Roland Park Announces Initiative to Purchase Country Club Land
The neighborhood will attempt to raise about $10 million as part of an open space initiative.
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The Roland Park Civic League Tuesday announced a plan to raise $10 million in part to purchase and preserve land owned by the Baltimore Country Club.
The neighborhood’s new open space initiative, announced during the group’s annual meeting, would protect the 32-acre property from future development.
“If the space is changed from the way it is now, to a large institutional structure, and if I take at face value the club’s wish to stay in the club [house], I think I would much rather look down on a space in the way the community is striving to keep it, than a large educational or religious structure,” said Phil Spevak, president of the Roland Park Civic League.
Michael Stott, general manager of the Baltimore Country Club, attended the meeting, but said the announcement caught him off guard.
"This is the first time we've heard anything about it. We haven't been contacted by Roland Park in more than 12 months," Stott said. "So we didn't know anything about anything that was going on tonight."
Roland Park has been attempting to purchase the land on the west side of the neighborhood for years.
The land became a priority for the neighborhood nearly three years ago when Keswick Multi-Care announced plans to purchase 17.5 acres of land, and build a retirement community.
Neighborhood and government opposition caused the plan to fail.
Tom Kiefaber
10:38 pm on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Wish The Senator was available, as back in the day. I can see all kinds of fundraising possibilities for this goal, as she sits blighted, dark and currently dead in the water. ;-(
AH
5:59 pm on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Please stop with the drama. Whatever blight now plagues the Senator is almost entirely due to lack of proper maintenance on your watch. I don't claim to know if you did all you could or not back in your day, but the theater has obviously needed extensive work, outside and in, for many, many years. It's a bit late for you to be engaging in all this public fretting.
IamGayle
8:53 am on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
I hear that! MILLIONS were raised at The Senator for many years and for many worthy community causes. The Senator wwas a fundraising power house and now....?????!!!!
AH
5:52 pm on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
...and now it's closed for essential renovations that have been needed for well over a decade. A new roof! An end to the flaking, rusting, deteriorating exterior! Goodbye to trashy,splitting formica bathroom sinks and clashing, mismatched tile! Chairs that don't doom you to needing a chiropractor! Closing to fix these kinds of long-standing problems is a good thing!
I wonder if Mr. Kiefaber rues holding to tightly to his desire to remain owner after the 2007 crisis, thereby neglecting to tap into this powerhouse fundraising capability in time to find the millions necessary to convert the theater to the non-profit y'all now claim you wanted all along.
Smiley
9:37 pm on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
AH, I was informed by "someone in the know" that Kiefaber was approached with the non-profit idea years before the senator closed and he laughed at it because it would mean giving up the title of "owner". Ironic, eh?
Smiley
10:15 am on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Yet again making it about The Senator. Hey Tommy, how goes the begging the city for money to not auction off your home? I wonder how much of the money raised at the senator went straight into old tommy boy's pockets.
Balt Observer
6:03 pm on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
On 5/24/12, Kiefaber takes one step closer to complete failure. He'd be lucky if he got to run a lemonade stand in his future.
Balt Observer
4:48 pm on Thursday, May 24, 2012
Well, it looks like Kiefaber took his loss whining and crying about injustice as usual. Karma really hit this guy like a 2 x 4.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bs-ae-keifaber-auction-20120524,0,1037138.story
Smiley
5:09 pm on Thursday, May 24, 2012
What a classy guy. Well at least now he'll have more to whine about than just the senator. Brace yourself.
Smiley
8:07 pm on Thursday, May 24, 2012
I swear, the more I read about this guy the crazier he seems. Here he is back when he was running for city council president taking credit for creating the posters he used for his political campaign... but if you check the comments you will see something very interesting.
http://www.baltimorebrew.com/2011/11/08/make-a-poll-workers-day-today-baltimore-vote/
Balt Observer
8:36 pm on Thursday, May 24, 2012
Lying, plagiarism - it's all good for Kiefaber and his band of deranged nutter lackeys.
Lucy R
12:30 am on Sunday, May 27, 2012
Oh my gosh, give the guy a break. He appears to be quite troubled now, which is sad. But let's not forget all the good he did for the community. Not only fundraising, but keeping a treasure going at a time when no one else was interested in running it, and Belvedere Square's survival was iffy at best.
Smiley
3:02 am on Sunday, May 27, 2012
Lucy, you clearly have not been keeping up with Tom and his friends. From the get go they claimed that the Cusacks would be out of the senator within 6 months of opening (informed by someone in the know according to tommy). Didn't happen. Throughout the year and a half they have posted box office grosses, which is a breach of Rentrak's terms and conditions as that information is to remain between exhibitors. They are responsible for scaring people away from the senator and then complain that people aren't going, and more importantly tom is responsible for the condition of the building, which is clearly the result of years of neglect. A year and a half would not result in current state of the building. The Cusacks simply took off the "make-up" to learn what they were up against and it's quite disturbing how run down the building truly has been for years.
Lucy R
4:09 pm on Sunday, May 27, 2012
Smiley, you're right - I haven't been keeping up, at least not to the degree of most of the folks on this thread. It's very troubling, particularly since the Cusacks have the ability to resurrect the Senator in a way that Kiefaber talked about but never did. And there's no question that there was a lot of deferred maintenance during his tenure.
OTOH, I stand by my comments about his earlier contributions. Is there anyone who really thinks that the Senator would have survived long enough to be renovated by the Cusacks if TK hadn't mono-maniacally kept it going all those years?
For a long time he was very effective, and it's very unfortunate that his inability to let go, which served the community well for many years, has now devolved into something so destructive.
Balt Observer
8:35 am on Sunday, May 27, 2012
Nothing that Kiefaber and his nutter friends say ever come to fruition. Now they are attempting to spread disinformation about the status of the renovations and whether the Senator will reopen. And once again, they will fail with their irrelevant and delusional nuttiness.
Smiley
10:20 am on Sunday, May 27, 2012
Best to keep posted to the senator's official facebook site at facebook.com/thesenatortheatre for ACCURATE information. The FOTK now claims that nothing is going on in the theatre and that it has been abandoned by the Cusacks, but they've just posted progress pictures of the mural restoration. Everything they say has been WRONG and dangerously misleading to new customers that are not aware of the situation for the past 3 years. Kiefaber's credibility (though none remains) is tied to this project. That's why the FOTK have been helping him scare people away. You should've seen kiefaber yelling and cursing in front of kids at the midnight show of the deathly hallows which ended in a restraining order.
Balt Observer
12:26 pm on Sunday, May 27, 2012
The FOTK's latest tactic is posting doctored pictures of the Senator to make it look dilapidated and near collapse. It is utterly shameless to see the levels they will stoop to to try to discredit the Cusacks. But I guess this was all to be expected. They will really be left with nothing when the Senator reopens. But that won't stop them from trying some more nuttiness.
AH
8:01 am on Monday, May 28, 2012
I gladly give Mr. Kiefaber credit for his commitment through the years to The Senator and for the good he brought to the community. And I think he was lucky to, for a time, find a way to earn a living that had deep meaning for him and value for others...most of humanity never gets that gift. But once The Senator stopped working as a profit-making business, he failed to take effective steps to save it. And his character and the way he operates -- as revealed to the rest of us over these many months -- is the clearest evidence of why those in a position to save the theater chose to do so with other operators. His claims about retribution for his supposed "activism" seem highly implausible. But his prolonged willingness to viciously villify upwards of twenty individuals and entities in public forums creates a dilemma: ignore him and cut off the oxygen? or attempt to counter the sort of mania that, left unchecked, could do, is doing, harm?