(Baltimore Snacker) - ... Almost any born and bred Baltimorean 30 years old and above will remember The Enchanted Forest, that kitschy local amusement park that fell on hard times around the late 80's and finally closed down for good, after some transformations, in 1997. Many of the attractions that people remember, however, were left neglected from 1990 on, and have been sitting, decaying, ever since. Continued
Photo: The Baltimore Snacker
Photo: Union soldiers writing letters home from Camp Essex, Maryland, in 1861. Courtesy Center for Civil War Photography.
(Examiner) - Four years after a group of twenty residents and community leaders made recommendations for the improvement of the Route 40 corridor, Howard County planners have not released a design manual based on those suggestions.
A design manual, which would be codified by the County Council, would help guide development along the Ellicott City stretch.
“We urge you ... to ask the Department of Planning and Zoning before the end of the year to produce a design manual,” Grace Kubofcik, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Howard County, told the council at a recent hearing. Continued
(Wikipedia) - James Wilson Rouse (April 26, 1914 - April 9, 1996) was a pioneering American real estate developer, civic activist, and later, free enterprise-based philanthropist.
He was born in Easton, Maryland. He attended college and law school during the Great Depression; after graduating in 1937 he worked for the Federal Housing Administration and in 1939 he was a partner at a mortgage banking firm called the "Moss-Rouse Company", which would eventually become the Rouse Company.
After World War II he became involved in Baltimore, Maryland's efforts to rehabilitate its slums. This led to his participation in Dwight D. Eisenhower's National Housing Task Force starting in 1953. He introduced (or at least helped popularize) the term "urban renewal" to describe the series of recommendations made by that task force.
In 1958, Rouse built Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie, Maryland, the first enclosed shopping center east of the Mississippi River. Continued
Photo by Jeff Kubina
Photo: Baltimore News American via Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth, University of Baltimore.
(Sara Michael, Examiner) - A push to save small open space lots from development in Howard County has netted nearly 50 acres for preservation and with another 90 acres in the pipeline. “It’s much better than we were hoping for,” said Meg Schumacher, executive director of the Howard County Conservancy.
... Preserving these small lots from development aims to curb so-called bad infill development, which is squeezing new houses into existing neighborhoods. Neighbors often lament the burden on infrastructure and destruction of open space resulting from such development. Continued
(Matthew Santoni, Baltimore Examiner) - Boom times may return to Route 40 north of Baltimore. But the crumbling relics — the former Magnolia diner that’s now the office for a junkyard, the Keyser Motel so often cordoned off by yellow crime-scene tape, the old Flying Clipper restaurant that became a liquor store — may be among the casualties of progress.
As developers eye the run-down car lots, rent-by-the-hour motels and porno palaces along Route 40 as ripe for redevelopment opportunities, photographer Michael Lijewski rushes to document the area’s hidden history before it disappears.
“It’s a place that most people consider worthless, but the history there ranges from the obvious vintage motels and motor courts to the Colonial era,” says Lijewski, creator of the local history blog Falmanac. “Route 40 is our Route 66.” Continued
Canon EOS 30D & EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens
(Examiner) ... Land owners often buried family members on their land rather than pay for the town cemetery, said Barbara Sieg, who helped found the Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites Inc. The land is later divided and sold, and often the name of the owner is lost along the way.
State laws prohibit developers from building on top of a graveyard. However, plots are destroyed and hundreds disappear every year because of loopholes, Sieg said. Continued.
While Doughoregan Manor is indisputably historic, there's something about this story that doesn't sit well with me. I think it's the fact that while the public will be negatively impacted by the owner's efforts to restore the place, either by funding an easement or by encouraging more development, the public won't get much in return. The estate remains private. It isn't a museum, visitors aren't allowed. The owners don't care for the public, which is within their rights, so why should the public care about them?
"If we're going to give something to them to help preserve their land, I'd rather give them a preservation easement than give them the right to develop more houses. They're both handouts," Cochran said.
If handouts are in order, maybe a concession or two is in order as well? How about opening up the place to the public for a few weekends a year? Throw us peasants a bone whydoncha? Doesn't seem too much to ask. After all, we are holding the purse strings.
Smithers, release the hounds.
