Business

Baltimore is receiving an influx of federal and state dollars for major transportation projects like the Red Line and the Penn Station overhaul, creating the opportunity for a wave of new transit-oriented development in the region. But to take advantage of that opportunity, city and county governments must adopt pro-growth zoning policies and offer economic incentives, developers and state officials said Monday at the Greater Baltimore Committee’s Transportation and Economic Development Summit at the Baltimore Convention Center.

The county council’s Office of Legislative Oversight (OLO) has submitted its economic impact statement on Council Member Will Jawando’s bill to repeal the county’s tip credit for minimum wage. And OLO’s judgment is unambiguous: the bill would damage Montgomery County’s economy. OLO begins with this summary. OLO anticipates that enacting Bill 35-23 would have a net negative impact on economic conditions in the County in terms of the Council’s priority economic indicators.

In late 2021, Dana Henson made a panicked, late-night phone call to the CEO of the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, expecting to drop a major bombshell that would almost certainly spell disaster for both women.Henson, principal and vice president of The Henson Development Company Inc., told Janet Abrahams that their plan to bring a full-service grocery store to East Baltimore to serve as an anchor tenant for an ambitious development project and provide relief to an area long classified as a fresh food desert would not work.

Resort officials this week agreed to convey air rights above an alleyway to the developer of an oceanfront hotel, but not before a lengthy discussion on a revised site plan. On Monday, the Mayor and Council voted to adopt the second reading of an ordinance conveying air rights above a portion of Washington Lane for the development of an oceanfront Boardwalk hotel between 13th and 14th streets.

Curtis Bay Energy, the nation’s largest medical waste incinerator, which operates in South Baltimore, has been fined $1 million as a criminal penalty for improper disposal of biohazardous materials following a lengthy investigation by Maryland’s Office of the Attorney General’s Environmental and Natural Resources Crimes Unit, according to Attorney General Anthony Brown.

RCM&D has acquired a Hunt Valley insurance firm, the first in what the company says will be a string of purchases after three years without a major deal. The deal for Consolidated Insurance + Risk Management closed this month and gives Towson-based RCM&D, a large risk management, insurance and employee benefits company, a portfolio of small and midsize businesses that it didn’t previously have as clients, firm executives said this week.