Business

An internationally renowned equestrian competition is aiming to break even this year and wants to continue bringing out-of-staters to Cecil County. The 2024 Maryland 5 Star at Fair Hill, one of the most prestigious horse eventing competitions in the world, will return to Cecil County for the fourth time next month after bringing more than $11 million in direct spending to the state last year.

A flurry of major central banks will hold monetary policy meetings this week, with investors bracing for interest rate moves in either direction. The Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated two-day meeting, which gets underway on Tuesday, is poised to take center stage. The U.S. central bank is widely expected to join others around the world in starting its own rate-cutting cycle. The only remaining question appears to be by how much the Fed will reduce rates.

A robot dog and the “soul” displayed by local voices helped woo a conference dubbed the “Super Bowl of meetings” to Baltimore. The American Society of Association Executives Annual Meeting & Exposition, a major conference for trade group and association executives, will come to the Baltimore Convention Center in 2033.

The landlord of a federally subsidized Baltimore County glove factory that never opened is trying to recoup $1.3 million, according to recent court filings. Tradepoint Atlantic filed a lien against United Safety Technology last month, court records show. It followed up with a complaint alleging the proposed glove manufacturer has not been paying rent.

SpaceX pulled off its first spacewalk in the early hours of Thursday morning, in a historic first for a company. The marquee event of the private Polaris Dawn mission went smoothly, with two of the crew members — Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis — stepping outside of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule “Resilience.” It’s the first time civilians, and not government astronauts, have performed a spacewalk.

Lexington Lofts apartments could fit easily into one of downtown Baltimore’s trendier areas. Units come with soaring ceilings and windows, granite finishes, free Wi-Fi and Under Armour gym memberships. The glass-front building with sleek professional offices on the street level sits about a mile from the Inner Harbor. But the renovated six-story building occupies a block in downtown’s west side, where anticipated redevelopment has met with false starts for decades.

Howard County saw a 7% increase in visitor spending in 2023 over the previous year, as the number of tourists finally met pre-pandemic levels, according to a report from the county’s tourism bureau through Tourism Economics, a data and research company. Visit Howard County reported that the number of tourists reached around 3 million people, with those visitors spending a total of $790.4 million last year, up nearly 20% from before the pandemic.