Top Story of 2000: Standoff in Berkshire

by Wayne Laufert

The most memorable news event of 2000 is the one we’d most like to forget. While Joseph Palczynski held three hostages in a Lange Street home for four days in March, Dundalkians cringed as images of the grim watch were beamed via satellite across the globe. The ordeal ended with Palczynski’s demise from the gunfire of two Baltimore County tactical officers, but thankfully with no other deaths.

It seemed as if nothing else were on TV, presenting the opportunity for another round of condescending remarks about our community. To be sure, there were some. Berkshire took the brunt of the idiotic jibes, as if there were something in the neighborhood that could explain a bipolar tragedy like Palczynski.

But the standoff was about much more than Dundalk’s reputation. By the time Palczynski had taken his former girlfriend’s mother, her boyfriend and the boyfriend’s son hostage here, he reportedly had killed four people in and near Essex and had led police on a manhunt for 10 days. The longer Palczynski held out, the more likely it seemed he would tire. But did that mean he was becoming easier to defeat, or even more dangerous? No one knew whether Lynn Whitehead, Andy McCord and Bradley McCord would make it.

Even oversaturated media coverage could not dispel the drama. There was real danger, a real threat of death. When it was over, we were glad that no more innocent blood was shed, that the Berkshire residents who were stranded in the local elementary school could return home at last, that attention finally could be focused elsewhere.

None of those outcomes was guaranteed. Getting to them was a harrowing experience that will remain etched in our minds for a long time.

Top Story of 2001: Renaissance effort kicked off new millennium with hope

by Marge Neal

The real beginning of the new millennium started with the promise of a brighter future for Greater Dundalk, thanks to the vision and dedication of community leaders who formed the Dundalk Renaissance Corp.

Led by retired Sollers Point/Southeastern Technical High School principal Ed Parker, the DRC set about to forge a blueprint that it hopes will help redesign the community over the next couple decades.

That process led to a series of specific suggestions and detailed drawings from a team of professionals whose efforts were the most significant news story of the year in Greater Dundalk.

Where all the effort will lead is anybody’s guess, but at least the DRC got off to a good start.

The new community organization worked closely with Baltimore County officials to bring the team of architects, urban planners and designers and other specialists to Dundalk for a week in November.

Through the American Institute of Architects, groups of planning and design professionals known as Urban Design Assistance Teams adopt a town each year and volunteer their time to create a comprehensive plan for the chosen community.

The team that visited Dundalk, comprised of professionals from as close as Baltimore and as far away as the Czech Republic, was headed by Peter Batchelor, an architect and professor of urban design at North Carolina State University who has worked on similar projects for more than 30 years.

The original committee, dubbed Dundalk Digital Harbor East, evolved into the DRC, an incorporated nonprofit organization.

It started a membership campaign, and more than 500 community residents, business owners, students and senior citizens paid membership fees from $5 to $10. Many donated more than the requested fee.

The campaign raised more than $15,000, which was used for the professionals’ expenses while they were in town.

Eleven designers, economists and planners left their jobs and families to live, breathe, eat and sleep Dundalk for seven days, though they admittedly got little rest.

They worked 12-to-14-hour days early in the week and much longer hours the last couple days to complete a comprehensive master plan. The team compressed more than six months of planning into one week, Community Conservation director Mary Harvey estimated.

The unveiling of the group’s work Nov. 8 was met with enthusiasm and approval.

The team addressed every aspect of the community: environmental issues, general quality of life, housing, recreation, business and technology and education. Plans were offered for aesthetic and spectacular projects — like marinas and nature centers — as well as more mundane but no less necessary tasks like upgrading storm drain inlets and outfalls and sewage pumping stations.

And on Dec. 11, the DRC received news of an early Christmas present: $385,000 from Maryland’s Community Legacy Grant Program.

A far cry from the $5.2 million requested, the Legacy funds nonetheless will provide valuable seed money for projects the DRC hopes will enhance a proud community’s future.

The organization has a long road ahead of it. The final plan is set to be formally introduced no later than March, when some of the planners, including Batchelor, will return to Dundalk for a public meeting.

DRC members must select and prioritize projects, then convince local and state politicians and business owners to invest in the community.

Top Story of 2002: Redistricting victory: Greater Dundalk flexed its political muscle

by Bill Gates

It was Dundalk vs. Annapolis — and Dundalk won in a rout. Contrary to conventional wisdom, you can fight City Hall.

When Gov. Parris Glendening released his new legislative redistricting map near the end of 2001, you would have thought Dundalk-Edgemere had been responsible for scotching his attempt to guarantee himself the cushy position of chancellor of the University System of Maryland.

Many people across the state disliked the proposed map, but nowhere did it seem as intentionally, inexplicably vindictive as it did here. The community’s legislative representation was divided between four districts and was a minority in each.

Had the map stood, the state legislature probably would have included no one who lives in Dundalk-Edgemere.

About 230 years ago, a similar situation led to a bunch of tea being tossed in Boston Harbor. In 2002, it resulted in a court battle that taught Glendening a hard political lesson.

Incumbent Democratic State Sen. Norman Stone, who found himself now living in the 31st District, faced an almost pointless re-election bid. The same went for incumbent delegates Jake Mohorovic, John Arnick and Joseph “Sonny” Minnick, who each would have faced tough battles against Baltimore City incumbents.

But the citizens of Dundalk didn’t just toss up their hands and say, “What can you do?” People organized, protest rallies were staged in both Annapolis and Dundalk, and several lent their names to two of the 14 lawsuits against the proposed map.

The lawsuits charged that the governor’s proposed map was unconstitutional. Three violations of the state constitution could be found just in how Dundalk had been divided: the districts were not contiguous and compact (the 44th stretched from west Baltimore to Merritt Boulevard); they did not try to follow political subdivisions (two crossed the city-county line, and a third crossed from Anne Arundel County); and they did not respect natural boundaries (the 31st District took a huge leap across the Patapsco River to grab Edgemere).

Despite that, and despite the Court of Appeals ruling 10 years ago that the 1992 redistricting map was barely constitutional when the 46th District crossed into Dundalk to take three precincts, there was a feeling that Glendening was going to get his way.

That notion was reinforced when the special master assigned by the court to review the lawsuits, retired Court of Appeals judge Robert Karwacki, recommended to the court that it accept Glendening’s plan.

But the Court of Appeals ruled on June 11 that the governor’s map was “in violation of the Maryland Constitution and is invalid.”

The Court of Appeals, with the help of consultants, drew up a new, final map that not only restored Dundalk-Edgemere to one legislative district, but returned the three precincts — Eastwood, St. Helena and Graceland Park — that had been part of the 46th District.

After last month’s election, the revised 6th District (pictured at left) is represented by three Dundalk-Edgemere residents — Stone, Arnick and Minnick — and Michael H. Weir Jr. from the district’s new Essex portion.

That’s a long way from where we thought we’d be a year ago.

Top Story of 2003: Floodwaters and neighbors’ generosity rose to new levels

by Joseph M. Giordano

Isabel. The name alone invokes images of sobbing families being led away in rescue boats from their semi-submerged homes, stuffed animals and other toys floating away from flooded living rooms and basements.

The name of the worst storm to hit Dundalk’s waterfront also reminds one of more logistical nightmares like mountains of construction bills, the sour taste of bureaucracy and a mistrust of insurance companies that sometimes refused to pay for storm damages.

For residents of Millers Island, Turner Station and Watersedge, the year couldn’t have been worse.

About 3,371 homes in Dundalk, Edgemere, Millers Island, North Point and the Essex communities of Bowleys Quarters and Chase were affected by a great storm that ravaged the lower parts of the East Coast. Of those homes, 326 were destroyed.

It all began on the night of Sept. 18. when the tropical storm (Isabel was downgraded from a hurricane well before socking it to Dundalk) came in with the tide twice and brought the waters of the Chesapeake Bay to the doorsteps of many residents of eastern Baltimore County.

Aside from all the property damage, Isabel affected everything from high school sports schedules to steelmaking.

She dumped about five feet of floodwaters into the ISG-Sparrows Point Penn-wood power plant, ruining about 45,000 tons of steel.

Isabel also devastated the businesses of Millers Island, closing all but two restaurants (the Islander Inn], which lost about $10,000 in food stocks, and the New White Swan are open). Pelicans and Dock of the Bay remained closed.

Though the storm tore communities apart, it also managed to bring them closer together.

Many local churches and volunteer fire stations were sites for disaster relief, which several families used to get though the Thanksgiving holiday.

The crime rate rose little in the affected areas, except three weeks ago when a home on Fairgreen Road was ransacked and burgled, according to the Baltimore County Police Department. One Turner Station man drowned in the flood.

The storm also resulted in residents calling into question the policies of insurance companies and their adjusters. Hinton Avenue resident Bernice Myer formed the Isabel Victims Citizens Group to take on the National Flood Insurance. As recently as two weeks ago, County Executive James T. Smith Jr. announced during a press conference at Myer’s home that he had appointed an investigator to look at the residents’ insurance complaints.

Isabel did not spare North Point State Park, which sustained $668,500 in damage. But like they did for each other, about 50 local volunteers showed up to help clear the park of debris.

The storm took almost everything away except the determination and hearts of Dundalk-Edgemere residents.

Top Story of 2004: 1,100 will lose jobs when GM plant closes earlier than expected

by Marge Neal

It was a shock but it wasn’t a shock.

News that the General Motors plant on Broening Highway would close was expected, just not this soon.

The plant, which has produced the GMC Safari and the Chevrolet Astro vans since 1984, has been struggling for some time.

Without retooling the plant to produce other vehicles, workers knew the end was near.

“Long-term market softening and the products’ lifecycle have driven GM to make this difficult yet necessary decision,” a GM official said in a November press release. “GM can no longer justify building these two products at volumes that are significantly below the plant’s capacity.”

At its peak in the 1970s, the plant employed more than 7,000 workers, but the facility now is down to about 1,100 workers and just one shift.

On top of declining sales and a new contract that made the Baltimore facility exempt from a longtime moratorium on closings, Baltimore City, in an effort to help its sagging economy, hit the plant and other businesses with a new utility tax that was expected to cost GM an additional $500,000 a year.

Though workers are steeling themselves to lose their jobs sometime in 2005, a date has not yet been set for the plant’s official closure.

Thanks to a contract signed last year, workers’ wages and benefits are protected through 2007. Union workers will be required to do some sort of nontraditional work, such as volunteering or returning to school, to stay on the payroll, according to UAW Local 239 president Walter Plummer.

While company officials project that production will continue through summer 2005, “[The actual closing date is] really going to be driven by the market,” GM spokeswoman Pam Reese told The Eagle in November.

Top Story of 2005: Renewal status is questioned as development meets renaissance

by Marge Neal

In late 2000, when the idea of forming a committee to put together a long-term plan to revitalize Dundalk was pitched, it was a hard sell.

Residents had been there, done that, they told Baltimore County officials. Tired of working hard on plans only to see them gather dust on shelves, residents had to have their arms twisted to get involved in plans to bring a visiting urban design team to Dundalk.

The group of professional architects and planners promised to look at the community with fresh, unbiased eyes and create a viable plan with ideas that many would actually live long enough to see happen.

Excitement grew, and by the time the team left, the colorful and bold plans left behind had residents buzzing about Dundalk’s potential like never before.

Now, more than four years later, county officials say the ideas are taking shape. Locally, some critics say these latest plans are collecting dust like the ones before them.

Dundalk Village Shopping Center has a new owner who promises to get rid of subsidized housing and upgrade the retail center. But will the unit-by-unit apartment rehabbing taking place produce the upscale dwellings and hallways presented in drawings displayed at the ceremony marking JMJ Properties’ settlement?

Community residents have for years expressed their desire to see the Yorkway apartments — long a hotbed of crime that generates thousands of calls for police assistance a year — acquired and demolished.

County officials say they’re working hard on the difficult task of persuading Yorkway’s multiple owners to settle, and they point to work that has begun on a long-anticipated streetscape of Dundalk Avenue.

But for now, Yorkway languishes and the downtown Dundalk residential and retail district still is hurt by vacancies and a rundown look.

Meanwhile, wealthy developers are buying large open tracts of land — much of it waterfront like Bauer’s Farm in Edgemere and the 5.5-acre lot on Stansbury Road that Kevin Carney hopes to develop — on which to build high-end townhomes, single homes and condominiums.

The area has an abundance of housing tied to low incomes, such as the new Cove Point senior apartment complex. Community leaders say such developments do nothing to improve Dundalk’s demographics and make it more attractive to the upscale businesses and restaurants that many residents desire.

“It is my concern that we will end up with more Section 8 in an area that already has too much,” Greater Dundalk Alliance president Carolyn Jones told The Eagle on Nov. 25, addressing renovations, financed with tax credits, at Cummins Apartments on Dundalk Avenue.

Development in Dun-dalk-Edgemere is a reality. This year more than ever, people who live here are questioning whether it’s happening quickly enough and wondering whether it will lead to the improvements they want to see.

Top Story of 2006: Company, opponents try to influence public over LNG proposal

by Joseph M. Giordano

It started the way most projects do, with a public presentation.

But by the end of the year, the battle over a proposed liquefied natural gas plant had become an expensive legal fight between Virginia-based AES Sparrows Point and the LNG Opposition Team, led by community activist Sharon Beazley.

Last January, about 150 people showed up at CCBC Dundalk’s cafeteria to hear the first proposal by AES to open the LNG plant in Sparrows Point.

At first, the public was cool to the proposal. But in a few months the typical reaction would become open hostility.

The $400 million plant, which if approved (AES plans to file for federal approval to construct sometime in the coming weeks) could be completed by 2010, would provide up to 50 permanent jobs and 500 construction jobs.

The 60-acre property at the former Sparrows Point Shipyard would include a regasification plant, a new pier to accommodate ocean tankers laden with liquefied natural gas, a terminal facility, storage tanks, a natural gas pipeline and a recycling plant for dredge spoils.

The proposed pipeline would connect with other gas pipelines along the Mid-Atlantic corridor and end at a distribution plant in Pennsylvania.

The dredge spoils would come from the company’s need to dig down 42 feet into the the bottom of the Patapsco River to make room for the tankers.

By February, members of the Greater Dundalk Alliance got their hands on the videotape LNG: Its Risks and Danger, which was produced by California-based filmmakers Tim and Hayden Riley.

After watching the tape, which AES officials said contained numerous factual errors and misinformation — like a reference to a Somali tanker that exploded in the 1980s but was actually filled with liquid petroleum, not LNG — the community became obsessed with warding off the proposed plant.

Beazley, who owns an import business in St. Helena, founded the LNG Opposition Team in April and caught the ear of local politicians.

The nine-member team hired lawyer Bart Fischer and began gathering environmental, recreational and safety facts about the property.

In June, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., state and local officials and residents spoke out against the project at a public hearing hosted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) — which has the final say in giving permission to AES to construct the plant — at a packed fire hall in Edgemere.

The only public figure to come out in favor of the construction was former congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley, an AES consultant who resigned from the job while defending the LNG proposal.

In late August, the state appointed a 14-member LNG Task Force, co-chaired by Beazley, to gather facts about LNG to present to FERC next month.

The group wrapped up its meetings on Dec. 14 and AES bought ad space in local print media in an attempt to persuade people about the benefits of a Sparrows Point LNG facility. The company also revealed results of poll it commissioned, indicating that support for the project increased as people learned more about it.

During an interview with The Eagle earlier this month, Kent Morton , AES Sparrows Point’s project director, summed up AES’s role in the community.

“We’re a good neighbor,” Morton said. “If people knew all the facts, they would trust us.”

FERC is expected to rule on the permit sometime in the spring.

Top Story of 2007: Growing rat infestation prompted action from county

by Joseph M. Giordano

If Dundalk follows the Chinese New Year, 2008 will be the Year of the Rat.

And after a very ratty 2007, it’s shaping up that way.

“I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Libby Eichelberger, a longtime resident of Court Way in Logan Village who has seen the rat population in her neighborhood increase greatly since she moved in over 40 years ago. “I have a neighbor who takes peanut butter and bread and forks it into the ground in his back yard. Then he shoots the rats [with a pellet gun] from an upstairs window. It shouldn’t be that bad.”

This year, there were two important sweeps for rats and sanitary violations in the Dundalk area.

Baltimore County is using the information gathered on those sweeps to combat the rat problem.

“For the first time, we have several [county] departments working together,” said Tim Kotroco, director of Baltimore County’s Department of Permits and Development Management. “We’re using computers to map the worst rat areas in the county and gathering data on how to handle the situation.”

Departments like health and sanitation will work with zoning to keep a record of the worst areas in the neighborhoods and work together to tackle the problem, Kotroco said.

In 2007, according to Kotroco, Baltimore County focused its anti-rat efforts on Colgate and West Inverness by conducting two major sweeps in those areas.

The first sweep, in Colgate, took place in July. Ten percent of the roughly 1,200 homes showed clear signs of rat infestation, and another 10 percent showed danger signs.

Half of the homes in Colgate were cited for some form of code violation during the sweep.

The county conducted a similar sweep, but on a larger scale, on Nov. 23 in West Inverness, where 30 Permits and Development inspectors hit the alleys.

“I can’t recall something that extensive,” said Ellen Kobler, a Baltimore County spokeswoman. “There are usually about four or five inspectors on a sweep.”

The West Inverness sweep led to 500 out of about 1,200 homes in the neighborhood being cited for various violations.

But the county gave West Inverness residents a reprieve.

The county would waive the fines if people would clean up the alleys in time for a second sweep on Dec 10.

Did it work?

“Absolutely,” Kotroco said. “We were amazed at how many people cleaned up the area behind their homes.”

Out of the 500 original citations, only 100 were re-issued, according to Kotroco.

“This was a good sign,” he said. “We will continue our cross-departmental cooperation into the new year in hopes of getting the problem under control.”

Top Story of 2008: Through it all, Sparrows Point still a land of opportunity

by Randy Leonard

Long past its glory days as the heart of America’s shipbuilding industry, Sparrows Point remains an epicenter for industry and development in the region and state.

This year saw the Point garner more national attention when the fight against a proposed liquefied natural gas facility reached into the halls of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Indeed, the sprawling plant, with its drab iron works and moniker former Bethlehem Steel, led HBO’s The Wire creator to wrongly imply that steel is no longer made here.

Last January found in shambles the innovative plan of two brothers from Chicago who had imagined a dynamic cost-cutting benefit in adding Sparrows Point’s steel mill to their assets.

Rumors of a new buyer swirled in the spring, and Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal announced a $810 million deal to purchase the mill – part of a series of North American mill and ore mine grabs this year by what has become Russia’s largest steelmaker.

The deal opened up talks with the Maryland Port Administration, which hopes to place a dredge material management facility on the Point.

Not all the news for the plant was positive this year, with a number of incidents that brought to mind the potential dangers of working at the facility. A worker was hurt in an explosion in April when he dumped molten slag into a pit with water in it. Two workers at the plant had to be rescued with a ladder truck in June after a furious storm damaged the crane they were in.

Robert G. Fuchs was killed in September while cleaning the roof over conveyor motors, work that sources told The Eagle was normally done by a contractor who had been suspended from the property a week before. And a fire broke out on a conveyer belt later that month.

In October, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that Severstal had paid off a fine that had been assessed to a former owner.

A blast furnace shutdown in November was extended through February, partly due to global economic conditions.

As a protest float drove along during July’s Dundalk Heritage Parade, a kid was overheard asking what LNG was. He must have been from another county or state.

Arguments for and against the liquefied natural gas facility proposed for the Sparrows Point Shipyard property have been laid out this year from the community pages of The Eagle to the chambers of the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Coast Guard found fault with AES’s plan for security in February and said the Chesapeake Bay was not suitable for LNG transport without a number of security measures.

In April, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released a favorable draft environmental impact statement, concluding that the project could be expected to cause “mostly limited adverse environmental impact,” which residents and elected officials decried as dismissive.

In May, a panel of U.S. appellate judges overturned a June 2007 ruling that would have allowed LNG plants to be excluded under Maryland’s Coastal Zone Management Plan. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of that decision in October.

Despite the death of their leader, Sharon Beazley, in May, members of the LNG Opposition Team continued to raise objections to the planned facility, voicing their concerns to FERC staff at a hearing in June.

In June, the U.S. commerce secretary sided with AES Sparrows Point and ruled that a change to the coastal zone management plan had not been approved by the federal government.

This month, FERC released the final environmental impact statement for the project. The commissioners are expected to issue a ruling on a permit as soon as January.

Top Story of 2009: Some residents left high and dry after water main break

by Randy Leonard

Television news crews that had been in Dundalk earlier on Sept. 18 for a ribbon cutting at Dundalk Elementary School and a groundbreaking ceremony at Yorkway returned in the afternoon after a 6-foot water main ruptured under Broening Highway.

In less than two hours, 64 million gallons of water gushed from the break, flooding houses and stranding residents in Logan Village.

“It was just like a river,” one Loganview Drive resident said. Water engulfed cars, filled basements and wreaked havoc in the homes and lives of residents.

Damage to houses on streets including Loganview, McShane Way and Courtway ranged from minimal to over $100,000. An informal survey conducted by The Eagle in October and November found that over half of the 50 residents contacted had sustained damage in the area, reporting a total of nearly $650,000 (slightly less than the total reported in the November article).

Based on the number of those who had basements (11) and the total number of basements reportedly pumped by Baltimore County (72), total residential damages from the break are roughly estimated to be at least $1.5 million, and possibly much more.

Emergency crews cut off power and gas service and pumped basements in the effected area, and Red Cross workers went house to house with meals.

Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr., Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and other elected officials were quick on the scene, touring impacted streets in the days immediately following the flood. Some insurers responded immediately, rushing into the office to field calls from customers. Others took several days to respond.

The county coordinated relief efforts and identified assistance and aid available to residents who were affected. Some insurers paid readily, others denied claims on policies that lacked provisions for sewer backups or pipe breaks.

Loganview Drive resident Barbara Long estimated her damages at about $30,000.

“The insurance didn’t pay anything,” Long said Tuesday. Like others, Long sought compensation from Baltimore City, which owns the pipe.

“We filed our claim and they denied it,” she said. “We are going to contact a lawyer.”

Despite repeated urging by county and state officials of Mayor Sheila Dixon, the city is denying all claims related to the Sept. 18 break.

“There is no basis whatsoever for concluding that the city knew or should have known that this very large 72-inch water main was in any imminent danger of breaking,” the mayor’s spokesman Scott Peterson wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. “Unfortunately, the city does not and should not pay money for situations where it was not negligent.”