Baltimore’s first big cultural moment was arguably 209 years ago, when a local lawyer, trapped on a ship in the middle of a battle, wrote a poem about his relief at knowing the American flag still waved over Fort McHenry. It was similar to a lot of the artistic splashes the city would make in the next few centuries: dramatic, concerned with race, identity, and sense of place, and more than a little messy.

The large-scale overhaul of the Perkins Homes site in East Baltimore has snagged another federal grant. The Housing Authority of Baltimore City, or HABC, and a group of private developers this week were awarded $10 million by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help fund a third phase of the Perkins Homes redo. The funds will be added to a previous $30 million grant from HUD in 2018.

Ports America appointed Mark Schmidt as the vice president and general manager of its location at the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore. Schmidt has more than 30 years of experience working at Baltimore’s waterfront, holding a variety of different roles within Ports America. Schmidt has held positions in management, operations, and commercial expansions including roll/on-roll/off cargo (RoRo), of which the Port of Baltimore ranks first in the nation.

Hear that? It’s the sound of credit crunching all across America.Okay, if not crunching, maybe squeezing. Or tightening. Or whatever euphemistic verb you might choose to communicate that, basically, it’s gotten more difficult to borrow lately. Lots of measures have shown that businesses and consumers have found it more challenging to obtain financing recently, particularly in the wake of major regional bank failures in March.

Gov. Wes Moore (D) on Wednesday announced that he has chosen Sanjay Rai to serve as acting secretary for the Maryland Higher Education Commission. It is the final Cabinet-level position to be filled in the new administration. Rai, senior vice president for academic affairs at Montgomery College, would need to be confirmed by the state Senate when the General Assembly reconvenes next January before losing the “acting” part of his title.

It was an emotional highlight of the 2023 General Assembly session. Men and women of all ages and races were in tears as historians and legal experts recounted the early career of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and some of his successful — and heartbreakingly unsuccessful — battles to desegregate Maryland.

Hiring and retention aren’t getting any easier for companies these days. That’s why the Baltimore Business Journal is once again recognizing companies going the extra mile for their employees with our 2023 Best Places to Work Awards. Companies being recognized have scored highest among more than 100 employers that participated in Omaha, Nebraska-based Quantum Workplace’s employee engagement survey.

When Anthony Brown stood at the rostrum in the House of Delegates after he was sworn in as Maryland’s first Black attorney general in January, he outlined his priorities for the 2023 General Assembly session. In the months since, the legislature granted Brown’s office statutory authority to enforce federal and state civil rights laws and also give its Independent Investigations Division power to prosecute police-involved deaths and injuries.

 

It happened, on average, more than once a day last year. In fact, preliminary data shows that for the second year in a row, exactly 563 people died on Maryland roads in 2022. The new numbers were released Wednesday by the state of Maryland. In 2022, 135 pedestrians died on state roads, up by four from 2021. Another 11 bicyclists were killed, up five from 2021.

 

Before adjourning, the General Assembly took a major step toward making Maryland a leader in the emerging offshore wind industry. By passing the Promoting Offshore Wind Energy Resources (POWER) Act, we quadrupled the state’s goal to generate offshore wind energy. The new goal, 8.5 gigawatts, will produce enough electricity to power approximately 3 million Maryland homes. The measure lays out a framework to proactively strengthen our power grid infrastructure and sets up a novel offshore wind procurement process to benefit ratepayers.