Upscale

RICHMOND, Va. -- When customers here enter The Fresh Market grocery story, they leave their Southern roots momentarily behind to shop like Europeans. High ceilings with exposed beams give the store the feel of an open market in Paris or London. Low lighting and classical music produce a calming affect. Oriental lillies, pink Alstromenia and other fresh exotic flowers fill buckets at the front of the store. A display of Artisan cheeses sits cater-corner to an ample section of shiny purple eggplants, crisp apples and other produce.

For years, the call was for more golf courses; now it is for more golfers.For some 20 years before the early 1990s, Maryland in general, and the Baltimore area in particular, were rated near the bottom of any listing of new golf course development. Only a handful of area courses were built during that interval, and loud were the cries that more were needed.During the past five or six years, the number of private and public facilities has mushroomed, and more are under construction and on drawing boards.

The Middle Atlantic area's newest golf course will become part of a popular trend when it opens this week. Bristow Manor Golf Club, outside Manassas, Va., is billing itself as an upscale public facility.National Golf Foundation studies found that in 1991 about 64 percent of all U.S. courses were open to the public, and last year the figure was 65."We're moving toward upscale daily-fee facilities, but I don't think private clubs will ever be passe," said Catherine Suddarth of the NGF.Even so, the foundation recorded a 6.7 percent decline in private golf facilities from 1987 to 1992, during a time when public courses increased and the number of golfers rose from 21.2 million to 24.8 million.

It doesn't have a Mount Vernon Place address or a tile roof, but the abandoned American Can Co. complex on Boston Street in Canton qualifies as a landmark -- a monument to the tin can and Baltimore's industrial past.A proposal to convert the site's remaining buildings to shops and offices could unify a community divided over commercial and residential growth, or it could widen the gulf between the neighborhood's working-class and upper-income residents."The last thing we need is more restaurants, or another Harborplace," said Anna Stoffregen, 63, a lifelong resident of Canton.

NEW YORK -- The phone in Van Woods' office on Lenox Avenue is scratched from overuse, rung out by the new Harlem renaissance.Line one is Woods' mother calling from downstairs, where she runs Sylvia's, the legendary soul food restaurant. Line two is Woods' banker at J. P. Morgan, who is bankrolling his effort to turn Sylvia's into a national chain. Line three is a local entrepreneur who needs start-up capital and knows that Van Woods is the prototypical man to see in 1990s Harlem: a businessman with close Republican ties.

Most homebuyers would not put "walking time" at the top of their priority list when selecting a neighborhood. But many people have chosen Fallstaff as their home for that very feature. For the past 15 years, Orthodox Jewish families, whose faith prohibits them from driving on the Sabbath, have been picking this community because they can easily walk to synagogue. "People want to live within a 20- to 30-minute walk," said Aryeh Goetz, homeownership director of Comprehensive Housing Assistance Inc., better known as CHAI.

OCEAN CITY -- The T-shirt joints, seashell shops and grease-soaked food stalls have put aside some of their legendary rivalries and united to reinvent the boardwalk. A Victorian theme, maybe, or something nautical, they're thinking, to re-energize the seaside boards and complement the coming street lamps, planters and kiosks.Hotel development, fueled in part by a $30 million convention center expansion, is surging. And marketing gurus now target baby boomers with their large disposable incomes rather than hordes of teen-agers.

GREENBELT -- Plans were unveiled yesterday for a $1 billion, 240-acre development in Prince George's County that would mix upscale stores, office buildings and luxury apartments and condominiums.The proposed site is adjacent to the Greenbelt Metro Station and is intended in part to increase ridership.If approved by the County Council, Greenbelt Station, as it would be known, would include a four-department-store mall, a conference center, a man-made lake with paths for pedestrians and bicycles, and possibly an assisted-living residence for the elderly.

It used to be that two words - Miss Irene's - could quiet laments about how rich people in BMWs and $800,000 condos were slowly but surely sweeping away Fells Point's seaport grittiness. The smoky dive bar at Thames and Ann streets was the un-yuppie hangout, with cheap beer, worn stools, a big pool table and a look firmly stuck in the 1970s. Now Miss Irene's, which closed two months ago, is for sale at $1.5 million. It joins a pub crawl's worth of neighborhood bars scattered near the water that are on the market, including the still-open Whistling Oyster ($850,000)

Five years ago, golf outings took an immense level of planning for Dave Gasper and his friends. He had to make tee times weeks in advance and literally set aside an entire day from his Bel Air brokerage firm for the endless waiting that goes along with public golf. A recent boom in the number of the state's courses, however, has taken the hassle out of golf for people like Gasper. "There are certainly more opportunities, more places to play," said Gasper, a 25-handicap player. "If you go to one course and it's really packed, you can walk on at another within the hour.