Three years after it was founded, the women’s wellness startup Modern Revival finally has a place to call home. Co-founders Mikel Blair, a D.C.-area philanthropist, and Courtney Smith have opened the company’s first physical location at 7809 Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda, the pair announced in a press release this week. Until now, their wellness sessions, focused mainly on mental health and emotional well-being, had been held in temporary locations in Greater Washington and Southern California, where Smith is based.

When Baltimore received a windfall of $641 million in federal pandemic aid, Mayor Brandon Scott spread it across dozens of projects touching nearly every corner of city government. But with federal deadlines to earmark and spend the money bearing down, the mayor’s plan is changing. Scott’s top pandemic aid official said Thursday that the city will redirect tens of millions of dollars to different causes.

 

The Capital Crescent Trail is projected to reopen between Bethesda and Silver Spring in spring 2026—a year earlier than expected, according to a recent report from the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT). The 11-mile trail, which runs from Georgetown in Washington, D.C., to Silver Spring, has been partially closed since 2017 as part of MDOT’s Purple Line light-rail construction project.

Gov. Wes Moore on Thursday vetoed four of the more than 1,000 bills that lawmakers passed last session, refraining — unlike his predecessors — from duplicative vetoes and demonstrating, at least in the eyes of lawmakers, the effectiveness of his legislative team. Among the four he rejected this year were measures to change public notice requirements for estates and to allow out-of-state dealers of motorhomes and RVs to partake in Maryland shows.

Gov. Wes Moore waded through hundreds of pieces of legislation and has signed over a thousand since the 2024 legislative session ended in April. But one juvenile justice bill sponsored in honor of a slain teen girl never saw ink from his ceremonial pen. The NyKayla Strawder Memorial Act never even reached his desk.

The Prince George’s County Council passed a $5.46 billion operating budget in a majority vote Thursday, focusing on priorities such as public safety while faced with limited funding. Chair Jolene Ivey (District 5) said a $171 million budget shortfall, higher interest rates along with rising inflation and the end of coronavirus pandemic funds meant the council had to be judicious in what it was going to fund for the fiscal year.

The Frederick County government is taking steps to construct affordable housing units on the Prospect Center campus, which the county acquired in October 2021 for $20 million to use as a multi-agency complex. The 26-acre property on Himes Avenue in Frederick includes several large parking areas, in addition to the 209,000-square-foot main building, which the county previously used as a mass vaccination site.

The Baltimore County Council approved County Executive Johnny Olszewski’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget Thursday with a single amendment that halved a pot of money intended to fund the potential addition of two members to the council. The council passed the budget unanimously, after voting last week to cut $600,000 from a $1.2 million line item that would allow the county council to expand offices to account for potential additional members.

Mark Anthony Thomas has long believed the Greater Baltimore Committee needed to better define its purpose and goals to make a mark on the region’s economic development. A new 10-year strategic plan, unveiled Thursday evening, sets out to do that. The plan calls for a “sea change” in what it describes as a lack of urgency in attracting business and nurturing entrepreneurs,

Top Baltimore leaders said City Hall has plans to create an opioid overdose office and release a public tracker for overdose-related deaths. At a Thursday budgeting hearing for her office, Chief Administrative Officer Faith Leach said Baltimore officials have for months been working to expand services for people addicted to opioids, and hope to do so using potential settlement money from an ongoing city lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies that produced the addictive drugs.