Business

Maryland’s casinos raked in $178.8 million in gaming revenue in May, the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Commission said Monday, making it the state casino program’s second-best month ever. It’s an increase of 3.7% compared to May 2021. More than $73.4 million of those revenues, or roughly 40%, were contributed to the state’s coffers. The state’s six casinos generated over $53.4 million for Maryland’s Education Trust Fund (ETF), which is $137,334 more than the ETF contributions during the same period last year, according to the gaming commission.

Sportswear giant Under Armour Inc. has been booted from the S&P 500 and replaced, the S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Monday. The Baltimore company and IPG Photonics Corp are moving down to the S&P MidCap 400 list. Rising to replace them in the S&P 500 are Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. and ON Semiconductor Corp. The development comes after Under Armour reported a loss of $59.6 million in the first three months of the year last month.

The Montgomery Park building’s back-and-forth legal battle to reopen the bidding for the Maryland Insurance Administration’s lucrative Baltimore lease will go before the state’s top court. The Court of Appeals on Friday agreed to hear Montgomery Park’s challenge to a lower court ruling that the Department of General Services, the state’s leasing agency, validly renewed MIA’s lease and withdrew its request for bids even though Montgomery Park had a competitive offer on the table.

In its search for a site to open its first U.S. manufacturing facility, Greenland Technologies Holding Corp. found everything it needed in Maryland — a strong workforce, robust logistical network and a shared commitment to clean energy. CEO Raymond Wang said the company visited a lot of states, but it was Maryland that went “above and beyond” to secure a deal for Greenland Technologies (NASDAQ: GTEC) to open a 54,000-square-foot production center at the Nottingham Ridge Logistics Center in White Marsh next month.

A Georgia-based furniture and bedding manufacturing company is expanding to a warehouse in Havre de Grace, adding 225 new full-time jobs to the suburban market over the next three years. Elite Comfort Solutions will move into an industrial complex at 1900 Clark Road in the small town that sits on the Chesapeake Bay off Interstate 95. The firm is based in Newnan, Georgia, a southwestern suburb of Greater Atlanta, and is a subsidiary of the manufacturer Leggett & Platt Inc. (NYSE: LEG). Leggett & Platt is based in Carthage, Missouri and has 20,000 employees worldwide with reported revenues of $4.28 billion in 2020.

Andrea Oliver has always taken issue with how society perceives stay-at-home moms. “The misconception of stay-at-home moms is, you’re very free. You’re only running errands and taking care of your child,” she said. “Some people are thinking that if you’re stay-at-home, you don’t have a skill to contribute to society or make money.” That’s why Oliver, a resident of Bel Air in Harford County, launched a nonprofit aimed at helping single and stay-at-home moms use their parenting skills, from cooking to crafts, to start a business or side hustle. 

Marriott International says it’s going to suspend all of its operations in Russia amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The Bethesda-based hotel operator, which has operated in Russia for 25 years, said Friday that it has decided that newly announced U.S., U.K. and EU restrictions will make it impossible for the company to continue to run or franchise hotels in the Russian market. Marriott previously announced in March that it was closing its corporate office in Moscow and pausing the opening of upcoming hotels and all future hotel development and investment in Russia.

It was 95 years ago that the name Bernheimer disappeared as a Baltimore retailing legend. The big downtown department store sold out to the May Company that year, leaving behind a collection of solidly constructed buildings where you could once buy everything from a hairpin to a fur coat, and maybe some World War I surplus cavalry horses, too. One of the Bernheimer properties downtown is slated to become 107 apartments, adding to the developing residential neighborhood made of older commercial buildings where Baltimoreans worked and shopped for decades.

Maryland’s legal community is preparing for the seismic changes to landlord-tenant cases that will come with the impending arrival of access to counsel in evictions. The statewide program is set to launch in the coming years after Maryland lawmakers passed legislation in the 2022 General Assembly session to fund legal representation for low-income renters facing eviction. In some parts of the state, variations on an access to counsel program are already underway. Baltimore County, for example, offers day-of assistance to tenants in need of legal guidance.