Rhode Island Place, in the District (Photo by Gerald Neily)

by FERN SHEN and GERALD NEILY

 Residents of Remington and Charles Village who fear that a Lowe’s home improvement store proposed for their neighborhood will be a big, incongruous swath of car-centric surburbia need only look down the road, at D.C.’s Rhode Island Place, to see their nightmare scenario brought to life.

It may be unfair to compare for various reasons, but still, there are some striking similarities between the Baltimore and DC projects: starting with the fact that both the proposed 11-acre development in North Baltimore and the already-completed plaza in the District near the Rhode Island/Brentwood Metro Station, involve the same developer, Rick Walker.

Another similarity? The retail mix. (What’s been talked about so far in Baltimore is a Lowe’s, a supermarket, an Anna’s Linens and other stores. The DC development includes a Home Depot, a Giant supermarket and an Anna’s Linens.)

More importantly, though, the pitch in both cases is identical: big box retail usually associated with the ‘burbs will be designed to mesh with the urban community. But that never happened with Rhode Island Place, according to this 2002 Washington City Paper article, which describes the development on Rhode Island Avenue this way:

“A huge wall lumbers around the outside of the facility, greeting newcomers with a faceful of concrete and carving out a crude square of commerce from the surrounding community.The wall rises from a patch of dirt along Brentwood Road NE and slowly, one rectangular slab at a time, reaches several stories into the sky. The wall is gray with an underlying touch of purple. At times, it is capped by a shiny metal railing, at times by thick Jersey barriers.”

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by MARK REUTTER
Steelworkers and Severstal North America have agreed to voluntary layoffs to reduce costs at the Sparrows Point mill, according to documents released to union members by John Cirri, president of United Steelworkers Local 9477.

The agreement, to go into effect January 3, allows employees to elect to take five-week or ten-week unpaid furloughs. Employees will be recalled to work at the end of their furloughs with this important caveat – “unless, due to business conditions, their layoff is converted to a forced layoff.”

Another provision says that “this agreement shall not be used to permanently reduce the current workforce level” unless the agreement is superseded by a workplace restructuring agreement.

Severstal had threatened to begin forced layoffs Christmas week as part of its plan to eliminate 640 jobs at the Point by March 2010. Such forced reductions are now on hold, sources say, in part because of union opposition and in part because mill orders have increased significantly in recent weeks, reflecting the broader uptick in U.S. manufacturing.

By GERALD NEILY

While the official advice is always to stay home if you can during a snowstorm like the one Baltimore just experienced, the city government wanted thousands of people to take to the roads. Technically.

Everyone parked on the city’s vast network of snow emergency routes faced the threat of being ticketed and towed (as per the sign shown above.) And if the City tows away one of them, they really need to tow them all.

They’re all common criminals, just like the people who rip labels off pillows. Read the rest of this entry »

Robin munching holly berries after the weekend blizzard.

Or perhaps it’s normal. Maybe you birders and longtime Baltimoreans can tell us if robins typically show up this early (or late?) in the season in Maryland.

Wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions, ’cause the robins-mean-climate-change thing can get pretty political.

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