Struever Bros

The developers of Harbor East want the city of Baltimore to prepare their half-billon dollar property by installing $2.9 million worth of infrastructure and a promenade. H&S Properties and Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse also seek a 15-year deferral on the taxes for an office building proposed for this property and to pay no taxes on a planned parking garage for 25 years. Those favoring this arrangement argue that such support will keep and expand business in the city and that this development will eventually pay off in jobs and taxes.

The Baltimore real estate developer credited with resuscitating the American Can Co. complex finalized yesterday the purchase of the derelict Procter & Gamble Co. plant in southern Baltimore, which city officials hope will serve as an anchor to revive economically struggling Locust Point.Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse Inc.'s plan to convert the former soap-making complex, which has been vacant since September 1995, into $53 million worth of office and retail space could bring as many as 2,000 jobs to an area decimated by the closings of manufacturing plants.

THE MOVE OF Anne Arundel Medical Center from downtown Annapolis to a commercial area on the outskirts will have an immense impact the core of the state capital: The 5-acre parcel is the largest to become available in the Annapolis Historic District in decades.The surrounding community feared that the hospital would be replaced with offices, bringing more traffic to the area and dormancy after dark.Medical center officials ought to be commended for heeding the wishes of neighbors as they whittled the list of candidates vying to develop the site.

TWELVE YEARS ago, the City Council made a last-ditch effort to save some of Baltimore's vanishing blue-collar jobs. Hoping to keep Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Southern States' farm supply operation in Locust Point, the council decreed that only industrial uses would be tolerated along major portions of the waterfront.Today, those once-mighty employers are gone from South Baltimore. Yet that portion of the shoreline has glittering prospects.Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse Inc. hopes to take advantage of the vacant Procter & Gamble plant's water views by reconstructing it as a $53 million office and retail complex.

THE SCENT of soap still pervades some of the buildings at the former Procter & Gamble plant in Locust Point, even though the soap-making operation ceased five years ago.Those industrial-strength fragrances apparently have gone to the heads of the new owners, who are converting the landmark to Baltimore's newest waterfront office center.They've renamed the five major buildings in honor of products once made there. Office tenants will be able to lease space in the Tide Building, the Ivory Building, the Dawn Building, the Cascade Building or the Joy Building.

The Baltimore development company that rehabilitated the dormant American Can Co. plant has turned its sights on renovating the abandoned Procter & Gamble Co. soap plant in Locust Point.Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc.'s work on the Canton landmark resulted in significant retail space. It is studying converting the 26-acre waterfront site at 1422 Nicholson St. into primarily office space."In terms of the energy and the excitement level, we're thinking of it in terms of American Can, and in terms of the character we're hoping it will have -- but we're thinking at this point, and it's very early in the process -- that it will be just office space," said Bill Struever, the company's president.

Baltimore developer Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse Inc. intends to purchase the former Kirk-Stieff silver-making plant in Baltimore and renovate it into office space, primarily for high-technology companies, local economic development officials said yesterday.The 80,000-square-foot building is the former home of Kirk-Stieff.Kirk-Stieff was the product of a 1979 merger of Samuel Kirk & Sons, founded in 1815, and the Stieff Co., started in 1892 by Charles C. Stieff. Both were Baltimore companies.

BALTIMORE'S historic Congress Hotel would be reborn as a 36-unit apartment residence called The Kernan, under the latest plan to bring housing to the west side of downtown Baltimore.Owner J. Thomas Dowling recently joined forces with a co-developer, Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse, and they are working to begin construction on the $5 million project by June.Plans call for the building's upper six floors to be converted to market-rate apartments and for the lower levels, including the hotel ballroom, mezzanine and Marble Bar, to be leased to commercial or office tenants.

In the woody hillside that abuts his North Baltimore home, Hal MacLaughlin can glimpse chirping birds dancing in the high branches of 100-foot poplar trees, even an occasional deer strolling in the underbrush at sunrise.MacLaughlin built an addition to his home last summer with a sea of windows so the family could enjoy the scenery while eating breakfast.Want to make the MacLaughlins mad? Tell them 35 houses will replace some of the trees, as developer Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse, Inc. proposed three weeks ago.Their neighbors will get mad, too."

For years, the Frankford Improvement Association has fought to protect its Northeast Baltimore neighborhood from urban blight. Yet there's always been at least one seemingly unconquerable foe: Strathdale Manor.The 123-building apartment complex spread over 18 acres has been vacant since April 1997. It has become a shelter for the homeless, a refuge for stray dogs and a dumping ground littered with old furniture, dirty clothes and discarded tires.But relief could come soon to the neighborhood that has endured the complex's decline.

COPT earnings show 6% increase in net income Office developer Corporate Office Properties Trust said Wednesday its third-quarter net income rose 6 percent to $10.4 million, or 18 cents per diluted share, from $8.2 million, or 17 cents per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2008. The Columbia-based real estate investment trust reported a 3 percent decrease in diluted funds from operations per share to 60 cents per share from 62 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30. Funds from operations rose 7 percent to $42.4 million, from $39.5 million in the same period last year.

Four development teams will compete to build a sports and entertainment venue to replace Baltimore's aging 1st Mariner Arena, with their proposals envisioning added twists such as a seven-screen movie theater, a hotel, concert hall, offices or street-level shops, city officials said yesterday. The proposals unveiled yesterday were submitted in response to an August request for bids. State and city leaders want to tear down the 46-year-old arena and replace it with a larger, 18,500-seat venue that could draw big concerts and acts, and potentially attract a professional basketball or hockey team.

Tide Point office park for sale for $102 million Tide Point, the former Procter & Gamble factory redeveloped into a waterfront office park in Locust Point, is on the market for $102 million, including about $40 million in assumed debt. The five-building office campus, plus a warehouse being converted for Tide Point's largest tenant, Under Armour, has sparked interest from potential buyers, said Bo Cashman, a senior vice president in CBRE's Investment Properties Capital Markets Group. The firm is handling the sale for owner and Baltimore-based developer Struever Bros.

Developers of the historic Bagby Furniture Building in Little Italy said yesterday that they have commitments from retailers to fill well over half the building's newly renovated store space, with the first store, Verizon Wireless, to open tomorrow. Chesapeake Real Estate Group LLC is nearing completion on a $2 million to $3 million transformation of mostly vacant office space into a mix of offices and 25,000 square feet of street-level shops. The development group bought the century-old building at Fleet and Exeter streets just north of Harbor East more than a year ago from Struever Bros.

By choosing to build a new arena on the west side of downtown, Baltimore is placing a $300 million bet on an area that has long struggled to come to life. One problem has been 1st Mariner Arena itself, a 46-year-old albatross with only one entrance and no street-level retail outlets - a hulk that stifles the blocks around it. Proponents of a new downtown arena call the project a shot in the arm for the west side, while critics said yesterday that a mega-project is a bad fit for that area.

For most of the 45 years that Colleen Rosenbach has lived in Locust Point, her neighbor was a hulking grain elevator that coated her cars and windows with brown dust. Now, that silo is being turned into upscale condominiums. "I don't like either one," said Rosenbach, 70. "But at least you knew what to expect with the grain elevator." In a place where houses are passed down through generations and neighbors like to sit on their steps and chat on lazy afternoons, development has been met cautiously.

Essex shopping to get boost America's Realty LLC, which turns around distressed shopping centers, said it plans to buy the Diamond Plant Plaza in Essex and add big box retailers and a grocery store. Carl Verstanding, company chief executive officer, said he 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. Southwest might add jets Southwest Airlines Co., the only big U.S. carrier that's still profitable, might expand its fleet next year as competitors shrink operations to blunt surging fuel costs.

An ambitious plan to expand the Tide Point development in Locust Point has been scaled back significantly in the face of community opposition, the developer told a city planning panel yesterday. The panel approved the plan, but it must clear other hurdles before ground is broken. Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse intends to build 129 townhouses, a seven-story building with 200,000 square feet of office and retail space, two parking garages, a museum and a building with 4,000 square feet of retail on the northern edge of Locust Point, near the Inner Harbor waterfront.

Developer Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse hopes to transform 17 acres in South Baltimore's Port Covington into a community that could include homes, shops and offices, along with a promenade and even a trolley. Struever Bros., working with the owner of the adjacent Tidewater Yacht Service Center, envisions a 2 million-square-foot development with 2,010 housing units, some of which could be built on reconstructed piers. Early concept plans, presented yesterday to the city's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel, shows three residential towers, one as tall as 38 stories, as well as smaller housing units that wrap around parking garages.

The state of Maryland and a team of private developers are pushing ahead with an ambitious $1.6 billion redevelopment of the state's aging 28-acre midtown Baltimore office complex, planning to cluster new offices, apartments, condos and shops around existing mass transit and a new central plaza. Despite an economic slowdown that has stalled many big-city projects, state officials and developers said yesterday that they hoped to start construction of a new State Center by 2010. State officials hope the redevelopment, to take place over a decade, will become a model for transit-oriented development.