Warehouse

Bernard J. "B.J. " Land, a Coca-Cola executive and physical fitness buff who coached youth soccer and lacrosse teams, died Monday of a cardiac arrest at St. Joseph Medical Center. The Hunt Valley resident had recently celebrated his 53rd birthday. Family members said that Mr. Land, who was known as "B.J.," had returned Sept. 2 after a long bike ride and suffered a cardiac arrest that was caused by coronary artery disease, which he was unaware that he suffered from. He remained in a coma until his death.

Twenty Giant Food workers will be laid off by the end of the month after a dry-goods warehouse in Jessup that supplies Giant stores closes, union locals representing workers said Monday. Warehouse operator Jessup Logistics LLC said in April that it was shutting down the warehouse and laying off about 250 people. The subsidiary of New Hampshire-based C&S Wholesale Grocers said it would save about $13.5 million a year by shifting the distribution work to a more technologically advanced facility in York, Pa. Giant, the region's largest grocery chain, outsourced the dry-goods operation to Jessup Logistics but still owns the center and runs a fresh-foods warehouse as well as the transportation and recycling divisions.

Two Baltimore men who owned a warehouse have pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to transport stolen nickel, which had been imported through the Port of Baltimore, the U.S. attorney's office announced Monday. Gregg Lee Purbaugh, 50, and Kenneth Trainum, 44, were charged after Homeland Security agents caught them in November 2011 removing unmarked sacks of nickel briquettes from a shipping container next to their Bear Creek warehouse and loading them in a truck. According to their plea agreements, Purbaugh and Trainum began removing nickel from their warehouse in 2006 that belonged to an international mining company for which they were storing it. Over the next five years, working through another co-conspirator, Purbaugh sold 80,000 pounds of nickel worth about $1 million to a Pittsburgh scrap metal company, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

The Baltimore City Fire Department battled a three-alarm fire at a warehouse at 1200 Baylis St. in the Canton area late into the night Sunday, bringing it under control around midnight. Capt. Roman Clark, a department spokesman, said about 60 residents in the block were evacuated. No homes were involved in the fire, but heavy smoke and the fire's proximity to residences spurred the evacuation, said Chief Kevin Cartwright. An MTA bus was called to shelter residents. Power was also out in the immediate area.

With a Canton warehouse fire reduced to a smolder by Monday morning, attention shifted to ensuring that surrounding homes and the harbor's waters are protected from caustic chemicals inside the facility. State and federal environmental officials were on the site alongside firefighters into Monday evening, monitoring water streaming from the one-story brick structure into storm drains. The warehouse contains nearly 8,000 gallons of corrosive chemicals, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

With 369,000 square feet under roof, it would seem McCormick & Co.'s sprawling distribution center in Belcamp would have an eye-popping power bill, with some 3,300 light fixtures and a refrigerated storage area big enough to drive forklifts in and out. But in the past year, the 81/3-acre Harford County warehouse has generated more power than it has consumed, making it the first "net-zero-energy" building in Maryland and one of a small but growing...

Paul Frederick Obrecht, a well-known Baltimore warehouse developer whose various projects included Moravia Industrial Park, died Nov. 3 from complications of a stroke at his Lutherville home. He was 82. Mr. Obrecht, who went by P. Frederick Obrecht and preferred to be called Fred, was born in Baltimore and raised in Glen Arm. He was a 1947 graduate of Gilman School and attended Princeton University. In the late 1940s, he joined his father, George F. Obrecht, in managing the family feed and grain business that had been founded as P. Frederick Obrecht & Son by his grandfather in 1865.

Baltimore officials have finalized the $1.1 million sale of a 19-acre "brownfields" site on Pulaski Highway to construction magnate Willard Hackerman, who plans to develop a big-box store or warehouses or both, a city economic development official said Tuesday. The sale of the lot, the former site of a waste incinerator, was completed Friday, said M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp. The city's Planning Commission approved a "planned unit development" designation for the property a day earlier, allowing the uses proposed by Hackerman, president and chief executive of the Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. Hackerman formed Pulaski Limited Partnership to develop the Northeast Baltimore site and still needs City Council approval to proceed.

The former site of a waste incinerator in Northeast Baltimore could be developed into a big-box store or warehouses or a combination under a plan being proposed by construction magnate Willard Hackerman, who has a contract to purchase the vacant, 19-acre site on Pulaski Highway from the city for more than $1 million. Hackerman, president and chief executive of the Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., has asked the city to designate the 6709 Pulaski Highway parcel a planned unit development, which would allow him to proceed with one of three scenarios.