West Street

Talk about pre-wedding jitters. After a six-week delay, the four-star Westin hotel in Annapolis officially opens today, 10 days before Tara Prieto and Joe Conte's nuptials. Their 300-plus guests will be dancing in the hotel's ballroom, which still was being painted yesterday. Prieto plans to tour the roughly $80 million luxury hotel this week. She hopes that will help ease her mind after the hotel missed its pushed-back opening date of July 12 . Guests, who had trouble making reservations, are all booked at the hotel.

For years, Kristin Lewis searched for a hip place to open a dress shop. She considered Canton and Federal Hill, but the rents were too expensive. Then she found what she thought was the perfect spot: a small storefront amid the clatter of jackhammers along an almost-deserted West Street in Annapolis. "You try to figure out what's going to be cool before it's cool," said Lewis, who, along with three partners, recently opened Astrid, a dress shop with an eye-catching blue-lettered sign on the street.

As Main Street grew into a business and tourist center in Annapolis, what some called its ugly stepsister, West Street, sat neglected and deteriorating less than three blocks away.Once the gateway to historic Annapolis, West Street was a thriving residential and commercial strip. But with the rise of malls on the edge of town and an economic slump in the 1970s, businesses abandoned the corridor from Church Circle to Taylor Avenue. Families grew up and moved out.City officials now are pledging to pump at least $3.2 million into bringing back the ailing street.

In the latest sign of an upscale housing boom near downtown Annapolis, a third market-rate residential project is slated to be built a short walk from the historic district. Madison Homes Inc., based in McLean, Va., has acquired a long-vacant lot in the 200 block of West St. and plans to build a five-story residential and retail brick building on the property, said Russell Rosenberger, a principal leading the project. The lot, where the Capital newspaper building once stood, is just less than 2 acres.

Across Church Circle from Annapolis' thriving Main Street lies a street that has been the target of the city's revitalization plans for more than 15 years. Officials and residents hope the long-awaited West Street renaissance might be at hand as developers plan significant construction aimed at bringing West Street up to par with the rest of downtown. Redevelopment in the works along the stretch from the historic district to Westgate Circle includes several office buildings, stores, hotels, restaurants and residences.

Annapolis will build a 500-space garage on West Street in an effort to ease the parking crunch and spur downtown reinvestment, Mayor Dean L. Johnson announced yesterday.The city offered $1.1 million for a 37,000-square foot property that covers nearly a block, starting at the corner of West Street and Colonial Avenue. The deal is set to close tomorrow.City officials praised Cecil Claggett Knighton for shearing $625,000 off the property's appraised value in making the deal."By virtue of his philanthropic gesture, we are now in the position to move forward with plans to build a state-of-the-art parking garage on inner West Street," Johnson said in a statement.

Annapolis Mayor Dean L. Johnson proposed a city operating budget of about $47.5 million -- a package free of a property tax increase -- at last night's city council meeting. Under Johnson's plan, the property tax would remain at $1.68 per $100 of assessed value. The mayor's proposal includes a spending increase of 7.92 percent over last year's $44 million budget, with an emphasis on improving transportation and continuing the revitalization of the West Street corridor. "We are a city of differences -- different people, different families and different neighborhoods -- each linked by hope," Johnson said during his state of the city address.

Inner West Street has seen better days.After years of watching businesses flee the seven-block stretch for better venues in the county, Annapolis officials are scrambling to find $12 million to revitalize the once-thriving gateway that stretches from Church Circle to Taylor Avenue.Because the city budget depends on a growing property tax base and annexing county land is often a long, contentious process, Annapolis officials say they must persuade new businesses to take over empty office space or build offices in the West Street corridor.

After months of study, the city of Annapolis is moving forward with plans to build an often-discussed parking garage on the Inner West Street Corridor. The council voted late Monday night to follow the recommendations of a committee of residents and business owners charged with investigating uses for the garage and business complex at West Street and Colonial Avenue. The 11-member committee made its presentation at the council's regular meeting. Based on the group's plan, the city will soon begin accepting proposals to rehabilitate the five 100-year-old buildings at the site for small-scale retail and private development.

Change doesn't come easily in Annapolis -- not when it comes to modernizing a city fiercely protective of its history.Just ask city officials, who are preparing to launch a multimillion-dollar face lift of a rundown, seven-block stretch of Inner West Street from Church Circle to Taylor Avenue.Engineers who designed the project, a citizens' committee that reviewed the plans, the mayor and city council members appear to be on a collision course as monumental as the one that jammed improvements to Main Street for months.