Business

About 460 new jobs are headed to Washington County, Maryland, with the expansion of global rail manufacturing company Hitachi Rail into a ground-up, $70 million plant in Hagerstown. The 307,000-square-foot factory is part of a national expansion for Pittsburgh’s Hitachi Rail and will support the company’s $2.2 billion contract to build a new fleet of 8000-series, all-electric cars for Metro operator the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger will unveil on Tuesday new legislation designed to help bring federal economic development incentives to Baltimore County’s Tradepoint Atlantic. The legislation, known as The Rust to Revitalization Act of 2022, aims to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 so that it includes a special rule for designating former industrial areas that share a border with designated “Opportunity Zones.”

Another downtown hotel has changed hands. The Kimpton Hotel Monaco Baltimore Inner Harbor recently sold Douglas Development Corp., an investment group from Washington, D.C., for $18.6 million. The group is planning to spend $6.5 million to upgrade and renovate the property at 2 N. Charles St., the firm said in a release on Monday. The seller was an affiliate of Stonehill Strategic Capital, and CBRE brokered the deal.

The Black Train Trust has scored a $100,000 investment from the Maryland Technology Development Corp. (TEDCO) to help bring its product to market this year. The Baltimore-based tech startup has built a software platform to help firms measure and improve racial equity. It bills its core product, EquiScore BI, as “the Workday for diversity, equity and inclusion professionals.”

For an industry that brings both pleasure and therapeutic sustenance to so many people, the burgeoning cannabis industry is beset with hurdles. Everything from federal regulation (or lack thereof), issues with vaping, equal access to banking, veterans’ causes, tax policies, public perception and the continued presence of the illicit (or legacy) market are among the leading causes of angst for those working both in and around marijuana legalization and reform.

There is a wide pay gap between male and female physicians in Maryland, and doctors in the state earn less on average than those nationwide, a recent survey has found. The study conducted by Merritt Hawkins, a national physician search and consulting firm and a company of AMN Healthcare, on behalf of MedChi, The Maryland State Medical Society, tracks compensation, benefits and practice metrics of Maryland physicians and compares them to physicians nationally.

It easy to spot the vacant houses in so many of Baltimore’s older neighborhoods. It’s far more difficult to spot ongoing renovation of the city’s housing stock. In the last decade there is a bright spot — the 1700 block of E. Biddle Street, near Broadway and just north of the Johns Hopkins medical campus. The homes are in the Broadway East-Eager Park neighborhood. The catalyst for this encouraging transformation is ReBUILD Metro, a community initiative not as well known as it should be.