Walkway

One of the gateways to the area where Baltimore's Artscape festival is held every year is about to become more "pedestrian friendly."A forbidding concrete skywalk over Preston Street, constructed in 1976 as part of the state office complex, will be demolished within a year and replaced with a landscaped, at-grade promenade linking Eutaw and Howard streets.Maryland's General Assembly approved $601,072 this spring to remove the overhead "pedway," which measures 150 feet by 280 feet and cost $5.3 million to build.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has announced funding of more than $322,500 for construction of a pathway for pedestrians and cyclists along Broken Land Parkway, between Cradlerock Way and Snowden River Parkway. The project will cost more than $645,000. The Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks will pay the rest of the costs. Construction of the 4,370-foot trail is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2007, and to be completed by late fall, weather permitting. Christ UMC plans summer Bible school Christ United Methodist Church, which meets in the Owen Brown Interfaith Center, 7246 Cradlerock Way, will offer vacation Bible school from 6 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. June 25 to 29. The theme is "Fiesta: Where Kids Are Fired Up About Jesus."

A 26-year-old inmate at a state prison in Jessup died Friday after he was found with severe head injuries on Thursday night, Maryland State Police said. Javaughn A. Young was found lying on a walkway in a wing of the Maryland Correctional Institution about 7 p.m., after another inmate alerted correctional officers that an inmate needed assistance, police said. More than 60 inmates are housed in the wing. The officers found Young with severe head trauma and called for medical assistance, police said.

Without much fanfare, a new route from Fells Point to the Inner Harbor opened this winter. You traverse it via shoe leather, roller blade, bicycle or baby carriage, the personal transport forms much in evidence despite the chilly weather this weekend.This is the bulkhead view of Baltimore, a walk that is a window on the present and past, history and industry, river biology and pop sociology.After more than a decade of planning, the brick-paved harbor walk that began at Pratt and Light streets in the middle 1970s is now complete, without interruption, to Central Avenue and Lancaster Street on the western edge of Fells Point.

A quarter-century after its promising start with the redevelopment of the Inner Harbor, Baltimore's waterfront promenade remains incomplete -- with three large gaps, potholes and a section that has collapsed into the water. To finish the 7.5-mile walkway that many hope will be the city's most powerful draw for new residents and businesses, some city officials and developers argue that Baltimore should apply to the state for $50 million or more. But the issue is more complex than winning state money to build a boardwalk and installing a few benches and lamps.

Baltimore plans to build about a half-mile of waterfront walkway in four sections along the Inner Harbor this summer, helping to close some of the gaps in the city's long-unfinished promenade. Construction workers will begin more than $20 million in projects in Fells Point and near Federal Hill that, when finished, should make the 7 1/2 -mile brick walkway about 90 percent complete, city officials said. The promenade, construction of which began more than a quarter-century ago with the Inner Harbor redevelopment, is about 75 percent done from Canton to Locust Point.

Five Girl Scouts hope their service project at Lake Waterford Park in Pasadena is a brick road to success.But to help complete the service requirement and win the Gold Award -- the highest achievement in Scouting -- they need a helping hand from the community.The girls want to build a 26-foot-long brick pathway at the Lake Waterford Park office. They need donations of bricks, sand or money to complete the task."I'm looking forward to it," said Jessica Carter a member of Pasadena Senior Troop 817. "It'll be nice.

The National Aquarium in Baltimore won an injunction Sunday night to stop what a spokeswoman called a "mysterious" late-night attempt by the city to tear down an Inner Harbor footbridge used by about 300,000 tourists a year.City officials want to remove the 14-year-old wooden walkway between the aquarium and the Power Plant retail complex because it is not accessible to people in wheelchairs and violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, city officials said.Workers showed up under cover of darkness Sunday because they believed that demolishing the bridge at night would be less disturbing to the public, said Clinton R. Coleman, spokesman for Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke.

Decades ago, developer James W. Rouse looked at a rundown industrial waterfront in downtown Baltimore and saw the makings of an attraction called Harborplace at the Inner Harbor. Now a former Rouse employee looks at an expanse of woods in downtown Columbia and sees the possibility of an "Inner Arbor. " That's the name Michael McCall has given his proposal to turn 34 acres of woods surrounding Merriweather Post Pavilion into a place meant to celebrate both the arts and nature, a combination performing arts center, sculpture garden and elevated arboreal walkway.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening met his Democratic primary challenger, Harford County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann, on her home turf yesterday. Their encounter couldn't have been more cordial.At the opening of a pedestrian underpass to service North Harford elementary, middle and high schools, the two were all smiles. Glendening thanked the county executive several times during his speech, and when it was her turn to take to the podium, Rehrmann thanked the governor.Neither wanted to discuss the gubernatorial campaign that will pit them against each other in September's Democratic primary.