Tower

A controversial proposed 23-story condominium tower at the heart of redevelopment planned for downtown Columbia may be in jeopardy as its developer struggles in a challenging condo-building market. Florida-based WCI Communities Inc. insists that the project is solid despite financial problems that caused it last week to announce 575 job cuts -- about a quarter of its work force. "We're going to move ahead and are moving ahead with the project," said James P. Dietz, WCI's executive vice president and chief financial officer.

The fictitious Maine lighthouse in Stephen King's eerie miniseries "The Storm of the Century" may have toppled, but dozens of real ones still remain along the state's coastline.While Interstate 95 heads north toward Augusta, Maine, U.S. 1 skims the coastline and passes through the center of quaint little towns such as Damariscotta, Wiscasset, York, Ogunquit and Kennebunk.We thought we had pretty good maps with directions to the lighthouses, but we discovered they were vague. We would have saved some time if we had invested in a guidebook with specific directions.

It is the worst nightmare for those living in a high-rise apartment building: a fire halfway up a 30-story tower, choking hallways with smoke. Flames blowing out windows. No means of escape.For hundreds of residents trapped for hours in the Charles Center Tower, yesterday's blaze was all too real and all too terrifying."Oh God, oh God, I don't know what to do. We can't see out of here," a man on the 16th floor screamed to a 911 operator as flames licked at his window.The fire, in which a 72-year-old woman died, created hours of drama and heroics.

Two maintenance workers on a Catonsville communications tower survived a terrifying 200-foot fall onto a chain-link fence yesterday when their safety equipment failed, escaping with bruises and minor fractures."

On a clear day, you can see all the way to Highlandtown, but plans to put a 15-story apartment building near the 27-story HarborView condominium complex on Key Highway have Federal Hill residents worried about the view.An announcement of $75 million in venture capital financing for a 275-unit building on the 42-acre HarborView property is expected next week. While current zoning laws -- passed when the city approved the condominium project in the late 1980s -- allow for up to six skyscrapers on the old Bethlehem Steel shipyard site, residents are hoping developers exercise restraint.

TO EXPERIENCE the latest attraction in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, you won't have to pay an admission fee or stand in long lines.But you will have to do some climbing if you want to get the full effect of the design.The Rouse Flick Learning Tower is the name of a 75-foot-tall wooden observation tower that has taken shape on a city-owned pier that contains the East Harbor campus of the Living Classrooms Foundation.Featuring panoramic views of the harbor and downtown skyline, the $160,000 tower was constructed to supplement the teaching programs of the nonprofit foundation, which provides hands-on education and employment training for young people.

Officials at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County have scrapped plans to build a 350-foot communications tower after community residents in a Churchville neighborhood objected.George Mercer, public affairs specialist for APG, said concerns raised at a public meeting June 3 persuaded the Army to drop plans to build the tower, which would have transmitted information from a test track for military vehicles to military offices in nearby Aberdeen.Mercer said about 60 residents attended the June meeting, at which "a number of residents made it clear they were not in favor of [the tower]

James W. Rouse was a social architect and humanitarian whose visionary thinking improved cities around the globe, including Baltimore.Elizabeth Flick was a 13-year-old McDonogh School student who died in 1980 in a camping accident in Wisconsin.They never knew each other. But they will be inextricably linked on Baltimore's skyline, through the construction of an unusual memorial that will be dedicated to both.The Rouse-Flick Learning Tower will be a 75-foot-tall, $150,000 wooden observation tower, built starting this fall on a city-owned pier that serves as the East Harbor campus of the Living Classrooms Foundation.

WHILE THERE'S SOMETHING humorous about Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile's plan to disguise a cellular phone tower as a pine tree in Baltimore County, the case illustrates a serious dilemma. More people are carrying cellular phones, especially in their cars; they want unbroken service. But more cellular phone users mean more towers to transmit and receive the necessary radio signals. The towers must be near the callers -- which may mean locating them in residential neighborhoods.In this case, Bell Atlantic is trying to fill a break in service along the beltway near Pikesville.

In a large room dotted with computers and adorned with maps, Cellular One's Shirin Haghjou studies red, blue and green shadings on a map and notices a problem. Amid the splashes of color that signify cellular phone signals, there is a bare spot -- a place where customers could have trouble making a call.Innocuous splotches like this one are triggering community battles across the Baltimore area and nationwide over the placement of new antennas -- an issue called the industry's No. 1 problem.

Columbia-based Corporate Office Properties Trust said Thursday that it paid $125 million to acquire Baltimore developer Edwin F. Hale Sr.'s 1st Mariner Tower and surrounding land slated for a large waterfront development. COPT, which already held a $30 million secondary loan on the office building, invested $95 million more to close the deal that also included a parking lot, a utility distribution center and development rights to four waterfront lots associated with the Canton Crossing planned development, said Roger Waesche Jr., COPT's chief operating officer, during a conference call with analysts to discuss the company's third-quarter earnings.

The owner of downtown Baltimore's tallest office building, at 100 Light St., has agreed to an early termination of a lease with USF&G Financial Services Corp. - which has been subleasing to money manager Legg Mason Inc. - in a deal valued at $27 million. As part of the agreement with tower owner Lexington Realty Trust, USF&G, now a subsidiary of St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co., also will transfer ownership of land under the tower valued at $16 million to Lexington, the real estate investment trust said in a news release issued late Monday.

Robert H. Grabner Jr., vice president/senior project manager of the tower division of WCI Mid-Atlantic U.S. Region Inc., has assumed responsibility of the Plaza Residences development, a 23-story tower planned for downtown Columbia. Grabner replaces William Rowe, who recently left WCI to work with another development firm in the area. Grabner will also be responsible for WCI's tower development activities in Virginia, which include the Club on Quincy, a mixed-use condominium development in Arlington.

A controversial proposed 23-story condominium tower at the heart of redevelopment planned for downtown Columbia may be in jeopardy as its developer struggles in a challenging condo-building market. Florida-based WCI Communities Inc. insists that the project is solid despite financial problems that caused it last week to announce 575 job cuts -- about a quarter of its work force. "We're going to move ahead and are moving ahead with the project," said James P. Dietz, WCI's executive vice president and chief financial officer.

On Nov. 3, just days before last year's election, Democratic county executive nominee Ken Ulman called a news conference and said, "The community's voice has been loud and clear that a 23-story building has no place in our Town Center. As county executive, I will introduce a height limit for New Town zoning to prohibit any building over 14 stories." Ulman, of course, won the election. But not only hasn't the county executive introduced a height limit, he has kept a low profile on two height-limit bills introduced by Mary Kay Sigaty, his successor on the County Council.

On a recent humid evening, the granite tower of the old Mount Royal Station stood out along Cathedral Street. Its bright back-lighted clock reminded me: It's time to take a seat for the entertainment season. Over the years, it has become a personal beacon, one that I associate with ticket stubs and good times. This landmark clock tower, now part of the Maryland Institute College of Art, is part of the station where I made my first train excursion in 1953. For 10 cents, you could ride from Camden Station to Mount Royal.

As candidates last year, some County Council members said the proposed 275-foot Plaza Residence tower on Columbia's lakefront would be too tall. Does that mean that next month they must vote for Councilwoman Mary Kay Sigaty's two bills that could block it? Alan Klein, spokesman for the Coalition for Columbia's Downtown, made that argument last week at the council's public hearings, but Sigaty's colleagues reject it. "Why should you vote in favor of these bills?" Klein testified. "The simple answer is that you said you would.

I was stoked at the thought of capturing video and still images one recent morning as Leif Cogswell unstuck the wooden arms of the 25-foot-diameter southern-facing dial at Baltimore's famed Bromo-Seltzer clock Tower. City residents tend to take the long-standing tower for granted, barely batting an eye at the structure that was completed in 1911 and resembles the Palazzo Vecchio's tower in Florence, Italy. The city owns the tower and is renovating space inside for possible use as studio space by city artists.

A Florida developer has started construction on a 23-story condominium tower on Columbia's Lakefront after opponents failed repeatedly to limit its height or overturn county approval of the project. The conflict has pitted the developer, WCI Communities, and business interests against neighbors and slow-growth advocates, who protest that the tower will loom over lush tree canopy and cast neighboring condos in shadows. When completed, The Plaza Residences will be the tallest building in Howard County at 275 feet.

Opponents of the 23-story tower planned for Columbia's Lakefront lost another round in their struggle this week when a county Circuit Court judge dismissed their lawsuit. Judge Diane O. Leasure upheld earlier rulings that the residents trying to stop the 275-foot Plaza Residences at Columbia Town Center don't have legal standing. She dismissed their action Monday - a decision hailed as important by the project's developer, despite likely further appeals. "Now that the appeal has been dismissed, hopefully the community can move into the future with this issue behind us," said William Rowe, mid-Atlantic vice president of WCI Communities' tower division.