Business

Discount retailer Burlington recently inked a deal to lease close to 35,000 square feet at Lockwood Place bringing a Fortune 500 company to the struggling central business district, which has been rocked by office and retail vacancies. The national chain based in New Jersey will open in the coming few months on the third floor of 600 E. Pratt St. taking over the former Best Buy space that has been vacant for over a decade, a spokeswoman for Burlington said on Wednesday.

The office market is decidedly in favor of tenants these days but negotiations over lease terms and tenant requirements have a bit of nuance. Landlords are hard pressed to retain tenants as the threat of trillions in commercial real estate-backed loans set to mature in the coming years looms large, and values on office properties are taking a hit in the wake of rising vacancy, weak demand and higher interest rates.

The developer behind Metro Centre at Owings Mills said a 120-room extended stay hotel is coming to the transit-oriented development in Baltimore County. David S. Brown Enterprises said in a news release that the Element by Westin Hotel will break ground this summer but did not include an expected completion date.

When yoga teacher Sarah Rehman guided her students through Squishy Tushy positions in a recent class, her lesson reached more than the five students lying on mats at her Flying Buddha Studio in Gaithersburg, Md. — two more watched through a video stream broadcast by her computer set up near the back of the studio. It’s all part of Rehman’s new normal. After being limited to virtual teaching for much of the pandemic, Rehman has seen students return to in-person classes since 2022 — but she believes there’s still an opportunity to get more hesitant students to return.

Developers on Tuesday shared their vision for transforming Baltimore’s historic Car Barn, a structure that once was the base of operations for a long-gone cable car system that shuttled residents around the city. Renderings of the refurbished 43,000-square-foot building were released on Tuesday by Baltimore-based Cross Street Partners and Beatty Development Group. Two years ago, the firms were named as developers and announced plans for a $15 million renovation, according to The Sun.

The chief executive of Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE: EBS) has stepped down. Bob Kramer, Emergent’s president and CEO since spring 2019 and a longtime executive with the Gaithersburg biotech, notified its board of directors Friday he would be retiring from his positions the next day, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kramer intends to stay on as an adviser to the company until Aug. 1.

A Baltimore County cannabis company is alleging that a Canadian company stole millions from its coffers and used the funds to finance its other struggling businesses. In a federal lawsuit filed June 20 in U.S. District Court, LMS Wellness, Benefit LLC, which runs a dispensary in Baltimore County called “Health for Life White Marsh,” alleges that Canada-based iAnthus Capital Holdings and its subsidiary S8 Management LLC stole more than $4.5 million from the company through unlawful transfers while also making “false claims” about how those funds were being used.

Columbia-based defense security firm Hopr Tuesday announced the availability of its’ API Threat Protection and Access Control solution in AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy and deploy software that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). With AWS Marketplace availability, AWS enterprise customers can procure and deploy Hopr’s novel automated moving target defense (AMTD) solution in their own environments.