Zone Residents

Three weeks after Baltimore was named one of six federal urban revitalization areas, Vice President Al Gore toured the streets of East Baltimore last year and touted the multimillion-dollar initiative as a "new chance to succeed" for some of the city's most impoverished residents.Twenty-one months later, the $100 million empowerment zone effort seems to be more of a mixed bag of modest successes and much unfinished business.Nowhere is that more obvious than on the streets north of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, where Gore walked in early January 1995.

A Rouse Co. official defended last night his company's proposal to build a 517-acre Columbia-style development in North Laurel, saying it would be well-planned and better for local neighborhoods than a primarily industrial site.Under cross-examination for a second night before the Howard County Zoning Board, Alton J. Scavo, a Rouse senior vice president, was questioned about Rouse's plans to build a loop road and connectors to other thoroughfares around the proposed development, which would be just south of Gorman Road and north of Route 216, and would be bisected by Interstate 95.The cross-examination was led by Thomas E. Dernoga, an attorney who represents the Southern Howard Land Use Committee, an umbrella organization of citizen groups that is fighting the rezoning Rouse needs to build the development.

Shhhhh.Can you hear that? It's the sound of a little peace and quiet on Fayette Street.Since August, there's been less rumble from tractor-trailers on the east side of town thanks to an ingenious compromise struck by community leaders, trucking interests and city government.If you've ever lived in a neighborhood frequented by trucks, you know how bothersome the noise and vibration can be. Plaster walls crack. Windows hum. Parents worry about children playing outdoors."The houses weren't designed for this kind of abuse," says Ed Rutkowski of the Patterson Park Neighborhood Initiative.

Stymied by vocal opposition and a complex zoning process, developers who wanted to build a retail and residential village on Bestgate Road near Annapolis now say they are likely to build only single-family homes and townhouses. Michael DeStefano, president of Sturbridge Homes, said yesterday that his company and partner Erwin L. Greenberg & Associates of Baltimore are moving ahead with plans to build houses on the 54-acre property, which has been slated for various development scenarios during the past several years.

The county Planning Board endorsed a controversial "environmental" zoning category yesterday, urging county lawmakers to reconsider their opposition to the proposal.The advisory opinion was included with recommendations on 29 other last-minute rezoning requests that will be decided June 10 by County Council members sitting as the Zoning Board.The environmental category was rejected by the Zoning Board in straw vote taken during a March 17 work session.The proposal would allow three homes per acre, clustered away from sensitive areas such as steep slopes, wetlands and historical sites.

Chick-Fil-A Inc. announced yesterday that it has withdrawn its application to build a hotly contested drive-through restaurant near a residential area in Ellicott City, leaving critics to celebrate what may be only a short-term victory."

Two-thirds of all states added new incentives in the past two years or increased dollars for existing programs, a survey by The Sun found.Alabama doubled site-preparation money granted to some new employers and passed a franchise-tax abatement that will save Boeing $40 million. Florida's new investment tax credit will help give Cirent Semiconductor tax breaks of more than $35 million. Iowa, one of the few states that hadn't offered "enterprise zone" tax cuts for mobile businesses, now does.

Baltimore won a $100 million federal grant yesterday that is expected to spark a sweeping revitalization effort in some of the city's most troubled neighborhoods.The federal empowerment zone grant -- $50 million now, another $50 million in October -- will trigger an additional $800 million in commitments from city, state and private sources to revive dilapidated areas of East, West and South Baltimore.As one of six cities to win the grants, Baltimore will also be able to offer tax breaks to companies that hire zone residents or move to the empowerment zone.

They sound at times like a cross between urban versions of the old television show "Queen for a Day" and glossy city travel brochures.The double image of heart-rending hardship and rosy prospects is presented in the applications filed by Baltimore and other cities competing for hundreds of millions of dollars in the federal empowerment zone program: All plead poverty while touting their civic resourcefulness.And all have no shortage of ideas for solving their problems, offering a potpourri of proposals for urban revitalization.

AN APPARENT CASE of forgery in the city's empowerment zone is disturbing, especially since some are suggesting the act was excusable because the right person received money he was owed. They are wrong. If there is evidence that Leonard Jackson Jr. forged a signature to be paid $6,500 in salary he was owed as executive director of the Self Motivated Community People's Village Center in West Baltimore, he should be fired.The public cannot have confidence that anyone who has abused its trust won't do so again.