Business

With Pride Month celebrations in full swing, the fate of Baltimore’s gay bars and nightspots remains uncertain just as the LGBTQ community faces a myriad of mounting concerns. Two of the city’s largest bars and venues — Central and The Manor — remain shuttered, with no indication that either will be open for Pride Week activities this month.

Despite Marylanders gambling less money on sports in May than in April, the state saw an increase in revenue from sports wagering, thanks in part to sportsbooks having more revenue left over from lost bets. Hold, or the revenue remaining after sportsbooks pay out winners, rose by 20% during a month that two underdogs teams from Florida — the Panthers in the National Hockey League and Miami Heat in the National Basketball Association — improbably rose from the bottom of their playoff brackets to their respective championship series.

The Jack and Nancy Dwyer Workforce Development Center Inc. June 8 signed a Memorandum of Understanding to partner with Ames Memorial UMC-Ames Shalom Community Inc. and Pastor Rod Hudson to be the foundational partner of the Resurrection Sandtown project to help redevelop a long-neglected stretch of West Baltimore.

A local entrepreneur plans to convert an abandoned warehouse in Harbor East into pickleball courts with a sports bar. The fast-growing sport is expected to take over the corner of tiny Spring Street and Eastern Avenue by the end of the year, said Jimmy Edgerton, a co-owner of the Harbor East Pickleball Experience venture. The complex at 409 Spring St. will hold five pickleball courts, two indoor and three outdoor, and a sports bar with other games like darts, corn hole and ping pong.

A new building that will transform the main entrance of the University of Maryland Medical Center and the downtown Baltimore skyline was already slated to house cancer care. Officials said Friday it will also house trauma rehabilitation services. The rehab services will move in the next three years from University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute, formerly known as Kernan Hospital, near Woodlawn. That facility will close.

Allegany County is making preparations to have vacation rental companies add the county’s accommodation tax to their billing process. The Allegany County Board of Commissioners discussed the effort to collect the 7% hotel-motel tax from online platforms at its Thursday meeting. The number of rental units available locally through Airbnb, Vrbo, Evolve and others has increased sharply since the coronavirus pandemic subsided.

Constellation Energy Corp. is revamping one of its Western Maryland wind farms to kick off a larger nationwide investment into its wind fleet. Constellation (Nasdaq: CEG) will upgrade 28 turbines at its Criterion Wind Project site in Oakland in Garrett County, replacing the aging equipment with new state-of-the-art parts.

Dave Benfield did not have a clear exit strategy for the business he spent 25 years building. So when the opportunity to sell presented itself, the 53-year-old founder of DuClaw Brewing Co. seized the chance to spend more time with his family and focus on why he got into the brewing industry in the first place. The Rosedale-based brewery announced last week that it had sold to New Jersey’s River Horse Brewing Co. for an undisclosed amount.

Erie Insurance is suing the Maryland Insurance Administration in federal court over the agency’s recent determination that the Pennsylvania-based insurer pushed local agents to reject customers from majority-Black areas of Baltimore. The lawsuit claims the Maryland Insurance Administration conducted an incomplete investigation into Erie’s practices and released confidential information in a May 24 determination letter that accused the company of unlawful discrimination.