Business

When the University of System Maryland Board of Regents first established a fund to invest in early-stage student-, faculty- and alumni-led companies, they funneled $10 million from the system’s operational balance into it.  The hope was that the fund would become evergreen, with the money made from the investments serving to refill the pot. So far, only one of the Maryland Momentum Fund’s 24 portfolio companies has been acquired: an edtech company focused on K-12 vocabulary, called InferCabulary, that was officially bought in March. The fund’s leaders say this is only an issue of timing — the companies are too young to sell, but exit events are expected to begin in the next few years.

Home sales in Greater Baltimore dipped slightly last month — a year after bidding wars for homes were the norm. The dip, though, did not translate to lower prices as the annual spring selling season starts to ramp up. Data released on Wednesday showed home and condominium sales in Baltimore and its surrounding counties posted a median price of $340,000 in March — a nearly 8% jump from the same month last year. A total of 3,584 residential units changed hands in March, down almost 2% from a year ago, according to data from Rockville-based Bright MLS.

Westfield Annapolis Mall has been put up for sale by its European owners less than four years after it was acquired in a $16 billion deal. Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield SE announced last month that the company is leaving the U.S. as consumers have abandoned shopping malls for online buying during the coronavirus pandemic. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news on April 5. Westfield Annapolis was among dozens other shopping malls in the U.S. and Britain that were acquired in 2017 by Unibail, a Paris-based real estate company.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. has purchased an Annapolis movie theater as part of a deal that also includes the acquisition of six theaters in Connecticut and upstate New York. Leawood, Kansas-based AMC’s acquisition of the seven Bow Tie Cinemas locations includes Annapolis Mall 11 at the Westfield Annapolis Mall, which itself is soon to hit the market after the mall’s owner announced plans to downsize its U.S. portfolio. The other theaters included in the deal are Marquis 16, Royale 6, SoNo 8, Majestic 6 and Landmark 8 in Connecticut and Saratoga Springs 11 in New York.

There is only one rule in the new Ellicott Mills Children’s Museum in Ellicott City: “Touch everything.” That’s according to Pat Greenwald and Anne Schoenhut, co-chairs of the education committee at the Howard County Historical Society. “Everything we have in there are things to teach and touch,” Schoenhut said. “In the store, [children] can weigh beans or write a letter and post it at the post office. At school, they can pretend to be the teacher.” Fred Campbell, executive director of the historical society, said the new museum is meant to be a tactile museum.

Leadership Anne Arundel, a training and networking institute in Anne Arundel County, has announced its 2022 New Leaders Honorees. The class recognizes those who have stepped into positions of leadership in the past year and show exceptional leadership for the betterment of Anne Arundel County, according to a news release. Honorees were nominated by the program’s alumni and the community at large and come from nonprofit, government or for-profit organizations.

Seven years ago, Scott Kuhlman walked into a Harford County retirement facility and saw first-hand how unprepared some health care professionals can be when responding to an emergency. Then an EMS captain with a local fire department, Kuhlman was approaching a patient suffering from cardiac arrest when he noticed he had walked by three unused defibrillators, all still in their cabinets. None of the health care providers who arrived before him had used the technology to help the patient.