Business

A strip mall along the busy Joppa Road retail corridor in Parkville has sold for $4.5 million. The center at 1901-1907 E. Joppa Road traded this month to a private, unnamed investment group. The seller was Besche Realty Inc. Gil Neuman, who brokered the deal, said Thursday the sale closed despite a spate of interest rate hikes to over 7% over the past year that has impacted the commercial market. Some deals already in the pipeline have closed despite the rising rates, including the sale of the East Drive Shopping Center for $5.7 million in Southwest Baltimore County late last year. Neuman also brokered that deal.

Marsh McLennan Agency continued its acquisition spree with a deal to buy HMS Insurance Associates Inc., an 80-year-old Hunt Valley company. MMA, a subsidiary of Marsh McLennan (NYSE: MMC), in announcing the deal Wednesday, said that HMS Insurance’s more than 120 employees, including President Gary L. Berger, will join MMA and continue to work out of the Hunt Valley office. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Family members of five staff members murdered at the Capital Gazette in 2018, as well as survivors of the mass shooting, have reached a confidential settlement in lawsuits that claimed that the newspaper’s parent companies were negligent and failed to take reasonable steps to protect employees. Lawyers filed a two-page stipulation of dismissal on Tuesday in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court for the claims against The Baltimore Sun Co. LLC and Tribune Publishing Co. LLC. 

A busy Lutherville corner once home to a gas station will soon transform into a fast-casual food hub. Starbucks and honeygrow recently signed 10-year deals to open at York and Ridgely roads in about a year, developer Mark Renbaum said Tuesday. The two chains will open near a site recently identified for a $228.5 million transit-oriented development linked to the light rail line at Lutherville Station.

Profiles, a Baltimore public relations agency specializing in marketing, communications and social media, has named a new CEO. Amy Burke Friedman assumed the role effective January 1, taking over for Profiles’ founder Amy Elias. Burke Friedman has been with the company for 20 years, serving as president for the last 15 years, and has worked alongside Elias to develop the company into a local “powerhouse,” Elias said Wednesday.

The owner of the Ever Forward container ship, which ran aground in the Chesapeake Bay in March, will pay Maryland nearly $700,000 to enhance local oyster bars as a penalty for the accident, following a Wednesday morning vote from Maryland’s Board of Public Works.

The Ravens received final approval Wednesday to extend their lease of M&T Bank Stadium for 15 more seasons, through 2037, and potentially through the 2047 season. Though the current lease’s expiration date is nearly five years away, the new contract was negotiated with the team’s landlord, the Maryland Stadium Authority, with the expectation that the Ravens soon would begin requesting bonds to renovate the stadium.