Zenith

The price tag has gone up by $12 million, and the height has come down by 50 feet. But after years of delays in design and financing, the Zenith apartment tower is finally set to rise from a city-owned parking lot across from Camden Yards. The $46 million downtown project celebrated its official groundbreaking yesterday at Pratt and Paca streets, the same corner where Mayor Martin O'Malley stood with the African-American development team in May 2002 to herald the Zenith as a showcase of his efforts to foster minority-owned businesses.

A water pipe blocked by tiny pieces of "slag" — likely pipe shavings or soldering residue — was to blame for the water issues that left many residents of the downtown Zenith apartments without water or air conditioning this week, according to a city public works spokesman. Going floor to floor Tuesday afternoon, crews restored services in the 21-story building, said Lauren McDonald, a spokeswoman for the company that manages the Zenith. The slag pieces, each about the size of a dime, were located by city crews Monday in the filtering screen of a 6-inch-wide "backflow preventer" in the building's internal water system, not in lines maintained by the city, said Kurt Kocher, the public works spokesman.

Construction could begin as soon as next month on a long-awaited luxury apartment tower at a prestigious downtown corner. The Zenith, a high-rise planned for Pratt and Paca streets, overlooking Oriole Park at Camden Yards, was announced more than two years ago. Since then, the project, heralded by city officials as an example of its efforts to reach out to minority-owned businesses, has stumbled on a variety of development potholes. Yesterday, the building's developers said they expect to break ground next month, even though the city's Urban Design and Architecture Review panel has recommended last-minute design changes.

The thermostat in Matt Rechkemmer's luxury apartment overlooking Oriole Park at Camden Yards read 85 degrees Sunday afternoon, and he wondered whether he'd be able to take a shower before going to work Monday morning. "It's incredibly frustrating," said Rechkemmer, whose 12th-story apartment in the Zenith, an upscale high-rise apartment building in downtown Baltimore, has been without air conditioning since late Wednesday and without water since Saturday. "It's blazing hot in here, and you can't really do anything without creating more heat," he said.

CHICAGO -- In the early 1950s, more than 90 American companies made television sets. Yesterday, the last American-owned television manufacturer, Zenith Electronics Corp., gave up its battle to survive on its own and agreed to sell a controlling interest to a South Korean industrial giant.LG Electronics Inc., the South Korean manufacturer whose products sell under the Goldstar name, announced with Zenith that it would lift its stake in that company to 57.7 percent from the current 3.8 percent.

GLENVIEW, Ill. -- Zenith Electronics Corp.'s losses widened in the fourth quarter, causing its auditors to raise "substantial doubt" about the television maker's ability to survive.Zenith said it has received enough cash from majority owner LG Electronics Inc. of South Korea to carry it through June but warned that it may seek bankruptcy protection without additional financing.Zenith shares fell $2.0625 to $4.5625.The crisis is the worst yet for the 80-year-old company, which has reported a loss every year but one since 1985 and has never recovered from a flood of low-priced Japanese televisions into the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.

Two high-profile apartment projects in downtown Baltimore have wrapped up construction and are adding several hundred luxury residences to the market, one in a historic, former office building in the hub of west-side redevelopment and the other a new building overlooking Camden Yards. Construction is nearly done on the 183-unit former Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. headquarters, a nearly century-old Beaux-Arts building at 39 W. Lexington St., and the developer is kicking off leasing this weekend.

While city officials wait to see how many proposals they get for a high-rise "convention hotel" near Oriole Park, developers are moving ahead with plans to construct another tall building in the same area, a 22-story apartment tower called the Zenith. Baltimore's Design Advisory Panel last month approved schematic plans for the $35 million, 191-unit project, which is being planned by Legacy Harrison Development LLC for the southwest corner of Pratt and Paca streets. The land is just west of a two-block parcel where Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson has proposed a 24-story, 750-room Hilton Hotel and a separate building containing a new headquarters for Catholic Relief Services.

Attention, Space Cadets! Clouds might interfere, but if we get lucky, watch for a very bright International Space Station on Monday evening as it passes directly over Baltimore. Look for it to rise above the northwest horizon at 10:05 p.m. and pass right through the cup of the Big Dipper. It will climb nearly to the zenith (straight up) by 10:08, then vanish into the Earth's shadow a few seconds later.

The Zenith, a 23-story luxury apartment tower, was supposed to have reshaped Baltimore's skyline by now, with residents on top floors able to peer into Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Instead, the Zenith site is still a parking lot at Pratt and Paca streets. And much is riding on the project's outcome for both the developer and Mayor Martin O'Malley, who has hailed the project as a showcase of his efforts to encourage minority-owned businesses. Despite months of delay, the developer and city officials say the $35 million, city-aided project remains on track two years after it was announced with fanfare.

Attention, Space Cadets! Clouds might interfere, but if we get lucky, watch for a very bright International Space Station on Monday evening as it passes directly over Baltimore. Look for it to rise above the northwest horizon at 10:05 p.m. and pass right through the cup of the Big Dipper. It will climb nearly to the zenith (straight up) by 10:08, then vanish into the Earth's shadow a few seconds later.

Two high-profile apartment projects in downtown Baltimore have wrapped up construction and are adding several hundred luxury residences to the market, one in a historic, former office building in the hub of west-side redevelopment and the other a new building overlooking Camden Yards. Construction is nearly done on the 183-unit former Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. headquarters, a nearly century-old Beaux-Arts building at 39 W. Lexington St., and the developer is kicking off leasing this weekend.

Rarely does an Adam Sandler movie spark deep critical thinking. But in the new movie Click, Sandler plays a man whose remote control can ride herd over not just his TV, but also over time itself. He can fast-forward, pause, rewind. The remote control seems so ordinary that its extraordinariness is easy to miss. In the half-century since it was first hooked to TVs in American homes, the remote control has become faster, easier, sleeker, more efficient, more sophisticated and applicable to a spiraling number of gadgets: DVD players, ceiling fans, automobiles, draperies, security systems.

The price tag has gone up by $12 million, and the height has come down by 50 feet. But after years of delays in design and financing, the Zenith apartment tower is finally set to rise from a city-owned parking lot across from Camden Yards. The $46 million downtown project celebrated its official groundbreaking yesterday at Pratt and Paca streets, the same corner where Mayor Martin O'Malley stood with the African-American development team in May 2002 to herald the Zenith as a showcase of his efforts to foster minority-owned businesses.