Trammell Crow

A local developer believes two historic office buildings in downtown Baltimore can be converted successfully to apartments, even though their Washington-based owner is contemplating demolition.J. Joseph Clarke, head of Clarke Enterprises and husband of City Council President Mary Pat Clarke, is part of a team that has studied the former Redwood Center office buildings at Redwood and Calvert streets. He believes they would be ideal for conversion to 132 apartments for stockbrokers, attorneys and others who work in downtown Baltimore.

Continental Realty Corp. plans to develop the Franklin Business Park, a business community on an 11-acre parcel off Interstate 795 near Franklin Boulevard in Owings Mills.The first phase of the project will entail construction of two one-story buildings containing a total of 26,000 square feet of medical and executive office space on a 3-acre site at the southwest corner of Franklin Boulevard and I-795.The second phase is development of an 8-acre parcel just off the interstate at Nicodemus Road, but exact plans for it have not been disclosed.

NationsBank Corp., after years of whittling down a $1.8 billion regional portfolio of foreclosed real estate, has shifted the focus of its South Charles Realty Corp. subsidiary toward investments.The transition to South Charles Investment Corp. took a major leap last week, when the company bought a vacant, three-building office complex in Northern Virginia for $7.4 million, the first property acquisition under its new strategy."We feel we have all the skills necessary to operate in the real estate business in-house," said Turner B. Smith, South Charles' president.

One of downtown Baltimore's trophy office buildings, 500 E. Pratt St., is on the market and generating strong interest from potential buyers, an owner's representative said yesterday. The owner of the 12-story tower, one of the newest at the Inner Harbor, will be considering offers over the next couple of weeks and expects to select a buyer before Thanksgiving, said Bruce Strasburg, a principal and senior vice president with Trammell Crow Co.'s Washington office. Trammell Crow is representing the building's owner, Multi-Employer Property Trust, a pool of public and private pension funds.

A "glass bridge" proposed to connect Piers 3 and 4 in the Inner Harbor has received a first-place award in the 1991 Architectural Design Awards Competition sponsored by Pittsburgh Corning Corp.Cho, Wilks and Benn Inc. of Baltimore is the architectural firm that designed the bridge, which would replace a 10-year-old wooden footbridge that links the National Aquarium in Baltimore with the Marine Mammal Pavilion.Cho, Wilks and Benn designed the bridge in conjunction with Whitman Requardt and Associates, a local engineering firm that has an open-ended city contract to complete studies for various projects around the Inner Harbor.

The owners of 550 acres of undeveloped land in northwest Anne Arundel County are proceeding with a plan to build as many as 1,400 residences, despite the continued softness of the area's housing market.As part of the planned Dorchester community project, the Washington-based owners of the property have contracted to sell the land to a partnership formed by Driggs Corp. owner John Driggs. Although neither side would reveal a purchase price, the land is valued at roughly $25 million, based on comparable land sales.

A heap of government spending, some low interest rates and a sprinkling of pent-up demand for space could be just the recipe for some new building in 2002. Or, more likely, it could fill some empty pockets of commercial real estate. While few developers or brokers are predicting a hot market in the next year, some say it could improve in the second half of the year as the general economy improves and businesses and government agencies begin looking for space in large numbers. "Real estate really follows the economy," said Greg Crum, senior vice president at Trammell Crow Co., a national real estate services firm.

One of the prospective tenants of a five-story office building planned for 925 N. Charles St. is now exploring plans to expand its current headquarters instead.Investment Counselors of Maryland, an 18-year-old investment firm that handles $3.5 billion in assets, asked Baltimore's Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals for permission to construct a four-story, $800,000 addition to the rear of its headquarters at 803-805 Cathedral St., which is part of the Mount Vernon historic district.Investment Counselors had been negotiating to lease about 13,000 square feet of space in the Charles Street building, which was planned by Cochran, Stephenson and Donkervoet Inc. and PersonaCare Inc.Shortly after a groundbreaking in January, the developers halted work, saying they were unable to obtain financing until 65 percent of the building was pre-leased.

Developers of a $90 million office, retail and parking project near the Baltimore harbor will save up to $1.5 million a year in local taxes for the next two decades, courtesy of a city incentive they said would bring them closer to breaking ground. The city's Board of Estimates approved the payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, yesterday. The tool, which slashes property taxes, is commonly used by the city to promote economic development. The Lockwood Place project - bordered by Pratt, Lombard and Gay streets and Market Place - is planned on land leased from the Baltimore City Community College and now used as a parking lot. "We're anxious to get started, to get up and open and create the premier office-retail space in what is a wonderful location," said Wayne Snyder, chairman of Kravco Co., the King of Prussia, Pa.,-based developer that is leading the project.

DALLAS -- People in Fort Worth, 30 miles west of here, have long had a pithy way of explaining the difference between the two cities. Fort Worth is where the West begins, they say. Dallas is where the East peters out.But in one enormous artistic undertaking on a 4.2-acre plot downtown, Dallas is now officially on a mission to redraw forever the boundary of the American frontier.The city is erecting a giant bronze rendering of a 19th-century cattle drive, with 70 6-foot-high steers and three trail riders herding them up a ridge and past a man-made limestone cliff a block from City Hall.