Mar 4, 2009
Parking garage paradox?
A neat little story in the latest issue of Style magazine provides some helpful historical context for the ongoing legal dispute between Peter Angelos and the Pittsburgh restoration firm that recently renovated his 2 Charles Center Garage in downtown Baltimore.
(The Style story is not available online. How various media outlets strive to survive in the era of Internet ascendancy and shrinking ad sales is another matter altogether.)
While my story briefly explains why the Graciano Corp. is cross with Angelos — $1.2 million in unpaid bills — the Style piece pays tribute to the domed-and-columned Metropolitan Savings Bank building that was erected on the same plot of earth 101 years ago and demolished to make way for more Charles Center development in 1963.
Style writer Mary K. Zajac concludes her retrospective by quoting the caption of an Evening Sun photo of the razing:
“A public park with underground facilities for about five hundred autos will be built on site in the northeast portion of Charles Center,” the caption reads. Today, the space is occupied by a Super Fresh.
Any irony in a company that prides itself on “Giving a Future to the Past” suing over work it did on an underground parking garage that, in part, replaced an indisputably more historic structure?
BRENDAN KEARNEY, Legal Affairs Writer
The irony would be the work done in the demo of the historic structure, not the suing about the unpaid bills.