Waterfront

The Baltimore County Council voted last night to support a marina owner's plan to build a 36-unit waterfront condominium in Bowleys Quarters. The proposal by Galloway Creek Marina owner Milton Rehbein must win approval by the Planning Board and undergo a review by county agencies. But the 7-0 council vote allows the project to move forward as a "planned unit development." The designation, while subjecting the plans to public hearings, would eliminate certain zoning rules if the project is deemed to benefit the community.

For nearly two decades, the Rev. Frank M. Reid III has been the shepherd guiding one of the Baltimore area's largest and most influential congregations. Virtually every serious candidate for citywide and state office visits his church, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal -- and this year, at least two leading contenders for mayor are members. The Upton church plans to break ground on a Baltimore County location this year to accommodate the thousands who attend weekly services. Reid has even been immortalized on The Wire television series.

So, what do you call a New York-born, Muslim-raised, self-described "redneck" girl? (She grew up in Georgia.) You call her Noureen DeWulf. You've already probably seen her onscreen in Pledge This! with Paris Hilton and any second, she'll burn up the Cineplex in Ocean's Thirteen with all those guys who are pals of George Clooney. But if you can't wait, pick up Maxim. There's Noureen in skin-tight jeans and a pristine white bra. She wears spiky leather boots in some shots, stiletto platform heels in others.

Baltimore has collected its first profit-sharing check from one of the major development projects that got tax breaks from the city over the past decade to help spur economic growth. The Baltimore Development Corp. said yesterday that the city received $819,826 for fiscal 2006 from the Marriott Waterfront Hotel. The hotel was one of the first big projects that helped transform Harbor East from an industrial stretch of waterfront to an upscale urban neighborhood. The Sun reported in August that the city had yet to receive any payments from profit-sharing agreements linked to tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks for projects over the past decade.

MIAMI -- Like the spokes of a wheel, they connect to the Circle: The high school drop out in search of a tan. A hippie-turned-teacher-turned-house cleaner with a dolphin tattoo on her right shoulder. The Messianic Jew who left his home in Oregon on a bicycle and has not stopped pedaling, five years later.None of them can touch the rock with the strange carvings, protected as it is by 24-hour-a-day security guards, two chain-link fences and a court order. But people of all states of mind come to glimpse South Florida's answer to Stonehenge from the roof of the Sheraton Biscayne Bay parking garage.

For years, Colleen Pearsall's husband, Wes, tried to persuade her to move to Shady Side, a boating community he came to every summer as a kid because his father kept a boat at the Chesapeake Yacht Club. Once they finally did make the move, she couldn't understand why she didn't agree to it sooner."It's like a big playground. We have it all here," Colleen Pearsall said.And having it all has been the reason many other people have made the move to the secluded community surrounded on three sides by water.

A dismal cluster of vacant properties in Essex has been sold for $1 million, according to government and business leaders who say the deal pumps more optimism into the region's battle to restore economic stability.William H. Bissell, owner of a Parkville bingo hall and auction house, purchased the property this month, said sources familiar with the deal."It's a huge acquisition," said Baltimore County Councilman John Olszewski Sr., whose 7th District includes part of Essex. "People have been waiting for years for this to happen."

Michael R. Cataneo, who headed a family-owned line-handling company on the Baltimore waterfront and cut an imposing figure on the docks, died Monday of kidney failure at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Lutherville resident was 86.In 1979, Mr. Cataneo retired as president of Cataneo Line Service, a business established by his father, Pietro Antonio "Tony" Cataneo, an Italian immigrant, in 1926. The elder Mr. Cataneo started the business after his waterfront luncheonette on Clinton Street failed.

Yaeko Nakamura, 93, a woman adored as Japan's "Mother Teresa" for her dedication to orphans and the elderly, died Saturday in Tokyo.Mrs. Nakamura, joined by her husband, Haruka, began her activities for the disadvantaged in 1931 by caring for the children of fishermen and others making their living on the waterfront near Osaka.Pub Date: 1/08/99

TWELVE YEARS ago, the City Council made a last-ditch effort to save some of Baltimore's vanishing blue-collar jobs. Hoping to keep Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Southern States' farm supply operation in Locust Point, the council decreed that only industrial uses would be tolerated along major portions of the waterfront.Today, those once-mighty employers are gone from South Baltimore. Yet that portion of the shoreline has glittering prospects.Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse Inc. hopes to take advantage of the vacant Procter & Gamble plant's water views by reconstructing it as a $53 million office and retail complex.

Columbia-based Corporate Office Properties Trust said Thursday that it paid $125 million to acquire Baltimore developer Edwin F. Hale Sr.'s 1st Mariner Tower and surrounding land slated for a large waterfront development. COPT, which already held a $30 million secondary loan on the office building, invested $95 million more to close the deal that also included a parking lot, a utility distribution center and development rights to four waterfront lots associated with the Canton Crossing planned development, said Roger Waesche Jr., COPT's chief operating officer, during a conference call with analysts to discuss the company's third-quarter earnings.

COPT buys 1st Mariner Tower, waterfront land in Canton Columbia-based office developer Corporate Office Properties Trust said Tuesday that the company has bought Baltimore developer Edwin F. Hale Sr.'s 1st Mariner Tower in Canton, along with surrounding land slated for a large waterfront development of offices, shops, a hotel and a marina, for an undisclosed price. Hale had defaulted on an $84 million loan on the 17-story Canton Crossing office tower in September, and last week the Paris-based lender Natixis SA withdrew its foreclosure action and canceled a planned sale.

Next weekend marks the sixth anniversary of Tropical Storm Isabel's deadly tromp across Central Maryland. The storm made landfall Sept. 18 near Ocracoke, N.C. with top winds of 105 mph. It quickly weakened. But Isabel's storm surge flooded the Chesapeake waterfront, including Baltimore, Annapolis and many bayshore communities. Seven people died in Maryland, and damages came to more than $1 billion.

Budd Schulberg, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter who wrote about corrosive ambition and power in "On the Waterfront" and "A Face in the Crowd" and in best-selling books such as "What Makes Sammy Run?," died Aug. 5 at his home in Westhampton, N.Y. He was 95. Mr. Schulberg was the son of a Hollywood producer whose fortunes rose and fell dramatically. As a result, he once said he was intrigued by "how suddenly [people] go up, and how quickly they go down." He used his insider knowledge of Hollywood politics to write his first novel, "What Makes Sammy Run?"

The push for intense development along the water's edge can be traced largely to the administrations of Kurt L. Schmoke and Martin O'Malley, who recognized the water's ability to draw businesses of all kinds. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the city had strong restrictions on waterfront development. Its master plan called for low- and mid-rise buildings close to the water and taller buildings several blocks inland, a strategy that limited the amount of new construction along the water's edge.

Karl Malden, an Academy Award-winning actor who excelled in plain-spoken, working-class roles, including the awkward Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire and a brave priest in On the Waterfront, died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. No cause of death was immediately disclosed. He was 97. Mr. Malden's bulbous nose and thinning hair made him one of the most familiar sights in movies and on television for five decades. In the 1970s, he became known to millions of viewers as a police veteran who partners with a young inspector played by Michael Douglas on the ABC drama series The Streets of San Francisco.

State and local officials are looking to buy a 190-acre waterfront farm in eastern Baltimore County from a developer, even though the partly wooded spread on Back River scored poorly on a rating system the state uses to rank potential purchases for parkland. No deal has been reached, and no one would reveal what price has been discussed with developer Mark C. Sapperstein, who says he has spent at least $6 million to buy and improve the land. But county officials, who paid Sapperstein more than the appraised value of another property two years ago, say they would be "very interested" in acquiring Bauer's Farm to preserve it from development and to expand public access to the river and Chesapeake Bay. "Anytime Baltimore County could preserve a couple hundred acres of prime waterfront property and add it to the county's park inventory, that would always get our interest," said Don Mohler, spokesman for County Executive James T. Smith Jr. The farm, with nearly a mile of shoreline, adjoins 1,360-acre North Point State Park, which has a wading beach, fishing pier and hiking trails.

Faith, family, friendship - not to mention sexual abuse, illness and death. These are just some of the issues that will be addressed during the 28th Baltimore Playwrights Festival, in works that cover the stylistic waterfront - comedy, drama, and the festival's first musical - and that are set in a variety of places and times, including Thanksgiving and Passover. "It's a pretty eclectic group of plays," says Bob Russell, former owner of the Spotlighters Theatre and a two-decade veteran of the festival's organizational team.

Baltimore is rated 3rd-best city for recent grads Baltimore ranks third on a list of best cities for recent college graduates compiled by Apartments.com and CBcampus.com, the groups announced Wednesday. Indianapolis was at the top of the list, followed by Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati and Cleveland. The rankings were determined by rating U.S. cities on the bases of highest concentration of young adults, inventory of jobs requiring less than one year of experience and the average rent cost for a one-bedroom apartment.

Once a gritty neighborhood on Southeast Baltimore's industrial waterfront, Canton has transformed itself into a model of urban chic where million-dollar townhouses overlook the harbor and destination night spots surround O'Donnell Square. But many residents of the resurgent community worry that the city's preferred route for an east-west transit line would cut off Canton from the water, drag down property values and compound the area's already serious traffic and parking problems. They're organizing to oppose the plan known as Alternative 4-C - which has powerful support and could well be chosen when the Maryland Transit Administration decides this summer.