Northrop Grumman Moving East

According to this front page story by Dana Hedgpeth and Thomas Heath in The Washington Post this morning, Northrop Grumman “plans to move its corporate headquarters from Los Angeles to the Washington area by 2011, solidifying the growing importance of Washington as a center for the defense industry and other businesses.”

As I said before, compared to most parts of the country, we have it good.

No doubt Dick Story and his team are working hard to entice this corporate plum to Howard County. The competition with DC and Virginia will be intense, not to mention the competition from other Maryland jurisdictions.

Still, Howard County offers an active option to Northrop Grumman. Not only is Howard County close to an important customer at Fort Meade, it also has the best public school system in the state and compared to Montgomery County at least, our housing costs are much more reasonable.

Sadly, Columbia Town Center is not likely to be among the sites that the company would consider. The master plan is still awaiting approval and it would likely be 2012 before any new building would be ready to accommodate them even if it does get approved. This is yet another reason why this plan needs to be approved now, not later as some critics would prefer.

Visioning Town Center

This past weekend Mama Wordbones took a road trip down to check out the National Harbor mixed use development in Prince Georges County along the Potomac River. It gave us a pretty good feel for what a high density new urban development feels like.

This is a photo taken of Waterfront Street in National Harbor. It shows a mix of office, residential and retail buildings looking down Waterfront Street from the intersection of Mariner Passage. On the right side is an eight story, 184 room aloft Hotel, a seven story condominium building, and a five story, 60,000 square foot office building. Each building has street level retail space that includes retailers like South Moon Under and restaurants such as Ketchup. On the left side of the street is a three story office building and a five story condominium building. These buildings also have ground level retail and restaurants.

I believe this is a pretty good “real life” representation of what General Growth Properties envisions for Columbia Town Center. We definitely liked what we saw.

2009 Newsmaker of the Year

Rand Griffin, the CEO of Columbia based Corporate Office Properties Trust has been named the 2009 Newsmaker of the Year by the Baltimore Business Journal.

"At a time when many in the commercial real estate industry are licking wounds inflicted by an unforgiving recession, Rand Griffin-led COPT is still raising, spending, and making money. That’s why the Baltimore Business Journal picked him as its 2009 Newsmaker of the Year."

Congratulations Rand!

ICE!

Yesterday Mama Wordbones and I headed down to National Harbor to catch an exhibit called ICE! We had read about the ice sculpture extravaganza and it seemed an appropriate outing for a day when the wind chill bought the temperature down in to the low twenties.

Maybe it’s just us, but spending twenty bucks each to wait in line and then walk through a freezer looking at ice sculptures seemed a bit pricey. Sure, it was cool (pun intended) and we did enjoy going down the ice slide once, we still felt that it was way over hyped.

We did enjoy having cocktails afterwards while watching the Christmas light show inside the Gaylord National Harbor Hotel though.

Congress Holding Up Cyber Command

According to this story by Ellen Nakashima in The Washington Post today, the new cyber command that is expected to be located at Fort Meade “has been slowed by congressional questions about its mission and possible privacy concerns.”

“Although officials stress that the cyber command, as it is known, is an effort to consolidate existing offensive and defensive capabilities under one roof and involves no new authorities or broadening of mission, its potential for powerful new offensive capabilities -- some as yet unimagined -- have raised questions on Capitol Hill about its role, according to national security experts familiar with the concerns.”

This past summer, Secretary of Defense Dr. Robert M. Gates had expressed a desire to have the new command fully operation by October of this year.

Confirmation hearings for the President Obama’s nominee to lead the new command, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, have yet to be scheduled.

“Alexander, who would become a four-star general, must be confirmed in that position before the command can launch at "initial operating capability."

Hopefully Congress can get comfortable with their privacy concerns before there is another major attack on the defense department computer networks.

It’s in the Bag

Yesterday, a new law took effect in DC that requires consumers to pay a five cent fee for plastic shopping bags making it one of the toughest environmental measures in the country.

It’s a dam good one too in my opinion.

According to this article by Annie Gowan in The Washington Post today, “Americans use billions of plastic sacks every year, and only a fraction are recycled.”

“The D.C. Department of the Environment found in a recent study that 47 percent of the trash in the Anacostia's tributaries and 21 percent in the river itself is plastic bags.”

Anyone who has ever spent time cleaning up stream beds know that this true. When Jean-Michel Cousteau spoke in Baltimore back in October he singled out plastic shopping bags as one the more egregious environmental hazards that could easily be addressed by getting consumers into the habit of taking their own reusable bags to the stores.

Gowan reports that similar legislation is will be introduced during Maryland’s General Assembly session this year.

I’d much rather see our legislators putting their energies into this type of initiative rather than those that pander to the license beverage association and limit consumer choice.

Ken’s Back

Don’t get me wrong. I do wish him well but I found it a little unsettling when I read this story by Larry Carson in The Sun today about our county executive’s surgery to “to remove a protruding portion of a disc that has been causing him pain for nearly a year.”

It’s never good when a politician loses some backbone.

Out With the Old

Four years ago I put my townhouse on the market right after January 1st. I spent New Years Day taking down the Christmas tree and all of the holiday decorations in order to make the house look less cluttered. I found the exercise to be extremely cathartic. The holidays were over; it was time to get on with the business of the New Year.

Ever since then I have taken down my Christmas tree on New Years Day and this year was no exception. This morning, while nursing a mild New Years Eve hangover, I dissembled the tree and put it out to the curb just in time for the first day of curbside recycling for Christmas trees.

It’s very cleansing.

Looking Back and Moving Forward

HowChow and I met for coffee this morning at the Starbucks in The Mall. Though we have communicated by email over the two years since he started blogging about the local food scene, this was the first time we’d actually met face to face.

For me, this is one of the advantages of blogging locally. I can actually meet fellow bloggers and commenter’s if I want to. Since starting this blog a little over three years ago I have made an effort to occasionally connect with the those who visit and comment here as well as with those who blog. I credit JessieX for getting me started on this with the first local blogtail hour at Clyde’s back in the winter of 2006. Since then I’ve had the pleasure to meet the people behind The Hedgehog Report, Howard County Maryland, Hayduke, Free Market, The Stobist, Dinosaur Mom Chronicles, Finding Blanche, Do I Amuse You, Columbia Compass, Columbia Blog Project ,Columbia 2.0., Annethologie, and of course HoCoMoJo.

This year I’ve met a couple of commenter’s too. I’ve had lunch with Bob O and drinks with Lotsabogeys. These personal connections have made my own blogging experience that much richer.

This morning, HowChow and I talked a bit about the work involved in maintaining an active blog. It isn’t easy to post on regular basis. It takes dedication that borders on obsession. That is probably why so many blogs fade away after promising starts. For HowChow, blogging was a way for him to get acquainted with his community. He moved to Howard County from Northern Virginia and didn’t know where to find anything. He found that the traditional sources of information, The Washington Post, The Sun and, by extension, Explore Howard, gave only very cursory coverage of the local food scene. To get acclimated with his new home and its gastronomical offerings he started blogging and two short years later this relative newcomer has become the leading online source for information on where to eat and where to buy groceries in Howard County. Now it has become a labor of love for him.

For me it is also a labor of love. I love Howard County and I enjoy the dialogue that this blog sometimes generates about local issues. Of course I have my own opinion on things but I don’t stifle dissenting opinions either. That is what makes blogging interesting.

I hope 2010 will be an interesting year for Tales of Two Cities readers. With statewide elections in November there will be ample subject matter to write about and hopefully some of my posts will continue to generate lively debate and discussion.

Thanks again to all who visit and comment. Happy New Year!

Sarah & Desmond’s Closed

I received a tip from HowChow that Sarah & Desmonds Bakery & Café in Ellicott City had closed so this morning I dropped by to check it out. I found the restaurant locked up with a District Court notice taped to the door. From appearances I’d have to say that they’re toast.

It’s a shame. This is a great little spot for a café and I had high hopes for them. On three separate occasions this fall Mama Wordbones and I tried to have breakfast there but left without purchasing anything because the service was so bad. We hadn't been back. I wonder if others had similar experiences and if that may have contributed to their downfall.

Enough Affordable Housing in Columbia

Don’t get me wrong, I can certainly appreciate the need for affordable housing in Howard County but it does seem that Columbia already bears a disproportionate burden of the counties low cost housing stock. According to David Yungmann and New City Alliance, “Columbia currently contains more than half the affordable housing in Howard County.”

Apparently that isn’t enough for some housing advocates. They want a redeveloped Columbia Town Center to accommodate even more low cost housing than the developer has already generously proposed. According to this article by Larry Carson in The Sun, “Advocates of affordable housing want 10 percent of the new residential units to be set aside for those with incomes under $40,000, with another 10 percent for those with incomes between $40,000 and $60,000.”

General Growth Properties is proposing “no more than 15 percent of the units be reduced-price housing, or about 825 of the 5,500 units. Hamm said his company would create a fund of up to $30 million to pay for that by charging builders a $4,000 premium per housing unit and by charging commercial tenants 5 cents per square foot.”

The company would initially establish the fund with a $5 million donation. That seems pretty generous to me.

HoCo Home Assessments Drop 23.1%

According to this front page story by Larry Carson in The Sun today, the assessed value of homes in Howard County dropped by 23.1% since 2006. Across the State of Maryland, assessed values dropped an average of 19.7% “the largest decline in the state assessment office's history.”

This doesn’t mean our property taxes are likely to go down though.

“In Howard County, for example, if a home doubled in value, the owner pays taxes on only 5 percent of that increase yearly. So even this year's 23.1 percent decline in residential value won't produce a tax bill cut.”

Curiously, Carson also reported that during the same period commercial properties actually increased in value according to the State Department of Assessments and Taxation. That doesn’t jibe at all with what the financial community thinks.

The Problem with Petitions

Back when Marc Norman and his Citizens for Open Government were trying to overturn CB58-2008 (aka ZRA 100) through referendum, I wrote a post about the problem with the petition gathering process. As noble and democratically righteous as the concept of the right to petition the government for redress may sound on paper, it falls apart where the rubber meets the road.

Huh?

The bottom line is that a large number of registered voters are ill informed and therefore lack a good understanding of the implications of signing a petition. This is aptly demonstrated by the video featured in this post on Free Market’s blog yesterday.

After watching this video I am more convinced than ever that the bar for petition gathering for referendums needs to be set very high.

Federal Lawsuit Update 7

On December 21st, Susan Baker Gray and her merry band of plaintiffs filed an appeal of the ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz dismissing their suit which claimed that the new Wegmans store in Columbia would disturb Phillip Rousseau’s quiet enjoyment of his home (among other things).

In dismissing this suit back on November 19th, Judge Motz ruled that this was essentially the same suit that he dismissed back in July.

I’ll say one thing for these plaintiffs, they are tenacious, crazy sure, but tenacious in their craziness.

The 2009 Dookie Awards

As we wind up another year in the local blogosphere it is time once again to toss tomatoes and accolades at the best and the worst of the local blog scene in 2009. This tradition began back in December of 2006 by HoCo Hayduke and was picked up by Tales of Two Cities last year when Hayduke retired from blogging. In honor of the founder, they shall henceforth be known as the Dookies.

There are no rules here. Anyone can nominate and all are encouraged to do so.

To get things started the following are the Tales of Two Cities nominees for the 2009 Dookies:

The China Syndrome Award goes to Jack Cole and the Columbia Blog Project. “The Gonzo Journalist last posted in July saying he was off to Shanghai for 16 days and that he’d post again upon his return. “I’ll be back,” he wrote.

He hasn’t been heard of since.

The Smoothie Queen Award goes to JessieX. Who knew that you could make a smoothie out of sweet potatoes and apple puree or beets and beef?

The hands on favorite for the What’s for Dinner Award is HowChow. From 186 posts in 2008 to almost 400 so far this year, Brent has chronicled the local eating scene from Afghan to West African cuisine.

The Urban Art award goes out to Free Market for his posts about the Centennial Park Skate Spot. FM was all over this story a good two months before it was picked up by Explore Howard.

There are two nominees for the Blog of Few Words Award. http://hoco-at-nyte.blogspot.com/, a newcomer to the local blogosphere, rarely posts more than a sentence or two, and sometimes not even that. County Councilperson Jen Terrasa, started a blog back in June. She’s posted ten times since. Are things that slow in District 3?

The “What’s He Smoking Award” goes to Columbia Maryland’s Future. I’m not sure whether Spence wants to be taken seriously or if this is some attempt at real estate satire. For his sake I’m hoping it’s the latter.

And no blog awards would be complete without an award for the blog commenter’s. Tales of Two Cities is fortunate to have a healthy band of regular commenter’s such as Bob O, HH, Young at Heart, PZGURU and of course Anonymous. Still, we pale in comparison to the number of commenter’s on the Hedgehog Report.

And finally, I fully expect that this blog will once again receive a nomination for the Pompous A$$ Award. While I am honored I also think y’all can do better than that.

And with that, I now turn the program for the 2009 Dookie Awards over to you….

Let er rip!

Good for Some, Bad for Others

The schools weren’t the only things shut down by the Blizzard of 09. The jobsite at Emerson One in Emerson Corporate Commons was too.

We were supposed to have a meeting at the site on Monday afternoon. The prospect canceled on Monday morning. “One of our guys is in a wheelchair,” I was told.

It really didn’t matter. The jobsite was closed anyway.

At this point in time, Emerson One consists of four cinder block stair towers rising out of the foundation. The surrounding site is a stew of mud and trenches. The snow covers all of that now. A wrong step could be extremely regretful.

Since not much else was going on at the office, I decided to drive out to North Laurel anyway. Standing looking at the deserted site it occurred to me that this storm was not good for the workers on this job. Instead of getting in a days labor at one of the rare commercial construction jobs right now, they stayed home.

The jobsite wasn’t completely shut down. Two workers were trudging through the snow and muck trying to clear some of the snow from the site.

A pickup truck from the county Bureau of Engineering rolled up the road so I spent a few moments talking with John Alcorn. He told me that some of his guys had just come off eighteen hour shifts moving the snow. He looked pretty tired himself.

“You get much sleep in the past few days?”

“I got about four hours last night,” he told me.

He said that some guys on his crew logged in over 50 hours of overtime during the storm. He then pointed out that this helped take the sting off the mandated four day county furlough the week after Christmas.

That summed it up nicely. B09…good for some, bad for others.

Christmas Shopping 09

Shoppers outnumbered salesclerks at the digital camera section of Best Buy by a ratio of at least 10 to 1 this past Monday. An impromptu clerk waiting line had formed which I joined just as the harried sales guy reappeared. He had been trying to find something on the computer for the first customers in the line.

“It looks like we are out of stock,” he told them.

The second customer in line had apparently been listening to the first customer’s camera inquiries. He pointed to a Canon display and asked if they had considered that one. “I’ve done some research on the Internet and this one seems to get pretty good reviews.”

Before the first customer could respond, the sales guy chimed in “That’s a very good camera,” and then proceeded to point out that it was actually a better a choice than the camera the first customer had inquired about. “It’s on sale too,” he added.

A brief discussion of that particular cameras features and benefits then ensued with questions and answers following back and forth between the sales guy, the first customer in line, the second customer in line, a fourth customer and me.

The first customer decided to go with it. They were available in dark gray, light gray or light blue. “I’ll take a dark gray one,” he said.

“While you’re down there grab me a light gray one” the second customer suggested.

“I’ll take a light blue one,” I said.

The fourth customer went for a light blue one too.

Before you know it, the sales guy had taken care of four customers in one swoop. Of course we the customers had a lot to do with that. We collaborated on this one holiday shopping task and saved a good deal of time and energy. I never got anyone’s name but for that brief period of time we worked pretty well together as a team. The whole experience was pretty interesting, for me at least.

“I hate this time of year,” the sales guy said as he rang up my purchase.

Moron Legislative Perks

Okay, I’ll admit it. When I started to type “More on” in the heading for this post my writing muse tapped on my shoulder. Moronic is not a bad way to look at the shenanigans with the pay and perks of the Maryland General Assembly.

My buddy Len Lazerick is all over this.

On December 9th he wrote this analysis of the pending compensation commission review which will soon determine “whether legislators will get a pay hike after the next election. The panel will also review pensions and expenses such as lodging and meals,"

The last time they did this, back in 2002, legislative salaries increased by 38% over the next three years “while state employees were getting less than a third of that and personal income in Maryland as a whole was going up 20 percent.”

The things is, the General Assembly is already the second highest paid time state legislature out of 40 part time state legislatures in the country.

Number two in the country. I guess sometimes it can be preferable to at least be number two on a list.

Our elected representatives get a pretty liberal expense account too.

In a December 14th follow up on the same topic, Len took a closer look at their expense reimbursements.

“A majority of the legislature lives less than an hour’s drive from Annapolis, as does a majority of its constituents. Yet the state spends $1.8 million to put them up in Annapolis. The state contracts with seven hotels to put up 60 percent of the 188 legislators for the whole 90 days at $126 a night. That’s $11,340 apiece.”

"Eighty six percent of the legislators also claim the full per diem meal reimbursement for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They are not required to provide receipts."

Len points out that the savings, though not huge, would still send the right signal.

“Talking about meals and hotels when the state faces a $2 billion deficit next year seems kind of petty. But those are the sort of perks that can annoy constituents. No question that most legislators work long hours in the final weeks of the session, so why not rent those hotel rooms for 60 days instead of 90? That would save $600,000.”

“How about receipts for some of those meals? Cumbersome to be sure, especially when you’re splitting the tab, and lots of paperwork for some poor clerk, probably making less $43,500 per year.”

Then again, we could always go with my idea.

More Columbia Blizzard Pix

Yesterday I received two more emails with Columbia blizzard photos. Lisa from Thunder Hill sent this great action photo of her daughter Savanna. She writes “And yes, my daughter Savanna is airborne after hitting a snow ramp.”

Once again the biggest beneficiaries of the snowstorm are the kids. Last night I received a text message from the school system letting me know that the schools would be closed again today. I really like the new text message notification system. Nice job HCPSS.

Chuck supplied this picture of the mound of snow accumulated on his patio table. Chuck writes “That table is holding it's own, but just barely. Seems like Columbia always seems to be right in the path of these storms and wins the snowfall amounts.”

He’s right about that. According to the official snowfall tallies I saw, Columbia got a couple more inches than Ellicott City.

Happy Birthday Liz

Last night, as I tried to make my way to the annual winter’s solstice bonfire in my old Columbia Town Center neighborhood, I got held up by Santa.

The Ellicott City Volunteer Fire Department collects toys for kids by ferrying Santa around Ellicott City neighborhoods in a tricked out sleigh. Santa is accompanied by a team of fire and rescue personnel who also show off a couple pieces of their fire equipment. The big man was supposed to visit our neighborhood Saturday but B09 caused them to reschedule for last night.

Santa’s neighborhood arrival is a big time community and family event. The adults seem to enjoy his visit as much as the kids. Consequently his visit caused me to get a little hung up in my new neighborhood while trying to get to my old neighborhood.

By the time I arrived at the solstice celebration Liz Bobo and Lloyd Knowles had already come and gone. My old neighbors told me that she was also celebrating her birthday last night. I guess Lloyd figured he had to take her someplace else besides a pagan inspired bonfire to celebrate.

Anyway, sorry I missed you Liz. A belated Happy Birthday.