Business

Jody Davis didn’t know she would one day dress Maryland’s first lady, Dawn Moore, for the inauguration. She didn’t even expect to become a fashion designer. Davis, 60, originally planned to be a veterinarian. But the summer after she graduated from Western High School in North Baltimore, she started “twiddling with sewing.” She bought a yellow linen tablecloth from Goodwill Industries and transformed it into a top and skirt, which drew compliments from family, friends and even strangers.

Silver Spring developer Banneker Ventures announced Tuesday that it has received a $20 million loan from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) to help it build 193 affordable housing units across the street from the Addison Road-Seat Pleasant Metro station in Prince George’s County. Banneker, a Black-led real estate development firm that also has an office in Southeast D.C., is the lead contractor for Park Place, a $45 million development that will rise from a vacant lot at 6301 Central Ave. in Capitol Heights. All of the units, ranging from studio to three-bedroom apartments, will be preserved as affordable for 99 years, said Banneker President Omar A. Karim.

Gaithersburg engineering contractor Amentum is leaving suburban Maryland for Chantilly, Virginia where it will consolidate its headquarters in its existing Westfields Boulevard office, Virginia and company leaders announced Monday. The move, which is expected to create 157 new Virginia jobs, comes roughly a year after Amentum closed its $1.9 billion all-cash purchase of Arlington-based PAE Inc. With that acquisition, and the September 2020 purchase of DynCorp International Inc., Amentum has grown to 44,000 employees in 85 countries and more than $9 billion in annual revenue.

After more than two decades leading downtown revitalization efforts, the head of the Ocean City Development Corporation will step down in March. Glenn Irwin, advocate for downtown redevelopment for more than 22 years, will retire from his position as executive director of the Ocean City Development Corp. (OCDC) March 31. While he remains passionate about the revitalization of the resort’s downtown, Irwin said the time had come for him to slow down.

For Jonathon Heyward, the new music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the key word for success is community. At a news conference last week at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Heyward addressed a small group of news media about what can be expected of his first season in the driver’s seat. A priority of that, he said, will be a focus on “programming that is relevant to the community,” both in “having familiar faces in the community on our stages” as well as “pre- and post-concert experiences that relate to the community.

Under Armour Inc. wants to expand its program that gives Baltimore City student athletes the resources they need to succeed now that the local sportswear maker has completed renovations of all 21 of the city’s public high school gyms and outfitted all its varsity teams. Executives with the company shared that message Friday from the gymnasium of Edmonson-Westside High School, where a crowd of high school athletes, city officials and others were gathered to celebrate six years of Under Armour’s Project Rampart and talk about where the program will go in the future.

Hall of Famer Bobby Dandridge led the Norfolk State men’s basketball program to the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association title in 1968 in Greensboro, North Carolina, and had attended conference tournaments in Norfolk, Virginia, Charlotte, North Carolina, and — for the past two years — Baltimore. “The Greyhound,” as Dandridge was nicknamed, said Baltimore has proved to be a worthy host after the CIAA elected to move the tournament from Charlotte after the 2019-20 season.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration is crafting a $1 billion economic development grant program to help bring jobs to distressed communities — and it’s looking for your help. The $1 billion “Recompete Pilot Program” was originally authorized by Congress in 2022 as part of the CHIPS Act passed by Congress that poured tens of billions of dollars into semiconductor production and manufacturing. The grant though, is unrelated to semiconductors, and its purpose is to “target long-term comprehensive economic development and job creation in selected areas by supporting workforce development, business development, and infrastructure activities,” according to the Commerce Department.