Business

Celebrity chef Bryan Voltaggio announced Saturday that his downtown Frederick restaurant Thacher & Rye will close Sunday. “This decision marks the end of a significant chapter for me at the lead of the kitchen here for over 16 years,” Voltaggio wrote in an Instagram post. The restaurant, named after the chef’s son and Maryland’s spirit-making history, opened in September 2020, serving traditional American and mid-Atlantic cuisine.

The Greater Washington Board of Trade is relaunching its Potomac Conference next month, convening business and community leaders to discuss one of the most talked-about challenges in the region today — public safety. More than 100 law enforcement, political, nonprofit, university and business leaders have been invited to attend the conference, which will be held July 9 at the Catholic University of America in D.C., said Jack McDougle, president and CEO of the Board of Trade since 2018.

A Baltimore venture studio is partnering with the Harford County government to transform an old community college building into a hub for scientific research and manufacturing. Early Charm Ventures and Harford County Economic Development are turning the former HEAT Center on 1201 Technology Drive in Aberdeen into a training ground for biomanufacturing materials for the U.S. Military and private industry.

When George Whelan first started working at an industrial equipment company based in Maryland, he was sweeping the floors. More than three decades later, Whelan is one of the 25 employees who has become a millionaire through the company’s employee stock ownership program, or ESOP. Whelan, Alliance Material Handling’s used equipment director, has benefited from the company’s ESOP program after it formed in 2004.

Cannabis taxes paid to the state for the first three months of 2024 grew by less than 1% even as collections fluctuated sharply on a regional basis. Maryland collected nearly $14.7 million in taxes on sales of recreational cannabis in the first quarter of this year, an increase of less than 0.7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the Office of the Comptroller. The data released Wednesday is just the third quarterly report since July 1, 2023, when Maryland residents 21 and older could legally purchase cannabis for recreational use.

Hundreds of new apartments, redesigned streetscapes and improved pedestrian and bus access are among the sweeping changes proposed for a nearly 26-acre area surrounding the Reisterstown Plaza Metro Station, according to a conceptual state plan released this week. State planners envision transforming a large, underused parking lot into six apartment buildings, a parking garage and more than 50,000 square feet of retail space.

After settling a lawsuit in 2022 over an ineffective unemployment insurance system and agreeing to reform the state’s overwhelmed claims process, the Maryland Department of Labor is still failing to make timely payments to thousands of people who are out of work and awaiting their benefits. Claimants and attorneys who sued the state in 2021 have blamed then-Labor Secretary Tiffany Robinson, who was in the role during former Republican Gov.