Business

The first builders arrived this week at a half empty 1970s public housing project within a West Baltimore neighborhood. Over the next year, the 1970s Rosemont Homes, a village of town houses, will emerge renewed, with an upgraded recreation center. Rosemont, a neighborhood that follows the contours of the hilly Gwynns Falls Valley south of Walbrook, is a community where residents remain proud of their tidy streets. “It’s a blessing that the recreation center will be restored,” said Robert Hunt, a longtime Rosemont resident. “We’re a community with a majority of homeowners … I consider Rosemont my oasis.”

Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough LLP has tapped Kraig Long to lead its Baltimore office. Long replaces Tim Hodge, who started the firm’s Baltimore presence in 2018, and has been promoted to become the head of the firm’s Atlantic corporate and real estate practice. McGuireWoods LLP also has a new head of its Baltimore office, with Elena D. Marcuss taking the reins from Cecil E. Martin III. While neither firm has its headquarters in Baltimore, both are among the top 25 largest law firms in the region, according to Baltimore Business Journal research from last spring.

Families near the Northwest Baltimore City-Baltimore County line will have a new early-childhood learning center open for students come July. The upcoming Kennedy Krieger Integrated Early Learning Center in Windsor Mill hopes to be an innovative model in the early-education field. The center will be open to up to 40 children, ages 3 to 5, from families of economic need and combine students with and without disabilities in the same classroom. The learning center will also function as a demonstration site, allowing early-education professionals to undergo observations, trainings and coaching. Family involvement will also be encouraged.

UPMC will increase minimum starting wages for entry-level positions to $18 an hour by January 2025 at its Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Williamsport area sites. By January 2026, the same wage increase will apply to UPMC Western Maryland workers, as well as those in southwest and western Pennsylvania and southwest New York. The rate increase aims to support its workforce, recruit new employees “and continue to be the employer of choice in health care,” UPMC said via press release Thursday.

Bank of America recently awarded two local organizations with a $200,000 multi-year award. Baltimore-based Innovation Works and Per Scholas were the recipients of the 2022 Neighborhood Builders grant for their efforts to provide greater Maryland community members with equitable access to workforce development and job training. Aside from the capital, the nonprofits’ executive directors will receive leadership training from Bank of America on financial sustainability, human resource development and strategic storytelling, among other topics to bolster their projects..

Profiles, a Baltimore-based marketing firm, has announced a change in leadership, with the firm’s president, Amy Burke Friedman, taking over as CEO from founder Amy Elias. Elias founded Profiles in 1990 as a one-person agency with a single client, advertising firm W.B. Doner & Co. Profiles has expanded to serve businesses, nonprofits, associations and individuals in media relations, communications, crisis management, social media, event planning and branding.

Staffers from the Maryland Environmental Service will remain at the troubled Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant through April 30 under a new agreement between the state and Baltimore. Under a previous agreement, the state agency’s tenure at the plant was poised to end Dec. 31. But now, the Environmental Service will remain into the spring, as long as the city’s Board of Estimates agrees. Its next meeting will take place next Wednesday.

Airlines have resumed flights at BWI Marshall Airport on Wednesday after a computer outage at the Federal Aviation Administration grounded departing flights across the country. “Residual delays can be expected,” the airport said in a tweet late Wednesday morning. “Please confirm your flight status with your airline.” The FAA tweeted that normal air traffic operations are gradually resuming across across the U.S., after the agency ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 a.m. Eastern Time.