Business

The Washington County Commissioners sent a proposal to update the definition of a convenience store in the county’s zoning ordinance back to the Planning Commission after a lengthy public hearing Tuesday. The proposed zoning text amendments would change the definition of a convenience store to eliminate the size restriction, which is currently 5,000 square feet — including areas for gas pumps. That restriction “is a big problem,” civil engineer Fred Frederick, president of Frederick, Seibert and Associates, told the commissioners.

The longtime owner of a 1960s-era garden apartment complex in downtown Bethesda has proposed to redevelop it as a new, much denser apartment tower, adding to a growing trend of similar residential projects in the area. A partnership of the Kossow and Gelman families — of Kossow Management Corp. and The Gelman Cos., both real estate firms — has owned the 84-unit, roughly 72,000-square-foot Battery Lane Apartments at 4861 Battery Lane since 1984.

Baltimore entrepreneur Michael Saunders can’t wait to open Matriarch Coffee in a long-vacant space in Harborplace’s Pratt Street Pavilion this fall — and hopes the shop will be part of the beleaguered retail center’s future. Saunders and his partners have entered a deal to open the coffee shop in October in 600 square feet of the former M&S Grill space on the first floor of the nearly vacant pavilion. MCB Real Estate, which is redeveloping Harborplace, has a licensing deal with Matriarch, a Baltimore County coffee roaster that uses beans from the African country of Rwanda.

TEDCO, the Maryland Technology Development Corp., has expanded its Maryland Innovation Initiative program to include Bowie State University and is investing $500,000 over the next two years to help students there commercialize their business ideas. Bowie State will get $250,000 this year and next to implement programs that promote entrepreneurship and innovation. The school is contributing an additional $50,000 each year to the effort.

The words mergers and acquisitions — or M&A as it’s affectionately called — conjure up images of corporate moguls sitting around a conference room in cutthroat negotiations. Think “Succession,” “Barbarians at the Gate” and other classic Hollywood takes on mergers and corporate takeovers. But M&A doesn’t have to be about billions of dollars, evil private equity investors or corporate intrigue.

Last spring, the Prince George’s County Council passed emergency legislation capping rent hikes at 3%, in part moved by complaints from seniors and other residents that some apartment complexes were increasing rents by hundreds of dollars per month. In some cases, the rent hikes were increasing faster than Social Security and other forms of income. In the immediate aftermath, there were reports of some apartment complexes trying to impose other new fees that aimed to get around the actual rent, while others began looking for other loopholes.

Plans to convert a vacant corner in Midtown into a busy complex anchored by a marketplace and apartments moved forward on Thursday before a city design panel. The five-story building would add a new gateway to the University of Baltimore’s urban campus and act as an extension of the ongoing renewal of Penn Station a block away, the city’s Urban Design and Architecture Advisory Panel, or UDAAP, was told by officials of BCT Design Group during the nearly two-hour meeting. BCT is designing the project for developers Zahlco and the University of Baltimore.