Warehouse

A three-alarm fire at a warehouse in Woodbine extensively damaged the building's office last night and caused heavy smoke and water damage to the remainder of the single-story cinder block building, said a Carroll County Fire Board spokesman.Damage was set at $100,000, said Bill Dailey Jr. owner of the 30-year-old A-aarid Enterprise Corp. warehouse in the 7700 block of Woodbine Road near the border with Howard County.On the way to the blaze, the six-man crew of a Mount Airy Volunteer Fire Company fire engine suffered minor injuries when the vehicle ran off the road at Flag Marsh and Watersville roads, said the Fire Board spokesman.

Baltimore County firefighters fought yesterday to keep chemicals from flowing into a stream that feeds Loch Raven Reservoir as they began cleaning up debris from a four-alarm blaze that destroyed a Cockeysville warehouse.A few small fires still were burning amid the twisted metal and broken cinder blocks of the Martin Surfacing Inc. building at Alt and Cockeysville roads late yesterday morning as fire crews set about constructing dikes to contain the water runoff.Water used to douse the fire had mixed with rubber granules and polyurethane liquid stored in the warehouse and used by Martin Surfacing to build running tracks and gymnasium floors.

A four-alarm fire destroyed a vacant warehouse in Southwest Baltimore yesterday afternoon, despite more than 100 firefighters struggling for three hours in the sweltering heat and humidity to get the blaze under control. Fire officials believe that no one was in the building during the fire, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a department spokesman, and that no injuries were reported. Two firefighters were taken to Mercy Medical Center because of heat exhaustion, Cartwright said. The cause of the blaze is under investigation.

Without advertising for competitive bids, the Maryland Stadium Authority voted this week to hire Whiting Turner Contracting Co. at a cost of $860,000 to oversee renovation work inside the B&O Warehouse in Camden Yards.The six-member state panel voted Monday to hire the Towson-based company, headed by Willard Hackerman, to serve as construction manager for a $10.5 million conversion of the south end of the warehouse to office space.Even though state funds are involved, the Stadium Authority awarded the contract after reviewing proposals from only one other company besides Whiting Turner.

A private negotiating session today in the chambers of Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan may lead to the closing of a $10 million gap in the dispute over a purchase price for the B&O warehouse in Camden Yards.Kaplan ruled yesterday that the Maryland Stadium Authority should pay for the warehouse using a complex formula that is based on an appraisal from a consultant hired by former warehouse owners Morton Macks and Willard Hackerman.Hours after Kaplan ended a four-day "mini-trial" with his non-binding ruling, the authority interpreted the judge's formula to mean that it owes Macks and Hackerman between $3 million and $8 million for the historic building.

Three days after he purchased the B&O warehouse for $4.6 million on Dec. 30, 1983, the value of the historic building jumped to $12 million, said former owner Morton Macks."

State prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into possible environmental violations at a South Baltimore warehouse, after finding what is believed to be hazardous materials illegally stored at the site, authorities said yesterday. The investigation by the attorney general's environmental crimes unit began last week after residents complained that the warehouse owner had paid neighborhood children and young adults $10 to $60 a day to clean trash and chemical drums from the warehouse at 1700 Clarkson St. Inside the building, city and state investigators found liquids eating through unmarked metal barrels, oozing onto the floor and out a warehouse door, said Eric Augustus Banks, a compliance officer with the city Department of Public Works.

Developers expect to complete the second major warehouse at the new Baltimore Crossroads @95 business park in Baltimore County by July, First Industrial Realty Trust Inc. said yesterday. First Industrial, a developer of industrial buildings, started work on a 300,000-square-foot warehouse despite the lack of a tenant. The Chicago-based company also is completing a 130,000- square-foot building for moving company Alexander's Mobility Services to occupy in the next 30 days. Eventually, the 1,000-acre, mixed use business park near White Marsh is expected to employ more than 10,000 workers at more than 5 million square feet of flex/office, office, warehouse and industrial space, 400,000 square feet of shops and two hotels.

The philosopher Roland Barthes called photographs remnants of an absent past, a species of semi-magical sign denoting something that once was, but that is no longer. Absence and loss are the subject of Mitch Epstein's Warehouse, 2000, one of the Baltimore Museum of Art's newest acquisitions. Senior contemporary art curator Darsie Alexander purchased the picture last year for the museum's photography collection with funds from a grant provided by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. The 30-by-40-inch color image, which seems to depict an array of anonymous objects in an anonymous room in some anonymous city, exudes an almost ineffable sadness, like the poignance of a memorial.

Considering the many old buildings in downtown Baltimore that are vacant and need repair, the former warehouse at 315 to 319 N. Calvert Street may not immediately come to mind as a prime candidate for a multimillion-dollar renovation.Built in 1923 by the Southern Supply Co. to store construction materials, grain, and other goods, the four-story, brick-clad structure is neither an individual landmark nor part of an historic district.Its only noteworthy facade is the side facing Calvert Street, with a modified pediment and diamond-shaped ornaments made of porcelain.