The non-public consortium managing Maryland’s Purple Line challenge has signed a $2.3 billion contract with a brand new development staff to finish the long-delayed light-rail line, in line with the consortium and the Maryland Transit Administration.
Maryland
New construction contract for Maryland’s Purple Line signed
Reaching “monetary shut” on the alternative development contract means funding has been secured. It’s additionally vital as a result of it permits main work on the stalled 16-mile challenge to renew, which challenge officers have stated will happen beginning this spring. Below the newest timeline, the rail line between Bethesda in Montgomery County and New Carrollton in Prince George’s County will start carrying passengers in fall 2026 — greater than 4 years delayed.
State officers have attributed the escalating development prices to modifications within the challenge’s “danger profile” and the pandemic’s results on insurance coverage charges, labor shortages and supplies.
“We’re excited to begin a brand new chapter and ship the Purple Line to Maryland,” stated Maryland Transit Administrator Holly Arnold. “There can be a noticeable enhance in development exercise later this spring and summer season as this crucial challenge strikes ahead.”
The brand new development staff is a three way partnership often known as Maryland Transit Options and led by the U.S. subsidiaries of Spanish development companies Dragados and OHL. It replaces the unique staff led by Texas-based Fluor.
The development contract is between the brand new companies and Purple Line Transit Companions, the non-public concessionaire led by infrastructure investor Meridiam. The consortium is managing the challenge for the state as a part of a broader public-private partnership wherein it’s constructing the Purple Line and serving to to finance its development earlier than working and sustaining it for 30 years.
The brand new development contractor has met “ceaselessly” with Maryland transit officers and PLTP “to easily transition tasks and plan for the environment friendly mobilization of development,” PLTP stated in an announcement. The contractor has been including employees in preparation to re-initiate development.
The Maryland Division of Transportation additionally signed a brand new partnership settlement with the consortium to incorporate the upper development price, in addition to extra for associated bills, corresponding to financing, insurance coverage and working the road long run. The worth of the partnership settlement has grown from its unique $5.6 billion to $9.3 billion.
“Our rock-solid partnership with MDOT MTA is the explanation we’re capable of make immediately’s announcement, which brings the Purple Line an necessary step nearer to serving the folks of Maryland,” stated PLTP Chairman Jane Garvey. “Main as much as immediately’s milestone, ‘Crew Purple Line’ has spared no effort to make sure the restart of development hits the bottom operating.”
Maryland officers have stated the consortium will finance the elevated development prices. The state pays again these prices with greater month-to-month funds — averaging about $255 million yearly — over the 30 years. The consortium’s new financing features a $1.76 billion low-interest federal mortgage, which has grown from the unique $875 million mortgage, and a further $140 million of its personal fairness.
The challenge’s delays and value overruns have drawn nationwide consideration as a result of its public-private partnership was one of many first for a U.S. transit line to depend on non-public financing. Governments throughout the nation are counting on related partnerships as a option to faucet non-public funding to construct transit, highways and different main infrastructure.
The finalizing of the brand new development contract can be welcome information in Maryland’s inside suburbs, the place the unique contractor’s departure left behind unexpectedly patched roads, partially constructed rail bridges and a string of principally deserted development websites.
The state has paid for some work, corresponding to to refine the design and transfer utility strains, to proceed previously 18 months. Nevertheless, residents desirous to experience the long-planned line have been pissed off by the delays, and native enterprise house owners say they’re apprehensive about surviving an extended interval of misplaced parking and torn-up roads.
The Purple Line is designed to supply sooner, extra dependable east-west transit service than buses in older, auto-dependent suburbs and join communities with Metro, Amtrak and the MARC commuter rail system. Native governments are also relying on its 21 stations to draw and focus financial growth.
It will likely be the Washington area’s first directsuburb-to-suburb rail line.
The state has agreed to imagine extra monetary danger for the development, together with for “any unknown defects” within the unique contractor’s work and any further pandemic-related issues, state officers have stated.
The partnership settlement’s dispute decision course of additionally has been streamlined, whereas different modifications would make it tougher to terminate for added prolonged delays, state officers have stated.
Maryland
The rich and controversial history of Maryland’s clown ministers
We are fools for Christ’s sake.
So believed the apostle Paul when he penned a letter to the Corinthian church. And so, too, believed Maryland’s pioneering clown ministry.
This niche style of Christian outreach is as outrageous as it is earnest, and traces some of its roots back to Columbia. It’s perhaps a legacy that James Rouse never imagined when he founded the Howard County town, with its distinctive urban plan, efficient use of land and commitment to diversity. Rouse included a series of interfaith centers intended to bring people of different beliefs under one roof. The model inspired one local pastor at Abiding Savior Lutheran Church to pursue his own experiment blending liturgy with laughter.
These days, Rev. Floyd Shaffer is remembered by some as the “clown father” of modern Christian clowning. Though liturgical clowning already had a history in Europe, Shaffer spent his time in Columbia in the 1970s dabbling in clown ministry and eventually became known as a leader of the movement in the United States. He died three years ago, his wife Marlene Shaffer confirmed.
Even though the whimsical ministry’s heyday was in the 1980s and ’90s, some Christians continue to answer the call to clown. And the practice has captivated new audiences on TikTok and YouTube.
Earlier this year, the Columbia Maryland Archives put together an online exhibit about the town’s nondenominational clown ministry, called Faith and Fantasy, which Shaffer founded in 1974. Archivist Erin Berry said staffers were inspired after stumbling across a popular YouTube channel’s episode on Christian clowning.
Shaffer’s idea for a clown ministry came to him in 1964 on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The pastor was in town for a Bible study and leafing through some books when he stumbled across the etymology of the word clown. He connected it with Jesus’ command to be a servant.
That same year, Lutheran church leaders were getting creative with clowns — and it wasn’t going over well.
The National Lutheran Council produced the short film “Parable,” which depicted Jesus as a white-faced clown and the world as a circus.
The film’s 1964 debut at the New York World’s Fair roiled event organizers, some of whom resigned in protest. One “disgruntled minister threatened to riddle the screen with shotgun holes if the film was shown,” the Library of Congress noted when it announced that it had selected “Parable” for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2012.
Six years later, Shaffer debuted as a clown minister for the opening day of Abiding Savior’s vacation Bible school, according to a news article preserved in Columbia’s archives.
“I don’t think that something that’s so controversial — I don’t know what other word to use — as clowning ministry could flourish in another place other than Columbia,” Berry said. “You could just try what you wanted to try.”
Other leaders within Columbia’s interfaith centers encouraged Shaffer to keep at it, said 86-year-old Marge Goethe. Her husband, Rev. Jerry Goethe, the pastor for Kittamaqundi Community Church, suggested to Shaffer that he teach a class on clown ministry. Together, the two men designed a seven-week course that covered theology, the history of clowning, skits and games to encourage playfulness.
Many local residents, including Marge Goethe, enrolled in the classes, embraced clown ministry and set out to visit children’s hospitals, retirement homes and domestic violence shelters. She learned how to silently deliver sermons with gestures and humor, but never mockery. Goethe used lipstick to draw a red circle — a symbol of the liturgical clown — on her cheek.
Goethe developed her clown persona and named him Harry, after a man she knew as a child who lived on the streets. He was a reminder that she could either be the kind of person who brushed him off or helped him out.
Howard County’s clown ministry eventually grew to include as many as 300 clowns, The Baltimore Sun reported in 1994. Members of the Faith and Fantasy ministry went on to teach clown ministry around the country and internationally.
Not every audience loved the routine.
During a worship service at a Virginia college’s youth convention, Goethe and other clown ministers offered to draw the mark of the clown on people’s cheeks.
“What is that, the mark of the devil?” one man asked.
Goethe couldn’t reply while she was in character.
“All I had to do was accept what he was feeling at the time and hope it changed at some point,” Goethe said.
Goethe still attends Kittamaqundi services and performs clown ministry. When people ask her about the decades she spent cheering up strangers, she worries she won’t find the right words to explain how rich clown ministry turned out to be.
“I did more good for people being silent,” Goethe said.
Shaffer eventually moved to Ohio and authored several books with titles such as “If I Were A Clown” and “Clown Ministry.” He produced instructional videos on clown ministry that lately have found a rapt audience on the internet.
Jen Bryant realized she had a personal connection with clown ministry while putting together an episode on the subject for her YouTube channel, Fundie Fridays, which features cultural commentary on aspects of fundamentalist Christianity in the United States. The Missouri resident’s grandfather, a Catholic, performed for a time as a clown minister under the name “George-o.”
Every community seems to have its subcultures, Bryant said, and she found that was also true for clowns. There are classical clowns like Joseph Grimaldi, a Regency-era entertainer who introduced the white face makeup. There are dark clowns like Juggalos, a nickname for fans of the hip-hop group Insane Clown Posse. And there are scary clowns like Pennywise, the shapeshifting antagonist in Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel “It.”
At first, Christian clowns sounded like a meme to Bryant. The full story, she said, turned out to be “way more interesting.”
Bryant and her husband James Bryant ordered copies of Shaffer’s books and collected a variety of research on clown ministry for their episode, which posted in April. The hourlong segment earned an “overwhelmingly positive” response from their audience, many of whom are in the midst of deconstructing their faith and understanding of Christianity, Bryant said.
“Everyone just thought this was just the most pleasant little novelty,” James Bryant said.
Maybe Christian clowns are even the original deconstructors.
“They’re people who went, ‘faith wasn’t working exactly how we wanted it to, so we broke it down and changed it,’” he said. “It worked. It has a legacy.”
Appearing in a video on Kittamaqundi’s YouTube page, Shaffer said clown ministry gives people a new way to live out and enjoy theology, “instead of being so glum and gloomy and solemn, as much of the church has become.”
Many Bible stories defy rational thought and that’s sort of the point, Floyd said in the video.
Scripture, Floyd noted, often suggests that God has a sense of humor.
Maryland
Calmer weather and milder temperatures in store for Maryland on Christmas
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Maryland
Where To Celebrate New Year’s Eve 2024 In Annapolis
ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, MD — New Year’s Eve will feature fireworks over the Annapolis Harbor, six Arundel Mills celebrations at Maryland Live! Casino & Hotel and the annual Charm City Countdown party at Hilton Baltimore BWI Airport Hotel.
Here is a look at some events happening in Anne Arundel County. Click on any event to learn more.
Annapolis
The transition from one year to the next is often marked by the singing of “Auld Lang Syne,” a Scottish folk song whose title roughly translates to “days gone by,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica and History.com.
The tradition of New Year’s resolutions dates back 8,000 years to ancient Babylonians, who made promises to return borrowed items and repay debts at the beginning of the new year, which was in mid-March when they planted their crops.
According to legend, if people kept their word, the pagan gods would grant them favor in the coming year. However, if they broke their promises, they would lose favor with the gods.
Many secular New Year’s resolutions focus on imagining new, improved versions of ourselves.
The failure rate of New Year’s resolutions is about 80 percent, according to U.S. News & World Report. There are many reasons, but a big one is they’re made out of remorse — for gaining weight, for example — and aren’t accompanied by a shift in attitude or a plan for coping with the stress and discomfort that comes with changing a habit or condition.
-
Business1 week ago
Freddie Freeman's World Series walk-off grand slam baseball sells at auction for $1.56 million
-
Technology1 week ago
Meta’s Instagram boss: who posted something matters more in the AI age
-
Technology4 days ago
Google’s counteroffer to the government trying to break it up is unbundling Android apps
-
News5 days ago
Novo Nordisk shares tumble as weight-loss drug trial data disappoints
-
Politics5 days ago
Illegal immigrant sexually abused child in the U.S. after being removed from the country five times
-
Entertainment6 days ago
'It's a little holiday gift': Inside the Weeknd's free Santa Monica show for his biggest fans
-
Politics1 week ago
'Knows how to get things done': Border Patrol union rallies around Noem as DHS chief
-
Lifestyle5 days ago
Think you can't dance? Get up and try these tips in our comic. We dare you!