Business

Just a few years ago, the Maryland Jockey Club pushed to move the Preakness from Baltimore to Laurel Park. But soon, the track midway between Baltimore and Washington might not host any horse races at all. As the racetrack owners, horsemen and the General Assembly — which recently created a state-operated racing authority — contemplate the future of Maryland horse racing, it’s Laurel Park that could be a casualty of the declining industry.

The U.S. economy wobbled in the first months of 2023, growing at an annual rate of 1.1 percent, as higher interest rates and a banking crisis dragged down activity across sectors. The latest figures, released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, mark a sharp slowdown at a time when Wall Street is already bracing for recession, in part because of fears that the banking sector’s troubles will curtail lending.

Three Baltimore businesses at risk of losing their liquor licenses were granted a renewal Thursday by the city’s Board of Liquor License Commissioners. But a fourth business will need to hash out concerns about security, operating hours and more before commissioners will approve another year of alcohol sales. The board gave Sangria, a Mount Vernon lounge, 10 days to seek mediation for issues with its neighbors, who said they are worried about two recent shootings near the business, and have concerns about the parameters of a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, between the community and Sangria that dates back to 2016.

A longtime Jewish deli established 108 years ago on Baltimore's once bustling Corned Beef Row is expanding for the second time in three years with a new location in the city. Attman’s Delicatessen this fall will move into a storefront at 1401 Point St. on the bottom floor of the 1405 Point residential building in the burgeoning Harbor Point development on the harbor near Fells Point.

Wearing brown leather shoes, a blue plaid suit and a white hard hat, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott climbed into the cab of the excavator, pushed and pulled on the levers, and — under the supervision of a trained operator — began to demolish the final vacant building in what was once a block full of public housing units. The made-for-TV moment capped off a groundbreaking Wednesday afternoon for the second phase of one of the city’s most ambitious housing developments.

About the business: Mrs. Bakewell’s is one of the only, if not the only, cream tea companies in the United States. Rose Bakewell, its founder, packs the boxes herself with her made-to-order English scones, imported clotted tea and jam, bamboo spoons, and Twinings tea sachets and ships them off to a nationwide clientele. The Clarksburg company is almost exclusively online, save for the sampler boxes she sells at Germantown’s Butler’s Orchard.

Tara Handforth will return to the Philadelphia area to become Wells Fargo’s division executive for the mid-Atlantic, leading a team of over 130 commercial bankers in five states and Washington, D.C. The commercial division provides loan, treasury management and deposit services to middle-market companies with annual sales of between $25 million to $5 billion. Handforth will work out of Wells Fargo's (NYSE: WFC) Conshohocken, Pennsylvania office.