park most of my life, I am always surprised by how some occurrences that go with little mention in other neighborhoods create citywide attention if they happen in Roland Park.   Not that a robbery of two city restaurant-goers, one a senior citizen, should go unnoticed. If all robberies received the attention of the recent one in Roland Park, perhaps more criminals would be caught.

Cranberry Square Shopping Center in Westminster may get increased traffic access through a left turn off Cranberry Road rather than the direct entrance off westbound Route 140 that the center's owners have been seeking.At a session last night, the Westminster City Planning Commission deferred a decision until its Dec. 12 meeting, but the Cranberry Road left turn proposed by commission member Jerry L. Toadvine got a generally favorable reception.Attorney Donald J. Gilmore said opening the first entrance at the rear of the shopping center to left turns off Cranberry Road would be acceptable.

MOUNT AIRY - It's so near and yet so far.Sitting at the intersection of Route 27 and Ridgeville Boulevard West, motorists and would-be shoppers are so close to the Mount Airy Shopping Center they can almost touch it.When the light turns green, they can drive to within feet of the parking lot and an entrance road to the plaza.But at the last instant, the road bends away from the lot, sending motorists north on Ridge Avenue, and on a circuitous route to reach the shopping center parking lot.Merchants at the shopping center have complained that the road configuration hampers business by making it difficult for prospective shoppers to reach the site.

The roast in the R.B.'s Beef & Cheddar ($7) is stacked so high that, with the curved roll, the sandwich is nearly round — and not much smaller than a softball. Maybe the best way to tackle this sandwich at Banksy's in the Lake Falls Village shopping center is to open it up and fork out some of the beef. Not only does this make it easier to eat, but you enjoy the treat of an exceptional roast. It needs no other adornment. Sliced thin and layered fold after fold, the Beef & Cheddar's meat combines quality and quantity.

Frank Taliaferro, a founder and former chairman of the RTKL architects recalled as the "soul" of that firm, died of lung cancer Saturday at his Santa Monica, Calif., home. The former resident of Harwood in Anne Arundel County was 89. Remembered as a mentor to numerous designers at RTKL, Mr. Taliaferro led architects who refined old retail strip centers and finessed them into shopping malls, including Harundale in Glen Burnie and Paramus Park in New Jersey, known for its early food court.