Marc Fishers Last Column

Washington Post Metro columnist Marc Fisher wrote his last column for the paper today. In it he recounts the highs and lows of over his 1,250 column run and reflects on how the Web has altered “the relationship between writer and reader.” 

It’s a good read from a good writer. 

Marc has weighed in on our local scene in some of those 1,250 columns. When the poinsettia tree dust up with The Mall was going on he wrote about it twice and more recently he wrote this column about Columbia resident Judge Lynn Battaglia and her ruling protecting the anonymity of people who post on blogs and message boards. 

For his next act in life, Marc intends to put together “a group of writers whose job it will be to tell the truths of the Washington area in compelling and essential ways, combining traditional storytelling with new forms that involve and engage the people who live here.” 

A big wag of the tail to Marc and his new endeavor. We look forward to learning more about it.

Try to Keep Up

Alex Hekimian is “feeling rushed.” According to this story by Larry Carson in The Sun today, Alex and his Columbia Council buddies, Phil Kirsch and Cindy Coyle believe that the county is moving too quickly on ZRA 102. ZRA 102 would change the process for altering Columbia’s village centers by, among other things, removing General Growth Properties from the role of gatekeeper. As it now stands, if an owner of a village center wants to make any significant changes to the center they most first receive the blessing of GGP. This requirement is a holdover from the early days of the planned community and may no longer be relevant today. GGP does not own any of the Columbia village centers. Most of its land holdings are concentrated in Town Center and Gateway Corporate Park. 

Cindy, Phil and Alex need to try and keep up. This is hardly what I would call a rush job. ZRA 102 was originally introduced last August and has been the subject of several community meetings over the past year. Additional public hearings will begin to be held on June 15^th and, according to the sponsor of the legislation, Councilperson Mary Kay Sigaty, “the council will schedule as many public hearings as it takes to hear from everyone who wants to voice an opinion.” 

That seems pretty reasonable to me. A year worth of debate followed by a month or so of public hearings should be ample time to adequately address this issue. If this is not enough time for Phil, Cindy and Alex perhaps they need to rethink whether they have the time and energy for public service.

Ackman Bullish on GGP Stock

Bill Ackman, whose hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management is the largest individual shareholder of General Growth Properties, believes the company “will emerge from bankruptcy reorganization in a strong enough position to benefit investors daring enough to buy its shares.” 

According to this story by Thomas M. Anderson in Kiplinger.com, Ackman told investors at a conference in New York that GGP “sought bankruptcy protection because it couldn't refinance its mortgages during the financial crisis, not because its business is unsound.” 

“Ackman thinks the stock is worth $10 a share in a bankruptcy-court decision that does not involve liquidating the company -- his most pessimistic scenario -- and as much as $30 if court rulings favor General Growth.”

Cyber Security Initiative

The Maryland Association of Realtors held a Commercial Symposium at the new Sheraton BWI today.  Roger Waesche, Executive Vice President and CEO of Corporate Properties Office Trust, told the told assembled commercial real estate professionals, that federal spending for the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative could easily top $100 billion dollars and that a lion’s share of that money will be spent in the Baltimore Washington region. 

Tom Sadowski, the President and CEO of the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore said our region already rivals California’s Silicon Valley in the number of IT professionals.

 Joe Burke, Executive Vice President and Senior Managing Director of NorthMarq Capital, said that in spite of the current recession, the “Baltimore Washington region is still considered one of the best places in the country to invest in commercial real estate.” 

All three gentlemen were on a panel entitled Climate Conditions affecting the Commercial Real Estate Market moderated by Anirban Basu of the Sage Policy Group. 

These were all soothing words for a group of professionals that have been feeling pretty battered for the last year.

Wham!

I was driving through the intersection of Route 104 and Montgomery Road yesterday when I noticed some major commotion at the Waterloo Plaza retail center. It appears that a late model maroon Mercedes SUV lost control while backing up and creamed into these cars.

Thankfully, no one was hurt. 

As I left I noticed the familiar bumper sticker, with New Jersey tags.

Scene This Week In...

There seems to have been an outbreak of graffiti in east Columbia this spring. I first noticed this while driving past the Auto Services Park on Dobbin Road. Earlier this month, someone or groups of someone’s, spray painted graffiti on all of the service bay doors facing Dobbin Road. It looked more like Brooklyn than Columbia.

Yesterday, while driving on Oakland Mills Road I saw this graffiti attack on the Verizon building.I know that some like to refer to these vandals as graffiti “artists” but not this old dog. I see this as plain and simple vandalism. 

The local phenomenon of stacking rocks in rivers has spread downstream from Ellicott City. This past weekend, as Mama Wordbones and I were crossing the swinging bridge at the trail head of The Grist Mill Trail in the Patapsco Valley State Park, we noticed these rock sculptures in the water below.

A similar display of rock art in the Patapsco River became popular in Ellicott City last summer and, as reported earlier here, has returned this year. 

It is both the anonymity of the rock artists and the temporary nature of the art that makes this so cool.

We’re in the Top Five!

According to this post by Adam Pagnucco in Maryland Politics Watch, Maryland blogs are becoming increasingly popular. Yesterday Adam reported that Maryland state and local blogs “set a combined record visit count in March. Then they set another record in April.” 

MPW has been tracking 35 state and local blogs that release their site statistics, which includes Tales of Two Cities, since June of 2007. 

Surprisingly, Tales of Two Cities was cited as the fourth most popular Maryland "local" blog, year to date, behind Inside Charm City, Just Up The Pike, and Rockville Central. 

Valley Forge Flag Company

One of my weekend projects was to replace the flag bracket over the garage. The one I purchased last year could not stand up to the high winds on our little hill in Ellicott City. It was Memorial Day weekend so I figured it would be pretty easy to find flag supplies at Home Depot. 

Once again I was wrong. It took three store clerks and a few walkie talkie conversations to accurately pinpoint where the "flag stuff" display had been moved to, which turned out to be less than a nine iron shot from where we standing. 

Anyway… 

The only flag products available the Home Depot on Snowden River Parkway came from the Valley Forge Flag Company. With a patriotic name like that I figured these flags were made in the USA. They were. The company proudly proclaims that their flags are “100% Made in the USA.” 

But I wasn’t buying a flag. I needed the Valley Forge flag bracket. That was made in China. In fact, everything but the actual flags in the Valley Forge flag display was made in China. 

Maybe they should change their name to Great Wall Valley Forge Flag Company and then they could capitalize on their patriotism in two countries at once!

By the way, does anyone have a good suggestion for mounting a flag bracket on brick?

Browser Blues

This weekend I made the mistake of clicking where I shouldn’t have and ended up downloading the newest version of Internet Explorer. Is it just me or is anyone else experiencing difficulty with this latest and supposedly greatest new thing from the folks at Microsoft? 

Apparently not, with 44 reviews so far on CNET, it has only averaged two out of five stars. Some of the comments include, “It's the browser that doesn't browse” and “After installing it I constantly got DEP exceptions. I was sending crash reports to MS almost every page visit.” 

I’m really getting to loathe those Microsoft crash reports. 

A couple of months ago I started playing around with Google’s browser, Chrome. It is much faster than Internet Explorer and the more I use it, the more I like it. I think Microsoft has finally pushed me to change my default browser.

Trail Mix

This afternoon Mama Wordbones and I decided to take a short bicycle ride on one of our favorite local trails, the Trolley No. 9 trail. While it is a steady climb from Ellicott City to Catonsville, the ride back is all downhill. No heavy lifting.

In a post from two years ago I provided a link to TrainWeb.org which has a nice photo tour of some of the trail highlights. Today, as we made our way up the hill, we came across a sight that you won’t find in that grouping. I guess you might say that this trail is dog friendly.

After we got back to Ellicott City we walked across the Patapsco River Bridge and saw that the impromptu rock sculptures have returned in the river.

I love this time of year.

Busy Day

The idealized vision of Memorial Day weekend includes sand, sun and adult beverages. While many folks will indeed enjoy some version of this vision, many more will be left behind to a far different reality. It will be no weekend of complete leisure for them. Instead they will be tending to pressing items at the homestead. In a word, “projects.”

The Saturday for Memorial Day is perfectly designed for big projects. Picnics are usually held on Sunday so Saturday becomes the day to “git ‘r done.” Lawns and gardens are worked over and outside furniture is cleaned up for another summer of cookouts. For many the project of the day requires a trip to the local rental center and today, one local rental center was having a very busy day.

“It’s one of the busiest days of the year,”

As it happens, my home project required one of those rental center trips so I headed on over to the ABC Rental Center on Dobbin Road in Columbia. That’s where I met Lee Knight. I asked him what the hottest rental item was today.

“Power washers, with tillers running a close second.”

And there ya go. I'd better get back to work now before Mama Wordbones finds me on the computer.

Most Uniquely American

Newsmax magazine has named Ellicott City as one of the “most uniquely American cities and towns.” The list was compiled by Peter Greenberg, the travel editor for NBC’s Today Show. Peter ranked 25 towns that he felt “embody America’s core values.

Ellicott City was ranked 17, getting high grades in education, family friendliness and business friendliness. At least it didn’t cite being “zoned against big boxes” as one of its endearing attributes.

Ellicott City was the only town in Maryland to make the list. You can see the entire list here.

2nd Annual Land Use Summit

Last night I had a free moment before meeting up with David Keelan for my long awaited beer so I decided to drop in on the 2nd Annual Land Use Summit sponsored by Howard County Issues. As soon as I walked in the room I felt like a fish out of water. It was quite obvious to everyone that I wasn’t really one of them.

Not that there were that many of them. At most, I counted fifteen people including the organizers. Mona Brinegar, the publisher of HoCo Issues was there as was Bridget Mugane, Angela Beltram, Barbara Russell, Susan Gray and Michael Cornell. I don’t believe any of the attendees were under 40. Mona told the gathering that last year about 70 people attended the first annual summit so it appears that there has been a dramatic drop off in interest.

Among the things that the organizers were happy about was the election of Russ Swatek over James Howard in the Long Reach election for the Columbia Council. Mona described James as being“aggressively pro developer” while Russ was described being “very egalitarian minded.”

After Mona spoke, Susan Gray took the floor, or more accurately, sat on the floor while she gave an update on the lawsuit she and Paul Kendall have filed against the county in federal court to place all county zoning decisions under federal jurisdiction. This generated a round of applause from the small group.

Susan told the gathering that she is very optimistic about this suit. She thinks they have put together a very strong case. I’ve come to the conclusion that Susan is delusional.

I left around eight o’clock to meet Mr. Keelan.

Looking for a Few Good Homes

The Program for Academic Exchange is looking for forty Howard County families that would be willing to host a foreign high school student next year. PAX “brings high school students from over 40 different countries here for an exchange year. The students are chosen to participate in the program based on their academic ability, maturity level and English skills. They also come with monthly spending money, health insurance and an active coordinator who works closely with them to maximize their exchange experience.”

If you are interested in finding out more about this program please contact Nicole Modeen Hark at nicolemodeen@gmail.com.

At Least someone is Working Today

I don’t know if it’s just me but it sure seems like people bug out of work a lot earlier for holiday weekends than they used to. Not that long ago, it was fairly common practice to skip out around noon on Friday before the holiday weekend. Today, my office was empty by noon.

Except for yours truly that is.

I suppose that in our technologically enhanced lives, where in theory at least, we are constantly in touch with our work, we never really leave work.

Still in my own little act of defiance at being the only guy in the office, I went home for lunch to throw on a pair of shorts. That’s when I met Mark.

Mark Sweadner was banging a stake into the ground just outside my backyard fence. The dogs were very curious about this survey activity so I opened the back door and we all went out to investigate. The lot lines in my little corner of a newly developed world can be a little screwy so I thought I’d go over and introduce myself.

It turns out Mark is a local boy. He went to Glenelg High School and his mom still lives in Woodbine where he is planning on spending his Memorial Day. He lives in Elkridge and works for Mildenberg, Boender & Associates in Ellicott City.

Actually, his office is in the Dorsey Hall Professional Center in the Village of Dorsey’s Search in Columbia but the post office considers this to be Ellicott City.

Anyway…

I had one last question before I headed back to my lonely office.

“Redskins or Ravens?”

“Redskins! I’m a season ticket holder.”

I immediately felt sorry for him.

The Belmont Blues Again

Poor Belmont. This picturesque estate in Elkridge continues to make headlines for the wrong reasons. Ever since the property was sold by the American Chemical Society to Howard County Community College for $4.8 million in 2004 it has been the subject of controversy. According to this story by Larry Carson in The Sun today, the college used unauthorized surplus funds to repay the “gift” from Harry “Chip” Lundy that originally helped them with the down payment for the historic property. The college has now agreed to pay that $1.7 million back to the county.

Where will the college get that money?

“When the school sells a 13-acre portion of the 81-acre property, the proceeds will be used to repay the surplus. No sale is imminent, however.”
The 13 acres the college hopes to dispose of to raise this money is the land surrounding the Dobbin House portion of the conference center campus. Dobbin House sits at the end of a tree lined drive just before the main entrance into the property. This was the property Chip Lundy had hoped to acquire for senior housing in return for his gift.

You can read my previous posts about Belmont here, here and here.

The Truth Sometimes Hurts

According to this article by Todd Shields in Bloomberg.com, The Federal Communications Commission has begun an inquiry into “whether Arbitron Inc. undercounts the audience for minority radio stations, potentially harming their advertising sales and ability to maintain programming for blacks and Hispanics.”

This is the direct result of the game changing technology developed by the Columbia headquartered company. Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (PPM) replaces the old written diary method of audience tracking with an electronic device the size of a pager. The PPM automatically records what radio stations an individual is exposed to during the day without relying on the participants’ memory.

The initial results have been both surprising and very disconcerting to some stations. Some speculate that, under the old diary system, a diarist would often say out of a sense of loyalty that they listened to a minority or ethnic station even if they didn’t actually tune in. The PPM system doesn’t allow for that since it only counts what a person actually listened to, not what they thought perhaps they should have listened to.

Not all minority stations are displeased though. In an article entitled “Radio Ratings Device Flawed, Stations Say,” by Paul Farhi in The Washington Post last October, Radio One, “one of the nation's largest radio broadcasting companies and the largest radio broadcasting company that primarily targets African-American and urban listeners” is on board with the program.

"Anytime you adopt a new technology, there are always short-term dislocations," said Alfred C. Liggins III, chief executive of Radio One Inc., the Lanham-based company that owns 53 stations -- including WMMJ and WKYS -- that seek African American listeners. "There's going to be a learning curve. . . . But [electronic measurement] is reality. I'd much rather get reality on the road then delay, delay, delay."

Liggins said that Radio One's stations in Houston and Philadelphia initially saw a steep drop in their ratings when the meters were introduced months ago but that they have since recovered to roughly the same ranking in the market.”

When a game changing technology like this is deployed in the marketplace there are bound to be folks who claim it is unfair, particularly if it exposes their weaknesses.

Steve Meskin Wants to Know!

Occasionally I’ll surf by the Howard County Citizens Association listserv to see what those crazy kids are up to these days. I think it would be accurate to say that I often find myself on the opposite side of their prevailing point of view.

On a recent discussion about political contributions, Steve Meskin shared an email he sent to Jared DeMarinis, the Director of the Candidacy and Campaign Finance Division of the Maryland State Board of Elections. Steve wants the state to dig pretty deep into the personal lives of people who contribute to political campaigns.

Among the things he would like to know about everyone who makes a political contribution:
-
- Contributors who are related to each other
- Employers of individual contributors
- Organizations for which an individual contributor is an officer

I think Steve is sniffing in places that are pretty private. Ya gotta keep an eye on those crazy kids.

If Larry Goes, I Go

When I picked up my copy of The Sun at the end of the driveway this morning I was struck by how small it had become. This didn’t happen overnight of course, The Sun has been progressively shrinking for at least a year now. Yet somehow this morning, lying there next to the Sunday editions of The Washington Post and New York Times, The Sun looks downright pathetic.

Two days ago I paid my bill for the next eight weeks of home delivery of Baltimore’s only daily newspaper. It was $38.75. For the first time since I became a subscriber, I seriously considered cancelling. It doesn’t seem like a good value proposition anymore.

Truth is I’ve felt this way the past couple of times I paid this bill. I’ve hung in there because while I believe that it is important to support the daily paper, we all have a breaking point. I’ve decided mine is Larry, as in Larry Carson, the veteran reporter covering Howard County. I’ve completely given up my expectation of any meaningful national news from The Sun, and forget about their business coverage. It is really just their Howard County coverage that keeps me hanging on and that has now boiled down to Larry Carson, the last Mohican.

I know I’ve tossed a barb or two his way in this blog. That’s mostly because he covers our little piece of the Baltimore Washington corridor so well. My digs have all been for minor infractions, mere technicalities if you will.

So I’ve decided to make Larry Carson my own personal line in the sand for continuing to be a subscriber of The Sun.

If he goes, I go.

"Zoned Against Big Boxes"

An anonymous commenter on this post questioned why I hadn’t posted anything about the latest accolade bestowed on Columbia by Forbes magazine. The article by Matt Woolsey entitled “America’s Top 25 Towns to Live Well” ranked Columbia as No. 7.

“Seventh place Columbia, Md., a 97,506-population town between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, is packed with restaurants, parks and music venues, and it is zoned against big boxes, making it exceptionally small business friendly.”

Zoned against big boxes?

Could it be that Columbia received this recognition under false pretenses?

The list was compiled by a corporate relocation consulting group from San Francisco called ZoomProspector.com. I’m guessing that they never actually visited Columbia.