Business

An acrimonious spat between trustees of the Walters Art Museum and its employees continues to move through the courts, with the cultural institution filing documents Tuesday attempting to prove that legally it is a private corporation and not a city agency. On the surface, the issue that a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge is being asked to decide might seem dry as dust: Is the museum in the Mount Vernon neighborhood part of city government — as its employees claim — and therefore, subject to the Maryland Open Records Act? Or is the museum a private entity as trustees argue, and therefore exempt from having to share certain documents with its employees?

Ellie Mental Health is a fast-growing mental health franchise model headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota. And a new Bethesda location at 8120 Woodmont Ave., Suite 840, is the first of multiple Maryland practices that its franchise owner, Montgomery County native Shahzad Dastgir, plans to open this year. How it started: Dastgir was working as a consultant for Optum Inc. doing mergers and acquisitions with large health care systems, including mental health providers. Then about a year and a half ago, he came across Ellie Mental Health. Its cozy vibe was more reminiscent of a living room couch than a doctor’s office, and its therapists felt like friends, he said. It caught his attention.

It’s a good week for Novavax. The Gaithersburg vaccine maker has earned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation to make its protein-based shot available as a booster to adults in the U.S., the last hurdle required before people can use it beyond a primary series. The CDC said late Wednesday that its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, greenlit the decision — which gives initially vaccinated adults the choice to get Novavax’s jab as a booster instead of the updated Omicron-specific shots from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.

Constellation Energy Corp. has tapped Nneka Rimmer, a former president at McCormick & Co. Inc., to join its board of directors — the second former high-level executive at the spice maker to join the energy company. Constellation (NYSE:CEG) on Tuesday elected Rimmer to fill a seat on the board once held by Allstate Insurance legal chief Rhonda Ferguson. Ferguson, 52, died in April. Rimmer’s appointment will be effective Nov. 1.

Cynthia Hopkins thinks it’s about time the Edmondson Village Shopping Center got a makeover. The center needs fewer hair supply stores, she said, and more sit-down restaurants like the ones she and her children used to dine when they first moved into the nearby Rognel Heights community in 1970. “We need the change. … Change is hard, but it’s all in the name of progress,” Hopkins said.

Workers at MOM’s Organic Market in Timonium are expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to follow the lead of MOM’s employees in Hampden and unionize. Local 570 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to represent the grocery store’s 65 full- and part-time employees who would be part of a bargaining unit. The union has proposed scheduling a vote for Nov. 18.

Eighteen Baltimore cultural institutions will receive $2 million from the city over two years to improve their physical buildings, Mayor Brandon Scott announced Tuesday. The city’s Cultural Spaces Capital Support Fund is administered each year by the Department of Planning. With grants ranging from $50,000 to $200,000, the money will be allocated in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 for arts organizations’ projects like building new performance spaces, repairing roofs and upgrading air systems.

Spirit Airlines shareholders voted Wednesday to accept a $3.8 billion buyout from JetBlue Airways, but the deal could still face a challenge from federal antitrust regulators. JetBlue emerged as the winner in a bidding war with Frontier to acquire Spirit, the nation’s biggest budget airline. Spirit announced the outcome after a brief meeting, which was held online. Spirit said only that the JetBlue deal was supported by a majority of shares voted; it promised an exact count within four business days.