Business

Days Inn Inner Harbor’s new owners are dropping the property’s affiliation with Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Inc. and spending millions to renovate it. Owner Richard Wahl is in the process of converting the Downtown Baltimore hotel into a dual-branded hotel — a DASKK, Ascend Collection and Clarion Pointe.

The final sprint to get legal cannabis products in the hands of Maryland adults who want them is under way. After voters last year overwhelmingly approved the legalization of recreational cannabis, and the General Assembly rushed to pass a comprehensive plan to make it happen, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore’s signing of the law Wednesday marked the final step to create and regulate a potentially multibillion-dollar industry.

About the business: V-No @ The Harbor, at 137 Waterfront St. in National Harbor, is a roughly 1,200-square-foot wine and spirits bar — plus craft beer and charcuterie — and a retail/wine-to-go boutique, with an 1,100-square-foot patio overlooking the water slated to open this summer. Owned by Shaina Taylor, V-No is in soft-opening mode now, with plans for a grand opening on Juneteenth, the celebration of when enslaved people in Texas were decreed to be free on June 19, 1865.

PJ Fitzpatrick LLC, which specializes in the repair and replacement of residential roofs, windows, doors, gutters, baths and showers, has selected Melford Town Center in Bowie as the site of its initial entry into the Maryland marketplace, company officials announced Friday. The Delaware-based company has signed a lease with Baltimore-based St. John Properties, Inc. for 12,176 square feet of space at 5061 Howerton Way, with plans to begin operations this month. The PJ Fitzpatrick workforce in Prince George’s County is expected to number approximately 65 workers.

A lunchtime market returns to downtown Baltimore, featuring small businesses through September. Many major American cities, including Baltimore, continue to struggle in a post-pandemic world to get people interested in coming back downtown. So, the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore is doing its part to encourage people to visit downtown with the opening of the Pratt Street Market.

Neil Meltzer, president and CEO of LifeBridge Health, was appointed chair of the Advisory Panel on Outreach and Education (APOE), a federal health care advisory committee to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Meltzer will begin his term as chair in June.

A new coworking space with over 90 offices has opened in Columbia with the goal of attracting Howard County entrepreneurs who are tired of the commute to Baltimore or Washington, D.C. The 20,400-square-foot space at 8865 Stanford Blvd. will be the first Venture X location in Maryland and has already signed leases with 28 companies in industries including fitness, psychotherapy, clothing design and cybersecurity, franchise owner Dimitrios Topaltzas said during Wednesday’s grand opening.

Joe Benny’s will close this spring after nine years of serving focaccia-style pizza out of its tiny shop on High Street in Little Italy. The restaurant will close at either the end of May or “very early June,” owner Joseph Gardella said in an emotional video posted to social media on Thursday afternoon. Gardella said his business model relied on him being in the restaurant all the time but “without a kitchen, without a staff, it just made things challenging at times, very stressful to say the least.”