Business

The University of Maryland Medical System plans to build a new hospital in Talbot County, replacing its current facility in Easton as part of a wider Eastern Shore expansion. The University of Maryland Shore Regional Health (UMSRH) filed the Certificate of Need application for the project with the Maryland Health Care Commission on Jan. 6, proposing a new facility to replace the current University of Maryland Shore Medical Center at Easton.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. has locked in a deal potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars to continue supplying a skin decontamination product to the U.S. military. The Gaithersburg company said late Thursday that it has inked a contract to provide its Reactive Skin Decontamination Lotion Kit to the Department of Defense for up to another five years, now that a previous contract has expired. The contract, which took effect in December, has a one-year base and comes with four single-year renewal options, making it worth up to $379.6 million.

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.