Wharf

While many Baltimoreans stayed home and watched football on New Year's Day, a dozen hardy souls spent the day moving into Baltimore's newest apartment complex.They are the first residents to move into the 125-unit Henderson's Wharf apartment complex since a $9.75 million renovation was launched there last fall.And although the real estate market is sluggish in general, the new managers say they are pleased with the response they've had since they opened a leasing office in October. They say the converted tobacco warehouse at 1000 Fell St. is already close to 20 percent leased even without a big advertising push and that they expect it to be fully occupied by the fall.

Mo's Fishermans' Wharf Restaurant at the Inner Harbor boasts of having one of the area's largest seafood menus. While that would be difficult to prove, it is certainly one of the biggest I have seen.The menu lists more than 20 fish, not including shellfish. They can be had broiled, fried, poached, stuffed, Cajun-style or with marinara, bearnaise or hollandaise sauce. Lobster? The menu lists five dishes. Surf and turf? Three, not including the night's "special" cuts topped with shellfish and bearnaise.

Yes, you can get seafood at almost any local restaurant, from French to Chinese, but is there a distinctive and distinguished Baltimore seafood restaurant -- a place devoted specifically to seafood and serving consistently superior cuisine? If there is, it isn't Fisherman's Wharf.Or at least it isn't the Fisherman's Wharf we went to. The menu informs customers that Chef Mo Manocheh presides over a group of Fisherman's Wharf and Seafood Factory restaurants, markets and carryouts stretching from Parkville to Glen Burnie.

Henderson's Wharf, an inn and conference center in Fells Point, has been named one of the Top 25 Hotels in the World by TripAdvisor's Travel Choice Awards 2011. The waterfront inn is ranked No. 20 in the world and No. 2 in the United States. No other hotel in the Mid-Atlantic region was named to either of those lists. Henderson's Wharf, which survived the onslaught of Tropical Storm Isabel and came out looking even better, has been a favorite of TripAdvisor for several years.

September 1964: Inner Harbor master plan unveiled. April 1973: Dedication of the public wharf on the west shore, where visiting ships dock. April 1974: Construction begins on the Inner Harbor promenade. September 1974: Baltimore City Fair held on the West Shore at what is now Rash Field. June 1976: Maryland Science Center opens. July 1976: Seven tall ships and six military vessels from around the world sail into Baltimore's Inner Harbor to celebrate the nation's bicentennial, revealing the potential of the Inner Harbor as a tourist destination.

When most people travel, the last place they want to end up is in the hospital. For me, that's always where I'm headed. About once a month, I volunteer as a courier for the National Marrow Donor Program, transporting life-saving bone marrow or stem cells to transplant patients around the world. It's a joy to help, but it can also be exhausting. (Consider how much faster you would run to make a connecting flight if you were carrying much-needed blood instead of souvenirs.) My fiancee once joked that I wasn't happy if I wasn't on a train or plane once a week.

LONDON -- It rises like an exclamation point on the east end of this low-slung city, up into the smog from Isle of Dogs, a thumb of land jutting into the Thames.The men who run the riverboat tours down to Greenwich always call attention to Canary Wharf and to the tower at its center, 1 Canada Square. It is the tallest in Europe, they say.It may also be one of the emptiest. And it could become emptier still, now that the bankers financing Canary Wharf have decided they have given enough.They made their decision Wednesday after considering a request to lend nearly $1 billion more to the project's developer, Olympia & York Developments Ltd., a Toronto-based developer that has sought bankruptcy protection for most of its Canadian assets.

The Wharf Rat near Camden Yards is so serious about its beer you have to be an expert just to understand the menu. That's the beer menu, not the food menu. I thought the waiter was going to faint when one of my friends tried to order a nonalcoholic beer.This brewery-pub takes its food seriously as well. I'm not a beer drinker myself, but I have one unscientific observation to make: Microbreweries serve good food. I don't know if that's because beer is a great cooking ingredient or for some other reason.

Belt's Wharf Landing, the mostly vacant condominium and town-house complex in Fells Point that was the subject of foreclosure proceedings five months ago, has been acquired by a new development team that plans to finish construction and kick off its sales campaign about Oct. 1.Belt's Wharf Landing Limited Partnership, a group headed by New York-based investors Elliott Sharaby and Joel Gamel, paid $4.2 million this week to acquire the unsold residences in...

Six months after it reopened as rental apartments, the Henderson's Wharf residential complex in Fells Point has lost one of its development partners and is operating under new management. But the 125 apartments are renting faster than expected, with 67 percent already leased.Richard Holland, an Atlanta-based developer, has left the development team to pursue other projects. Last fall, he joined with an affiliate of Boston Bay Capital Inc. of Boston to acquire the 125 apartments and a 38-room inn inside the former tobacco warehouse at 1000 Fell St.Boston Bay, a real estate brokerage that specializes in raising capital for the rehabilitation of historic properties, bought out Mr. Holland's share of the project for an undisclosed sum several months ago and has brought in its own management team, Hillcrest Management Inc.Linda Lowe, who was general manager of the apartment and inn complex while it was a joint venture of Mr. Holland's Richland Realty and Boston Bay Capital, has been retained to serve as general manager for Boston Bay. She said Mr. Holland left the partnership under good terms and is now working on a development in Germany.