Business

The Downtown Partnership of Baltimore will work to strengthen the appeal of the city’s central business district amid a recent wave of corporate departures to newer developments east of the Inner Harbor. “In thriving cities, shift happens,” Downtown Partnership President Shelonda Stokes told local business leaders and city officials gathered Tuesday night for the organization’s annual meeting at One Charles Center Plaza.

The last 18 months have been challenging for restaurants to say the least. We have had to deal with Covid-19 infections, lockdowns and mask mandates amid constant anxiety about keeping our business alive. As we recently celebrated Maryland Restaurant Week in the middle of another wave of infections, our business has figured out how to stay safe, continue to serve our customers and even expand. The No. 1 challenge now is finding and hanging onto good employees, a problem that has been well-documented by the media.

“My great-grandmother Lucille was born in Sumter, South Carolina, in 1922, and moved here when she was a child in the mid-1920s,” says entrepreneur Tyrell Dixon, his voice overlaying footage of Baltimore city streets, accompanied by a subtle piano score. “And, like a lot of Black families during that time, came here looking for opportunities that didn’t exist in the South.”

Bank of America announced Wednesday it has raised its U.S. minimum hourly wage to $21 as a next step in the company’s plans to increase to $25 by 2025. In May, the company also announced that all of its U.S. vendors are now required to pay their employees dedicated to the bank, at or above $15 per hour. The move by Bank of America, the largest bank in Maryland and the second-biggest in the nation, is part of a broader movement to elevate minimum pay levels by retailers, financial institutions and other businesses as employers compete for workers in a tight labor market.

Johns Hopkins University plans to build a 126,200-square-foot medical office and surgery center as it embarks on its development of the Belward Farm in Montgomery County. The project marks the first of several phases of development at the 108-acre Belward Farm site, which used to be mired in controversy. Late anti-development activist Elizabeth Beall Banks sold her farm, located at the intersection of Muddy Branch and Darnestown Road, at a cut rate to Johns Hopkins in 1989 so the land could be preserved and used for the creation of a bucolic campus.

Novavax Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX) just took another step to bring its Covid-19 vaccine candidate to the global stage, resulting in a stock surge once again. The Gaithersburg biotech said Thursday it has applied to the World Health Organization for an emergency use listing for its coronavirus vaccine, partnering with the Serum Institute of India on the bid.