Google Bike Map route from Poly to Lake Montebello.

by FERN SHEN

Baltimore bicyclists are checking out a new tool this week, Google’s long awaited bike map application, unveiled yesterday in Washington.

The idea: you plug in a starting point and a destination and the software gives you the bike-friendliest route. This feature is in beta mode and Google asks users to report errors or suggest changes.

But for now, right out of the box, how good is it in Baltimore?

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by FERN SHEN

 Benn Ray, owner of Hampden’s Atomic Books, couldn’t get over the language in the Baltimore Sun’s Friday Wal-Mart story, their first on the fact that a north Baltimore development proposal now includes a Wal-Mart, as well as a Lowe’s.

“A second Walmart store will open in Baltimore by the fall of 2011…” was the lede sentence.

“Why does it say ‘WILL open?’ The whole thing is being couched as a done deal, but they need to get a PUD,” Ray pointed out, correctly noting that, in order to be built, the mixed-use development would need to be green-lighted by the City Council as a  ”planned unit development.”

 “It’s unbelievable,” said Ray. “The government and the media are just accepting this is going to happen.”

Indeed, within hours after the Wal-Mart news broke, Baltimore government, community and media types  were staking out their positions, overtly or implicitly, on this hot button issue.

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by GERALD NEILY

Oh no! Didn’t anyone tell Rick Walker never to do what Gerry Neily says? When the Brew published my “Five fixes to make the Lowe’s redevelopment work for Remington“ several months ago, the developer must have paid attention, because the newly-revised plan incorporates almost all of the five fixes.

Coincidence? Perhaps, but when the city government finds out, he’s doomed!

The addition of a Wal-Mart may be controversial, but the new design, in my opinion, is now less so. Here’s how I score it on those five fixes: Read the rest of this entry »

Developers want to demolish the Art Deco McCrory's Building. (Photo by Elizabeth Suman)

story by JOAN JACOBSON, photos by ELIZABETH SUMAN

Some of the finest examples of historic preservation in Baltimore are on the rickety west side of downtown, right where the city may need them most.

There’s the ornate, wedding-white Stewarts Department store (now Catholic Relief Services headquarters), the flagship Hecht Company building on Howard Street and the regal, neoclassical BG&E building on Lexington Street (now both luxury apartments). Then there’s the Hippodrome Theatre on North Eutaw Street, that masterpiece of urban rejuvenation.

But just steps away, local preservationists are frustrated by what they see: one square block of empty, largely historic buildings, waiting for a city-designated developer who wants to destroy many of them to build modern retail buildings. Among the threatened buildings are some great examples of Art Deco architecture and some even older buildings — structures that survived the Baltimore fire of 1904.

McCrory's tilework detail. (Photo by Elizabeth Suman)

For five years, an out-of-town developer, calling itself Lexington Square Partners, has submitted plans that call for bulldozing most of the buildings along the south side of the 200 block of W. Lexington Street, as well as the blocks of Howard Street, Park Avenue and Fayette Street that adjoin it, known as the Superblock.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

((Inside: our research-rich SUPERBLOCK SLIDESHOW))
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Baltimore city workers razing part of the west side for redevelopment. (Photo by Fern Shen)

by FERN SHEN

The city began demolition yesterday another remnant of once-thriving Baltimore: a strip of retail buildings on West Lexington Street now so moribund that a patch of cattail stalks was visible growing on one roof.

But although yesterday’s ceremony featured an artist’s rendering of the glittery mixed-use development being imagined by the Cordish Company for the spot, and a crowd of “stakeholders” and media gathered to watch Mayor Sheila Dixon smash the first bit of facade with a backhoe, the immediate plan for the block is not too exciting:

A 100-space parking lot for Catholic Relief Services’ World Headquarters Building.

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