Federal Hill view is a landmark city must protect
The Sun's editorial ("Not in anyone's back yard," June 14) linking neighborhood concerns over the proposed Ritz Carlton Hotel to NIMBYism misses the point.
The hotel would not be built in Federal Hill's back yard. It would be built in the entire city's front yard.
The hotel, whether six stories high, 13 stories high or 23 stories high, would sit at the foot of Federal Hill Park overlooking the Inner Harbor.
The park is a cherished neighborhood resource and an urban treasure that serves people from all over the metropolitan area as well as tourists.
On weekends, hundreds of strollers, joggers, picnickers and families relish the scenery. On weekday mornings, visitors from the Inner Harbor hotels are drawn to the hill.
The park not only has historic value but is the best free vantage point of the Inner Harbor and a vast panorama of the city's reborn neighborhoods and industrial and maritime heritage.
That value has been recognized for decades by planners. City planners' 1990 Key Highway Waterfront Study and a study of the proposed hotel site by the architects of the Neighborhood Design Center in 1992 stressed the importance of preserving the view of the harbor from the park and of the park from the opposite shore.
City officials anticipated that advice nearly two decades ago by limiting new construction on the proposed hotel site to the height of the existing industrial warehouse -- roughly five or six stories above Key Highway.
The damage that could be done to the historic symbolism and scenic value of Federal Hill Park should concern all Baltimoreans.
Yes, we in Federal Hill have a special relationship with the park. But it isn't just ours.
James S. Keat, Baltimore
Selling a panorama for some empty promises
When will we start asking the right questions about the proposed Inner Harbor Ritz Carlton hotel? Almost all of the discussion has been about losing the magnificent view from Federal Hill or developing the old propeller factory.
No one has asked, "Why will this Ritz Carlton be successful?"
The Inner Harbor is littered with great expectations that turned sour. HarborView didn't sell as many condominiums as it had planned to and required tax relief from the city. Harrison's Inn did not make it and Scarlett Place had difficulties.
What is different this time? Why are the wealthy suddenly going to flock to Baltimore and need luxurious accommodations -- to see other millionaires play sub-par baseball or an Ohio football franchise that Baltimore's fans had to bail out?
Does Marriott stand behind this venture financially? This is the same corporation that had no qualms about letting Maryland think it was considering leaving the state long after it had decided to stay to win concessions from the state.
We should expect no change in negotiating tactics during discussions about this hotel.
We should remember that if this proposed hotel is not successful, the citizens of Maryland will have sold one of the most beautiful views in America for a stack of empty promises.
Frank R. Reilly, Baltimore
Don't let the Russians push us around in Kosovo
It appears we will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Kosovo ("Diplomats focus on standoff," June 15).
The Russians are engaged in a gigantic bluff and NATO and the United States have no one to call it: no John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or Harry Truman or Theodore Roosevelt.
We seem only to have Neville Chamberlains, who want peace at any price.
NATO will be left with whatever Russia allows in Kosovo. We are being humiliated and we don't have the gumption to resist.
The Russians have proved again that they can't be trusted. We should deploy a huge tank column, break through the Russian lines and take over the Pristina airport.
If we don't, I see another Berlin airlift in the making.
John Lockwich, Baltimore
The continuing humiliation of NATO forces at the Pristina airport in Kosovo by a handful of Russians is deplorable. If the allied commander on the scene had been Gen. George S. Patton, this "standoff" would have lasted less than five minutes.
Jay Lamar, Timonium
Eisenhower wasn't idle while in the Oval Office
Every time Joseph Michalski Jr. drives on an interstate highway, he can thank Dwight D. Eisenhower, the "do-nothing" president ("Eisenhower: a fine general but a mediocre president," letters, June 13).
Eisenhower was so impressed with the autobahn in Germany and Austria that he inaugurated the interstate highway system here. Anyone over 65 can tell you what it was like to drive across the country before we had interstate highways.
He also transformed medical treatment for heart attack. Against medical advice, he played golf while recovering from one.
When he thrived instead of dropping dead, researchers took another look at exercise after heart attack.
Eisenhower ended the Korean War, enforced integration of public schools, established the Air Force Academy, put Explorer I into orbit, established NASA, reorganized government agencies and much more.
And he was a true statesman who never launched a war.
Yvonne Aasen, Severna Park
Townsend grandstands after Beltway accident
While the rescue personnel were still at work after the tragic Beltway bridge collapse June 8, Maryland's Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend apparently decided to use the media frenzy to launch her political campaign.
With absolutely no regard for those killed and injured, or the driver of the truck that hit the bridge (who was visibly upset), she rambled on for the assembled cameras about prosecuting the driver to the fullest extent of the law, as though this accident was premeditated.
Someone should remind our lieutenant governor that she is in America, where you are innocent until proven guilty.
I'd like to offer Ms. Townsend some advice: The next time she is on the Beltway on a 95-degree day, comes across a fatal accident and wants to take advantage of a photo opportunity, take the rescue workers a cold glass of water.
That way, at least she would be be doing something useful, rather than just getting in the way.
Butch Schmitt, Glen Burnie
Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's response to the Beltway bridge collapse tragedy appalled me. Her plaintive cries of "finding who's responsible and making them pay" were totally inappropriate in such a situation.
Given her family's history, she must understand that sometimes accidents happen, especially involving motor vehicles and bridges.
Wesley Blickenstaff Jr., Baltimore
Hair tests aren't racially biased
The Sun's article "Hair tests raise doubts" (Perspective, May 30) correctly noted that more than 1,000 of the nation's largest employers now use hair samples for work-related drug testing, but fanned racial fears by describing "possible bias against people with dark hair" and leaping to the warning that "hair testing might be racially biased."
To set the record straight, the only concern ever raised about testing dark hair is that perhaps people with dark hair (regardless of race) may test positive after smaller doses of drugs than people with light hair color.
But studies with thousands of subjects have found that there is no such bias in hair tests. The few studies that raised such concerns involved samples too small to be statistically significant.
Hair testing for illegal drug use has stood the test not only of science but of the courts.
Researchers, employers, prisons, police departments and others are now using hair testing for illegal drugs with complete confidence that, when properly conducted, they do not produce false positive results.
Dr. Robert L. DuPont, Rockville
The writer is clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University.
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