Westport

Serving midday beers at Colleen's Corner Tavern in Baltimore's blighted Westport neighborhood, Mike Eanes wasn't so sure that slot machines were the answer to the area's woes. "There comes a lot of grief with that kind of stuff," Eanes said yesterday when told that Gov. Martin O'Malley had proposed a referendum to approve slot machine gambling in five places, including along the Patapsco River's Middle Branch, which Westport overlooks. "You get high crime and riffraff, so I don't know how that would play out in the neighborhood."

In its largest gift to support public schools in the mid-Atlantic region, NationsBank has given $250,000 to pay for Baltimore programs to improve children's health and fitness and increase parental involvement.The grant will allow two elementary and middle schools -- Westport Elementary/Middle School and Lakeland Elementary/Middle School -- to take advantage of well-proven programs from the Johns Hopkins University and the Harvard School of Public Health.Children will receive help from mentors, take part in drug abuse prevention programs and have opportunities to be part of Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Maryland.

Godfrey Madison, a retired Baltimore teacher who later owned two grocery stores, died Thursday of cancer at his home in New York City, where he had lived for several years. He was 80.Mr. Madison, a resident of Westport in South Baltimore for much of his life, was perhaps known most for his passion for sports. He avidly followed local professional sports and played on area softball teams until he was in his 70s."No question that basketball was his best sport. He could handle the ball and he could shoot, too. He never looked his age," said his son, Sam Madison of New York.

The Sunday the fire roared through Westport Elementary School, Principal Sharon Van Dyke came home late, tired and wondering what to do next.The blaze, in October 1993, killed three maintenance workers and caused $520,000 in damage to the southwestern Baltimore school. Now, Van Dyke had to figure out what to do with her 500 pupils. She hardly slept.Early the next day, she stopped at Baltimore Refuse Energy Systems Co., BRESCO, just south of Camden Yards, to alert Steve Tomczewski, the plant manager, who had entered the company into a partnership with the school three years earlier.

A woman found beaten and unconscious under a car in Southeast Baltimore last week has died, and her death has been ruled a homicide, city police said yesterday.Geneva Dale Zamenski, 45, of the 6700 block of O'Donnell St. died at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center Thursday night. Police said the woman had suffered severe head injuries and might have been raped.The woman was found by officers about 1 a.m. March 27, after someone called 911 to report a rape. She was nude and bleeding from the head and was under a Chevrolet Corsica in the 6400 block of O'Donnell St. in O'Donnell Heights.

Martha S. Dernoga, 99, 'Baker Lady of Westport'Martha S. Dernoga, who was known as the "Baker Lady of Westport," died of heart failure Monday at Genesis Elder Care in Randallstown. She was 99.She and her husband, John Dernoga, owned and operated Westport Bakery on Sidney Avenue from 1924 until it closed in the 1960s.She married Mr. Dernoga in 1914. He died in 1974.Mrs. Dernoga was especially proud that one of her customers from his childhood days was Al Kaline, the retired Detroit Tigers baseball player and Hall of Famer.

Playing Santa yesterday to 760 students at Westport Elementary-Middle School, Ronald Rose arrived in the down-to-earth but colorful style of the trash processing plant he works for.He waved from atop a pickup truck, beside a Wise Man from the north. Also in the parade to the Southwest Baltimore school were the Westport principal, three wailing police cars and a blinking emergency spill truck from the state Department of the Environment.It was the second year the Baltimore Refuse Energy Systems Co. (BRESCO)

In the midst of Westport Homes, Jackie Williams and her daughter Marcia can be found once a week in a quiet recreation center discussing good books, and philosophizing on friendship and love with other Westport and Cherry Hill residents.Ms. Williams and Marcia, a fifth-grader at Westport Elementary School, are one of 16 pairs of children and their guardians who participate in Family Matters, a reading and discussion group designed by the Maryland Humanities Council to bring together public housing residents, scholars and librarians who may not have otherwise crossed paths.

A wealthy professional designer, slowed earlier this year by public pressure, is stepping up his campaign to build twin billboards on a single pole along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in the Westport neighborhood.Albert V. Corbi has said he will use a fraction of the profits to fund youth programs. He has scheduled a meeting for 6 p.m. today in Westport Temple Church of God, on Annapolis Road, to discuss his proposal.If constructed to full height, the billboards would be the highest in the Baltimore area.

Before he showed up two years ago and said he wanted to help their children, no one in the neighborhood knew the rich man with the Rolls Royces, the successful design career, the beautiful Annapolis home with its own name: Tydings.Good news doesn't come to Westport often, much less a man like Al Corbi. It's a tiny southwest city neighborhood of 1,600 people, a place you drive through to get somewhere else, split as it is by Baltimore-Washington Parkway. But here was Corbi, well-dressed and energetic at a community meeting, with his "simple and wonderful" vision for fighting drugs and trash and blight.

A city officer was injured Thursday afternoon when he was dragged five blocks by a car whose driver was trying to escape arrest in West Baltimore. In a separate incident in Westport, an officer shot a man suspected of dealing drugs who drew a gun during an undercover drug buy, authorities said. The injured officer, whose name was not released, joined the department 18 months ago and was assigned to the Western District. He was listed in fair condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Details of his injuries were not released, but police said his bullet-resistant vest was shredded as he was dragged.

The developer of Westport's waterfront is selling an acre of the property along Baltimore's Middle Branch of the Patapsco to a company planning to build a luxury apartment building - part of the first phase of new construction in the proposed $1.2 billion mixed-use community. Baltimore-based Turner Development, headed by developer Patrick Turner, has signed a contract with Landex Development LLC for a parcel at the southern end of the development site a block from the Westport light rail station.

A decrepit railroad bridge in the shadow of Interstate 95 could find new life as the linchpin of a 5 1/2 -mile trail encircling the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River - opening up recreational opportunities along a stretch of Baltimore waterfront that some are calling "the next Inner Harbor." For now, the century-old CSX swing bridge carries little traffic except the occasional trespasser with a crab pot. But city officials and a prominent developer envision a restored span that would serve runners, bicyclists and folks who simply want to take a stroll along a stretch of shoreline that is being reclaimed from industrial development.

A planned waterfront development in Westport is among the five locations eligible for millions in state funds intended to encourage military families relocating to Maryland to settle in high-density communities with easy access to mass transit, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown announced yesterday. The other so-called BRAC zones are around the Odenton and Laurel MARC train stations near Fort Meade, in East Frederick near Fort Detrick, and at a commercial stretch of Prince George's County near Andrews Air Force Base.

CEG promotes Thayer, Berardesco Baltimore's Constellation Energy Group announced yesterday two management appointments: Jonathan W. Thayer as chief financial officer and Charles A. Berardesco as general counsel. Thayer, 37, Constellation's treasurer, replaces John R. Collins, who stepped down as CFO to serve in an advisory capacity to assist with the company's $4.7 billion sale to Warren E. Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. Collins will continue to serve as chairman of Constellation Energy Partners.

The final holdouts standing in the way of a $1.4 billion development planned in Baltimore's Westport neighborhood must pack this weekend and move off the property by tomorrow, but they haven't been going quietly. The owners of a concrete company on the Westport site, Dennis and Gerry Brice, say the move could put an end to their 40-employee business. They believe the city should provide $1.9 million in financial assistance to help them relocate, pointing to the fact that the City Council is considering a $90 million bond to build and improve infrastructure supporting the planned development.

When Mayor Sheila Dixon took office, she acknowledged the need for more affordable housing for police officers, firefighters, nurses, teachers and other middle-class workers. City efforts to include affordable housing in a waterfront residential-commercial complex proposed for Westport show Mrs. Dixon is serious about addressing the need. Are 200 units enough? No, but City Hall's commitment on the Westport project is a reasonable attempt to marry the need with a new city law that requires developers who receive public assistance to set aside some units as affordable housing.

Serving midday beers at Colleen's Corner Tavern in Baltimore's blighted Westport neighborhood, Mike Eanes wasn't so sure that slot machines were the answer to the area's woes. "There comes a lot of grief with that kind of stuff," Eanes said yesterday when told that Gov. Martin O'Malley had proposed a referendum to approve slot machine gambling in five places, including along the Patapsco River's Middle Branch, which Westport overlooks. "You get high crime and riffraff, so I don't know how that would play out in the neighborhood."

A developer's vision to transform the formerly industrial shores of the Middle Branch into a $1.4 billion community of homes, offices, shops and a hotel got final master plan approval yesterday from Baltimore's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel. Turner Development Group plans 2,000 condos, apartments and townhouses, 300,000 square feet of shops, 3 million square feet of office and entertainment uses and two hotels on 50 acres of waterfront land the developer has acquired in Westport.

Baltimore developer Patrick Turner plans to start construction March 1 in an ambitious plan to develop the formerly industrial shores of the Middle Branch, with the first buildings in the $1.4 billion community - including a 65-story, mixed-use skyscraper - to get under way by 2009. Turner, president of Turner Development Group, has spent several days this week introducing his Westport project to retailers at a major shopping center convention in Las Vegas. Tomorrow, the developer will present a site plan to the city's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel.