[Chat] starbuck's in Safeway

Christine Gray langwidge at erols.com
Mon Sep 4 15:15:58 EDT 2006


Speaking of starbuck's, one is opening soon in the Safeway at 25th and
Charles.

 

Christine Gray 

 

  _____  

From: Discussion-bounces at charlesvillage.info
[mailto:Discussion-bounces at charlesvillage.info] On Behalf Of Judy Berlin
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2006 5:22 PM
To: Charles Village Discussion List; gewirtz at bellatlantic.net
Subject: Re: [Discussion] Hopkins dorm opens, igniting renewal hopes

 

if coldstone creamery is to really open then i am in big trouble. i had a
sample of their product when i was in salisbury last week. i was in ice
cream heaven. customers can watch as their flavors are hand mixed. tastes
good good good good and better. judy
On Sep 4, 2006, at 1:35 PM, gewirtz at bellatlantic.net wrote:

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This story was sent to you by: gewirtz at bellatlantic.net
Note that Streuver Brothers is having difficulty selling its condos for the
asking price. See the end of the article. Maybe CV will not be so gentrified
after all. Steve. 

Hopkins dorm opens, igniting renewal hopes
Complex is key element of Charles Village project
By Gadi Dechter
Sun reporter
September 4, 2006

Though she had hoped for a bit more space, sophomore Jess Buicko nonetheless
pronounced her 100-square-foot bedroom in the new Johns Hopkins University
residence hall "4 million times better" than her freshman digs on the
Homewood campus.

The 18-year-old Albany, N.Y., native was one of more than 600 college
sophomores and upperclassmen moving yesterday and today into the $60 million
Charles Commons, a two- tower complex at St. Paul and 33rd streets in
Charles Village.

The university's first dorm for upperclassmen is the first of three adjacent
mixed-use projects in the North Baltimore neighborhood that officials hope
will transform a sleepy redoubt into a vibrant "college town" - and address
undergraduate dissatisfaction with Hopkins college life, rising town-gown
tensions and street crime.

Marketed as Village Commons by lead developer Struever Bros., Eccles &
Rouse, the $170 million development includes the dorm towers, two high-end
condominium projects currently under construction, more than 50,000 square
feet of street-level shops and restaurants, and a new parking garage with
nearly 400 spaces for the public.

The project will be anchored by a two-story Barnes & Noble bookstore,
containing a Starbucks cafe, scheduled to open at the end of October in the
dorm complex. The new store will replace a much smaller bookstore in the
basement of a classroom building on campus.

Hopkins students yesterday greeted the prospect of Starbucks coffee with
more a sense of entitlement than enthusiasm.

"This is probably the only nook of the world that doesn't already have a
Starbucks," said sophomore Sarah Ratzenberger of Westchester County, N.Y.

Soon, it will have two.

In addition to the in-store cafe, the Seattle-based coffee retailer will
open a stand-alone shop less than a block south, on the street level of the
68-unit Village Lofts condo building, according to Jamie Lanham, head of
Struever Bros.' commercial real estate division.

That building will also house a Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant, a
Coldstone Creamery ice cream shop, a Cloud 9 clothing store, a locally owned
stationers and the reincarnation of a convenience store displaced by
construction, to be called University Gourmet.

An additional 15,000 square feet of retail space will open up across the
street, at the base of the 107-unit Olmsted condominium building, scheduled
for completion in early 2008, according to a spokesman.

The only confirmed retail tenants in that building are a Royal Farms
convenience store and a florist shop, but Struever Bros. development
director, Joshua Nieman, said the company was working to attract a wine bar
at one corner, and a "bistro-type restaurant" at the other.

Though Charles Village has a reputation for jealously protecting its quirky,
iconoclastic image of "painted lady" Victorian rowhouses and bohemian edge,
the mood on the street among students, residents and veteran Charles Village
merchants was mostly supportive of national retail chains and upscale
shopping options.

"It's fantastic," said Eli Sendelman, 21, an art history major from New York
City. "I think it's good to gussy up the neighborhood a little bit. Not too
much, but it needs a kick, a swift kick."

When he arrived in Charles Village three years ago, Sendelman said he
"didn't understand why the main drag, as it were, was so dismal. Why
couldn't they have a little [Harvard Square] going on around here?"

Jerry Gordon, owner of the Eddie's of Charles Village market, said he
welcomed the competition from other food-service businesses. "I think it's
great. I've been waiting for this for a long time," said Gordon, whose
family has operated the store since 1962. "I don't know why it took so
long."

Paula Berger, Hopkins dean of undergraduate education, said impetus for
action partly came from a 2002-2003 university commission she chaired that
found deep discontent among undergraduates about their residential and
social lives.

Among the commission's findings was that undergraduates lacked spaces to
socialize, shared few traditions other than cutthroat academic
competitiveness, and often felt like second-class citizens in a university
whose national reputation was largely made on the strengths of its graduate
programs in medicine, science and engineering.

"Plenty of evidence suggests that improving residential and social life can
go a long way toward breaking an endemic culture of competitiveness and
complaint," the Commission on Undergraduate Education said in its final
report.

By 2003, institutional and private investment in "college town" projects was
a national trend, as the economic desirability of universities as
neighborhood anchors was becoming clear, said Randy Ruttenberg, a principal
in Fairmount Properties, a Cleveland-based developer of such projects.

Among widely mentioned college-town success stories is a 1998
hotel-and-bookstore development at the University of Pennsylvania that has
spawned a robust commercial district next to campus.

Penn's vice president for business services, Marie Witt, said the resulting
increase in pedestrian traffic has improved neighborhood safety, a benefit
Hopkins officials also hope for in Charles Village, where two Hopkins
undergraduates were killed in off-campus apartments within nine months of
each other in 2004 and 2005.

During the recent housing boom, median home prices in Charles Village rose
from under $100,000 in 2000 to $270,000 last year, according to data
aggregated by Live Baltimore.

Tensions between homeowners and students renters-particularly fraternity
members who host frequent parties-have risen along with the home prices.

Beth Bullamore, outgoing president of the Charles Village Civic Association,
said she expected the new residence hall would reduce undergraduate demand
for rowhouse rentals, which would in turn encourage landlords to upgrade
them or sell to prospective single-family occupants.

"The best part of this is we get the residential areas back for permanent,
full-time residents and the students [go into] space that's more appropriate
for them," Bullamore said.

But John Hinegardner, who owns about 200 rental units in the neighborhood,
including several properties used as fraternity houses, said demand remained
strong, and that rents continue to increase, despite a slowdown in the real
estate market.

Indeed, some Charles Village residents worried that gentrification would
force them to leave the neighborhood. Jeremiah Spencer, 29, an engineering
technician who makes less than $40,000 a year, said he would likely leave
the area after renting there for six years, and try to buy a house north of
Patterson Park. "I don't want to see Starbucks here," Spencer said. "I
absolutely hate those condos. I always wanted to buy a house in Charles
Village and now it's unobtainable."

Meanwhile, some supporters of the Struever Bros. development worried that
the slumping housing market would stall the neighborhood's revitalization.

About a quarter of the Village Loft condominiums have been reserved with a
deposit, according to the developer. Scheduled for completion around the end
of this year, the condos have asking prices ranging from the high-$300,000s
to the mid-$500,000s.

Penthouse units in The Olmsted will carry prices in the high-$700,000s, but
William Struever, president and CEO of Struever Bros., expressed confidence
in his marketing strategy, noting that more than half the condos in that
building would be offered at less than $400,000, many starting in the
mid-$300,000s. That would appear to represent a price reduction, because
signs around the construction site advertise units starting at $400,000.

But Struever insisted there had been no markdown. "We're still reflecting
increased pricing," he said. "In fact, the pricing we have today is
substantially higher that we started with."

gadi.dechter at baltsun.com


Copyright C 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery

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ory?coll=bal-education-college

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