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Commentaryby Brew Editors8:29 amFeb 24, 20140

Best of Brew Comments

Readers bring heat, passion and poetry to last week’s news.

Turning Carroll Park into a Harbor Point for the rest of us

“The Carroll Park renovation plan is excellent. I hope the Friends of Carroll Park can support, promote and bring the plan to fruition. Working with Parks and Rec to set up leagues in the park might help. Pedestrian bridges and train crossings for bikes, tourists & joggers seem to be on the list as well.”
– Trent Spriggs, via Facebook

“I run the trail into Carroll Park downtown and it always saddens me that more is not done with this amazing underutilized area. All we worry about is the harbor waterfront and other upscale areas. This can be a great area but we have no visionary thinkers in Baltimore.”
– Pat Yevics

“Sounds great on paper but here’s the biggest issue: crime. As Pigtown moves upward, the neighborhoods north continue their decline. I argued for a long time that the rails were what allowed Pigtown to grow by creating a border, like it or not. It takes an awful lot to encourage the gentrification of those neighborhoods outside of Union Square, not just a pretty (and impressive) plan to beautify and increase access.”
– Steve Miller, via Facebook

“Interesting stuff. Outside the scope of your study, but getting rid of the car-shredder between Mill Hill and the golf course would be a huge boon to the neighborhood. Should be room to make Carroll Park a full 18-hole course.”
– James Hunt

“What are you going to do about the hookers?”
– George Lopez

“They’re parked in the ho-wagons. Srsly, I’ve seen it where the pimp arrives in a van or SUV with a working woman. Clients drive up, park, walk to the side of the ho-mobile, pay and climb in. Suspensions rock for a time and client climbs out. In a park. Within 50 feet of the only playground for about 1.5 – 2 miles.”
-bmorepanic

Brew, do the cheap shots against Harbor Point ever end? It’s unrelenting. Us vs them. We the people vs business and development. . .”
– Day_Star

“The way I interpreted (and intended) the allusion to Harbor Point was in the spirit of gentle ribbing: Gerry and I argued at the beginning of the post that the very same tactic the city used to revitalize the harbor could apply to inland areas as well. That is, the city has been admirably focused and organized when it comes to removing harborside ‘border vacuums’ to create one unified, vibrant waterfront district, but I’d argue this focus has largely fallen apart when the city has attempted to revitalize inland neighborhoods.

I know James has aptly argued how many previous ‘invest in the neighborhoods instead’ efforts have fallen flat, and I think this is precisely because the focused waterside border-vacuum-fighting tactic has been neglected in favor of airlifting isolated solutions into isolated inland areas. For example, for all the money airlifted into Upton, little to no effort has been made to reconnect that district to Seton Hill/Mt. Vernon across the looong north-south chasm that is State Center, McCulloh Homes, MLK and the Highway to Nowhere.”
– Marc Szarkowski
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Media consolidation claims another alternative weekly – ours!

“Great piece. Meanwhile, oil giant starts ‘community newspaper’: .”
– Laura Dattaro, via Twitter

“What ‘man’? The Sun is a shell. ‘The Man’ left Calvert St. years ago.”
– Russ Smith, via Twitter

“While local ownership would have been a better solution, ownership with a local presence seems at least a step up, and certainly much better than a sale to pure bean-counters. CP has been struggling for years with an aging audience — not much younger than The Sun’s — in what *should* be a young medium. Here’s hoping that some of the same spirit that drives Brew and Fishbowl and Slumlord and Baltimore Crime and Technically and, even, b will make it to the pages (and, is it too much to ask, its digital presence) of CP. It’s almost a certainty that b will go away now; between that and the savings at CP on back-office expenses and printing that are now redundant, there’s at least the possibility that some of that savings could be directed at the editorial team to beef it up, not eviscerate it.”
– timwindsor

“Good thing you’re out there, Brew! Nice first sentence in this post.”
– Dan Pontious, via Facebook

CP had a long, happy run. Times change: smaller, nimbler online entities like the Brew are the mammals to their dinosaur.”
– James Hunt

“We need more investigative journalism in Baltimore, especially media outlets like the Brew and the City Paper that keep the Sun on its toes. Now that the Big Media Company has bought one of its most prolific watchdogs. If our beloved City Paper ends up another ‘b’ – God help us.”
– Carol Ott

“Good riddance to Savage Love and the massive prostitution ads section! That was where so much human sex-trafficking transacted. I hope they clean up this paper so it becomes less of an embarrassment and a positive step for this troubled city.”
– Andrew

“In the cosmos of news
City Paper edgy–
Sun Paper stodgy–
City Paper frothy–
Sun Paper desperate for frothy–

City Paper brazen
and in your face sensation,
Sun Paper broken–
a predictable frustration–

City Paper an astonishing gyration
of facts and fiction,
A giant ego–
with tremendous conviction–
a potpourri of sex and slander,
with gems of art and nuggets of culture
excavated by news spelunkers,

Sun Paper an astonishing gyration
of shrinking stories,
of largely absent investigation,
A giant–mostly crushed and fallen–
A prey to publishing police blotters–

Dearly beloved,
You are herewith invited
to view the inception
of the wedded bliss
of City Paper and Sun Paper–
on March 12, 2014,
at 501 North Calvert Street,
Baltimore, Maryland.”
– Excerpt from ushanellore’s “Everything is a Business”
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Gregory Thornton, favored by Mayor to be schools CEO, introduced today

“I’m perplexed at how this CEO search process has played out. I expected the CEO candidates to be announced to the public around now. Instead, a new CEO was simply announced, per the choice of the mayor. Weren’t a few steps in this process skipped over? Like the public being informed of the candidates and their qualifications for the position? Like the School Board discussing the candidates? Where’s the outcry against this process??”
– CarpeDiem

“You can’t make this stuff up. In the Sun today, someone said that Thornton knows how to put a team in place that stays around for a while. This is about a guy who is leaving his contract in Milwaukee early. Wow! It’s like city politics is performed for our amusement.”
– Sean Tully

“Mr. Thornton is simply ANOTHER out-of-town administrative carpetbagger. His type go from municipality bureaucratic appointment to municipality bureaucratic appointment, promising the world but never delivering. (See the performance of Police Commissioner Batts and former Fire Chief Clack.) Thornton will be here for two or three years then it will be off to his next gig.”
– KnowNothingParty

“Certainly disappointing at first read. The usual on-the-circuit careerist candidate, willing to break contracts for what is viewed as a new opportunity and before things start to fall part where he is at. Thornton says no consequences for him leaving the contract early – bully for you – who cares. . . Salisbury for his Masters?? I hate to sound like an elitist, but am somewhat familiar with that school and it really is not even second tier.”
– Diogenes

“Perhaps I’m biased. My graduate experience at SU was rigorous and positive. That’s the English Dept, anyway.”
– krempel

“Then should we just leave it at Thornton not being a credit to the school, what with leaving Milwaukee holding the bag and chiding a kid for not being up with technology – or joking about it in poor taste. I hope Thornton does not turn out to be a thorn-in-the flesh-ton-of-weight-on B’More-son-of-SU.”
– ushanellore
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After developer fails to post notice, 25th St. Station meeting rescheduled

“So, if we believe Jon Laria, BMZA did not even advise the developer about the February 25th hearing. BMZA was going to have a meeting with no developer, no sign posting, no community and do what? Talk among themselves? It feels like someone in the City Law Department, who had not lost all their marbles, stepped in here and said postpone. . . The issue with BMZA and the Planning Commission is that there are laws, processes, and procedures, which should be followed religiously, especially when there is opposition. They should not be shortchanged because politically connected developers say that the City needs retail; needs money; needs development, etc.”
– Lizzie 58

“I was at the November planning commission meeting. It was clear to me and others that they were not really there to listen to the community, only to rush through the minor amendment that took an hour to explain. They are in Wal-Mart’s pocket like a kangaroo in its mama’s pouch.”
– Tony Bot

“This city keeps trying to slip one by on the residents, both the planning commission and the zoning board. Who are they representing?”
– Kris Northrup, via Facebook

“You know, this developer could have saved a lot of time and trouble if they had only given us an urban design as we requested and deserved, like they did in D.C. Instead we have a suburban model, with a nearly 4-acre parking lot front and center. . . It’s not a matter of money, Walmart can certainly afford it. They just didn’t think old Baltimore deserved it.”
– Old Goucher watchdog
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Council supporting bill requiring state to supplement airport worker pay

“Why should the state (meaning us) have to pay the difference? It’s one thing to have a wage mandated in the lease or contract to operate a business in a publicly owned building (such as an airport); it’s a whole other thing to have the state supplement their wages. This is not a good precedence to set.”
– Matthew Reisner

“It’s kind of amazing that a huge operation like BWI wouldn’t take steps to make sure its support staff is properly compensated for the unique working conditions, security hoops, and scheduling conflicts. Naahh, it’s not amazing at all!”
– Pat R.

“With a crime rate out of control and a broken school system and no jobs, this is the kind of legislation our City Council has time for. Really!”
– Douglass Place, via Facebook

“Sadly, this doesn’t appear to be an Onion story.”
– Eric Jensen, via Facebook

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