Town Center

Simon Property Group, the nation's largest shopping mall owner, announced Tuesday a hostile $10 billion bid for General Growth Properties, including Baltimore's Harborplace pavilions and prime suburban malls across Maryland, raising hopes that a new owner could help rejuvenate those properties. Indianapolis-based Simon Property, which owns Arundel Mills mall, submitted its offer last week and announced details after officials said they received no "substantive response" from General Growth, the Chicago-based real estate company that filed for bankruptcy last April.

Columbia, the planned Howard County town known for decades as a national model of rational suburban growth, is now poised for an urban heart transplant. The legal framework for a three-decade plan to transform central Columbia - from an auto-dominated, disconnected series of aging buildings and a shopping mall into a lively urban downtown - was unanimously approved late Monday by the Howard County Council. The votes follow more than 52 hours of formal hearings and work sessions over three months.

Don't underestimate the power of a coat. Jennifer Ward certainly doesn't. "In the wintertime, I feel like your coat is really your outfit. It's what people are going to see you in." We certainly noticed the 25-year-old BCBG Max Azria sales associate in her black-and-white houndstooth, only one of many "great dress coats" in the Perry Hall resident's closet. The look: : Powder-blue acrylic knit 213 dress. Black perforated patent leather belt. Black and camel bugle bead multi-strand necklace.

Towson has had steak houses before. I'm thinking of JJ McBride's and Nichi Bei Kai. (Japanese steak houses count, don't they?) But for some reason, no one has opened what I think of as the Restaurant of the Decade: the upscale casual chain American steak house - big, bright and fairly affordable. Until now. Now Towson has Stoney River Legendary Steaks (825 Dulaney Valley Road, 410-583-5250). It's in the new wing of Towson Town Center. If you like the ski lodge look - lots of stone, wood and glass, a beamed ceiling, a large stacked-stone fireplace at its center, leather seats - the 7,600-square-foot restaurant has it all. There's also a large red canoe, a Stoney River trademark.

Sitting in his empty barbershop with the television blaring, 65-year-old Anthony Tringali recalled better times at Wilde Lake Village Center, where his shop opened with the birth of the new town in June 1967. "I had five barbers working for me at one time," he said. "Now I'm down to one and a half - and I'm the one." Between the recession and the closing of the center's anchor Giant supermarket and several other stores, Tringali's business is down by half again in the past two years, he said, but he's not done.

The Town Center and Wilde Lake Community Associations will host a family pool party from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at Bryant Woods Pool. Event is free and include pizza, refreshments, swimming and a raffle. Children younger than 16 must be accompanied by an adult. Party is for Town Center and Wilde Lake residents only. Call 410-730-3987 for more information. Slayton House events * Summer registration continues for Slayton House Camp of the Arts. Camp dates are Aug. 3-14. Families with two or more children in the same session can receive a discount.

Columbia resumes its journey into the future Monday night, when a bill changing the way the 42-year old town's village centers may be redeveloped is formally introduced to the Howard County Council. Council Chairwoman Mary Kay Sigaty, a west Columbia Democrat whose district includes the ailing Wilde Lake Village Center that sparked the issue, said the council will schedule as many public hearings as it takes to hear from everyone who wants to voice an opinion, starting with the regular monthly hearing June 15. Additional hearings will be scheduled as needed after the first one, and a final vote could be delayed a month and voted on at the end of July before the council's annual August recess, Sigaty said.

The next important election in Howard County is less than a month away, though no public offices are at stake. The members of the Columbia Association board of directors may not draw salaries, but they, along with incoming CA President Phil Nelson, could play a vital role in plans to remake central Columbia and its aging village centers. Each of the 10 villages has one seat on the board, and half could elect new board members when the two days of voting end April 25. Three villages - Owen Brown, Town Center and Harper's Choice - have no board contest this spring, while incumbents in Oakland Mills and River Hill are running unopposed.

The county Planning Board is weighing conflicting visions of the fears and hopes generated by plans for a major urbanization of Columbia's town center as board members prepare to make their own recommendations. The divide was clearly outlined in remarks at a Thursday night public hearing by Long Reach resident Russel Swatek and the Business Alliance, which represents 46 local business owners. "Some don't want a city," Swatek, a five-year resident, said about the plans to urbanize Town Center.