Business

The nonprofit William & Lanaea C. Featherstone Foundation awarded 30 scholars with $3,000 merit-based scholarships during an awards ceremony Sept. 23. Travis E. Mitchell, senior vice president and chief content officer at Maryland Public Television, gave the keynote address. Catalina Rodriguez Lima, director of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, was presented with the Featherstone Changemaker Award, a prize that honors an influential leader who drives social change and makes a positive impact in the community.

An apartment management company owned by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, has settled with the Maryland Attorney General’s Office over claims the company mistreated renters by ignoring serious maintenance issues and charging illegal fees. The settlement includes a $3.25 million penalty and the requirement that the company, Westminster Management LLC, pay restitution to current and former tenants. Attorney General Brian E. Frosh said at a news conference that Westminster used its “vastly superior economic power” to take advantage of tenants who often struggled to pay rent and support their families.

Baltimore Sun reporters and editors will soon move to another workspace as the storied newspaper shuts down its Port Covington newsroom at Sun Park this year. Owners of the 185-year-old newspaper did not renew the paper’s lease with Sagamore Ventures, MAG Partners and McFarlane Partners at the site, said MaryAnne Gilmartin, CEO of MAG, and will leave by late December. The move follows the shutdown of the Sun’s printing operation at the 250,000-square-foot plant off Interstate 95 this year, with the giant presses dismantled and sold off. Under Armour founder Kevin Plank, whose Sagamore Ventures is one of Port Covington’s developers, acquired The Sun property in 2014 for $46.5 million.

Marriott International held a grand opening this week for its new global headquarters, a towering 21-story building that forms just one part of the changing landscape in downtown Bethesda, Maryland. The gleaming new office-hotel complex and other tall new buildings in the central core of downtown Bethesda on Wisconsin Avenue include the Wilson, a 23-story office tower which houses the headquarters for local television channel Fox 5 DC, and the 22-story Avocet Tower, a space for offices and a hotel. While the towering commercial buildings stand out among the multiple construction projects recently completed or now underway, it is residential construction that seen the biggest investment.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, a Hunt Valley-based TV station owner, dismissed as “speculation” a report that it’s trying to sell its Diamond Sports unit to three professional sports leagues, even as plans were confirmed Thursday for the launch of new regional sports streaming services around the country next week. Sinclair bought the regional sports networks for $10.6 billion in 2019, but they were hit hard by pandemic-related disruptions and “cord cutting,” in which many fans have abandoned traditional cable TV.

After a nearly two-year search, the consortium tapped to spearhead an ambitious toll lanes project in Montgomery County has found itself a construction partner. AM Partners, a conglomerate led by Transurban, announced on Wednesday that it has taken on Los Angeles-based Tutor Perini to design and build toll lanes along portions of the Capital Beltway and I-270. The project is a top priority for Gov. Larry Hogan (R), though it has roused opposition locally. Early last year, the Transurban group outbid two other conglomerates, despite the loss of its original construction partner, Archer Western, which separated from AM Partners for reasons that have never been made public.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit small business owners hard, forcing virtually every business to explore new ways to reach their customers. For many, the challenges to keep the lights on led to some surprising results. The term “pivot” emerged as a buzzword to describe how businesses were changing the way they operated. Some of those changes were so impactful, they have become permanent fixtures. Here’s how two Maryland companies incorporated their pivot into daily operations.