Taubman

Craig 'n CompanyLet the kids rock out to the music of Craig Taubman and his six-piece band Sunday at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts. The award-winning recording artist brings his fresh brand of entertainment to children of all ages.Chock-full of catchy tunes about kid life, family life and the spiritual life, Taubman's show takes the audience on a whimsical musical journey. He will play tunes from his albums, as well as Jewish family songs with accompaniment from the children's choir of Har Sinai Congregation.

Atholton's Adam Abramson and Jay Garbart, who had won 36 straight games to reach the doubles final of the Howard County tennis championships, lost yesterday.A game, that is.Abramson and Garbart actually lost three games, but the top seeds earned the title with a 6-1, 6-2 victory over River Hill's Chanu Rhee and Zachary Heidepriem at the Wilde Lake Tennis Club.The top-seeded team of Wilde Lake's Lauryn Taubman and Mary Valverde won the girls doubles title, defeating second-seeded Mount Hebron's Katie Long and Ladan Fakory, 7-6 (7-4)

Brinkley breakup laid to crackupSupermodel Christie Brinkley and her ex-husband, Colorado real-estate man Richard Taubman, were diagnosed and treated for "post-traumatic stress syndrome" after a 1994 mountain helicopter crash, which may have contributed to their breakup, their attorney says.Ironically, their attorney revealed the information as part of an attempt to keep medical information and other personal matters secret in a Texas court case.Ms. Brinkley, Mr. Taubman and others in March sued American Eurocopter over the ski-trip crash.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Woodward & Lothrop Inc., a department-store chain that has been hemorrhaging money for years, may consider filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to restructure its debt, a company spokeswoman said yesterday."

30-year mortgages stay at 8.32%Thirty-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 8.32 percent this week, unchanged from last week, according to a national survey released yesterday by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. The rates are the highest since they averaged 8.48 percent during the week ended June 26.On one-year adjustable-rate mortgages, lenders were asking an average initial rate of 5.32 percent, up from 5.20 percent last week. The rates do not include add-on fees known as points.2 Honda executives join BMWTwo executives who helped make Japanese automaker Honda successful in the United States were appointed yesterday to head German automaker BMW's first U.S. operation.

Woodward & Lothrop Inc. was never known for environmental activism. Yet it is suing everyone in sight in Anne Arundel County on the grounds the planned expansion of the Annapolis Mall will spoil wetlands, endanger water supplies and increase pollution and traffic. Woodies maintains that's its sole concern. No one believes it.This activism was triggered by a mall expansion to accommodate Nordstrom's, a move that may affect a nearby Woodies. It has appealed rejection of an earlier challenge to the expansion and also filed lawsuits in federal and state courts alleging that the county worked with the mall to circumvent environmental requirements and that state officials allowed illegal dumping.

DETROIT -- A privately arranged 1985 loan to A. Alfred Taubman, first disclosed Monday, will yield hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for two General Motors pension funds.The funds, which pay pensions to thousands of GM hourly and salaried workers, will get back almost three times the amount of their $574 million loan.Under a proposed sale of most of Mr. Taubman's interest in his shopping mall empire, the GM funds also will become Mr. Taubman's business partners in a long-term plan to expand malls and buy or build new ones.

A. Alfred Taubman's shopping mall empire plans to sell shares to the public, hoping to raise between $335 million and $389 million from investors who would get a 22 percent stake in a group of 19 large shopping malls from California to Connecticut, the company announced yesterday.The move would effectively free Mr. Taubman of hundreds of millions of dollars of personal debt.The company said the offering and the accompanying restructuring would enable it to slash debt and expand.It said it planned to enlarge some large regional shopping centers and might buy or build others.

New York -- A series of poor earnings reports from majo public retailers have received widespread attention in the press, but the rockiest results for a major department store chain may be the ones coming from privately held Woodward & Lothrop.A rare window into its performance for its last fiscal year, which ended Jan. 31, was opened recently in a report by Salomon Brothers, Woodie's investment bankers. The incomplete but indicative numbers (Woodie's confirms their accuracy) raise tough questions about the retailer at a time when Wall Street has become euphoric about the prospects for the best capitalized and best performing companies in the industry, and highly skeptical of others.

Robert B. Mang has been named president and chief operating officer of Woodward & Lothrop/John Wanamaker Inc., effective May 1.Mr. Mang, 45, who will report to Arnold H. Aronson, the company's chairman and chief executive, is currently president of Bon Marche in Seattle, a division of Campeau Corp.Woodward/Wanamaker includes 17 Woodward & Lothrop stores in the Baltimore-Washington area and 15 John Wanamaker stores in the Philadelphia area. The two chains are owned by Taubman Holdings Inc., a private investment concern controlled by A. Alfred Taubman, a leading mall developer.