Shopping Center

Baltimore County police have charged a 25-year-old man in a Saturday stabbing that injured four people at a Parkville bar — an incident that concerns officers who say the club has had violent crime problems in the past. Allen Quentin Johnson, of the 1500 block of Lester Morton Court in Baltimore City, faces 18 charges including first-degree assault after police said he stabbed four men outside the Cheers Bar & Grill at 1969 E. Joppa Road. The stabbing was one of several incidents in recent years that have brought police to Cheers Bar, located behind the Perring Plaza shopping center in Parkville, which overlooks Interstate 695. A number of police reports cite the bar as the backdrop for assaults, disorderly crowds, and one attempted-murder charge in October 2008, but the police calls have died down in the past year.

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.

Howard County's first suburban shopping center got a weak recommendation for rezoning by the county planning board Thursday night, a move that could help pave the way for a major redevelopment into a new-generation mixed-use project. If the county zoning board agrees with the 3-2 planning board vote, the 25-acre Normandy Shopping Center, a 1961 precursor of suburban commercialism along U.S. 40 in Ellicott City, would be reborn with about 200 apartments, stores and offices in a "main street" configuration in the next few years.

It defies all logic that a farm with 100 acres could harm the Chesapeake Bay more than a shopping center, apartment complex and attendant parking lots on 100 acres could do. Back when the bay was clean, we had more farms than we do now, and we had many less people with their cars, sewage treatment plants and garbage. Are farmers singled out as evil bay polluters ( "Faulty stewardship," Jan. 13) because there are fewer of us? We are good stewards of the land, and fortunately we have the voice of the American Farm Bureau to speak for us. Milly B. Welsh, Davidsonville

Howard County police are seeking a suspect who robbed an armored truck employee in Ellicott City early Monday afternoon. The employee, a carrier for Dunbar Armored, had just picked up a deposit from the Giant grocery store in the Dorsey's Search Village Center and was returning to the truck at about 12:42 p.m. when a lone gunman approached, stole the deposit and fled in a Nissan Sentra, police said. Neither the carrier nor a second employee, who remained in the truck, was injured, according to police.

The Red Parrot Asian Bistro in Hanover — the community in Anne Arundel County, not Pennsylvania — has good food in a bland setting. It is a restaurant that specializes in Southeast Asian fare. The setting, a glassy corner building in a mall just off the Baltimore- Washington Parkway, is less than uplifting. The service, young men and women clad in black, is spotty. The fare, however, has taste and substance. Red Parrot is one of the tenants of a shopping center that has sprung up on Dorchester Boulevard and Arundel Mills Boulevard, not far from the mother of all malls, Arundel Mills.

My first foray into Christmas shopping this year couldn't have started on a more promising note. It wasn't at just any shopping center; I was at the Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis, only the Everest of its ilk, the largest collection in the country of stores and amusements. It was a couple of days before Thanksgiving, so I didn't even have Black Friday-addled crowds to fight. As a sales clerk at Club Monaco told me, "It's the calm before the storm. " The racks and shelves seemed freshly stocked rather than picked over.

At a time when many real estate companies are having trouble getting loans for expansion, Pikesville-based America's Realty is growing steadily. Headed by chief executive Carl Verstandig, it now controls 164 commercial developments in 13 states — a total of 21 million square feet of space housing 15,000 retailers. And Verstandig is looking to buy even more. His company recently acquired Long Reach Village Center, one of Columbia's original shopping areas, for $5.4 million. It is one of three commercial developments that America's Realty bought this fall in Central Maryland and marks the company's first venture in Howard County.

A Woodlawn adult work force training center and two Essex shopping centers are rounding out the last of Baltimore County's stimulus projects. The Baltimore County Council will consider approving $8.8 million in "Recovery Zone Facility" and revenue bonds — which will allow the developers of the projects to borrow at lower, tax-exempt interest rates — for the three projects at its Dec. 6 meeting. Seven other projects were previously approved. The bonds will go toward renovations at the Country Ridge Shopping Center and a new shopping center on Eastern Boulevard in Essex, and a training center for developmentally disabled adults on Lord Baltimore Drive in Woodlawn.

General Growth Properties is selling the Gateway Overlook Shopping Center in Columbia for $90 million. The 2,700-square-foot center, which opened in 2007, includes tenants such as Trader Joe's, Loehmann's, Costco, Best Buy and On the Border. The sale is part of a strategy by General Growth, which emerged from bankruptcy this week, to sell non-core assets to boost its balance sheet. The sale of the shopping center located at Routes 175 and 108 will help the company reduce about $55 million in debt and generate $35 million in proceeds.