Business

Chase Bank announced Tuesday that it plans to open an additional 50 branches across Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia as part of a major national expansion. The banking giant said that by 2027 it expects to have 190 branches open in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region, including one new branch in Baltimore and an additional 10 in the Baltimore metropolitan area.

The Webstaurant Store LLC has executed a long-term lease to use a 1.2 million-square-foot building near Funkstown as a distribution center, according to a news release from MCB Real Estate. Webstaurant expects to have over 700 new jobs at the facility once it’s at full capacity, according to the release and Kristen Durkin, spokesperson for MCB Real Estate. Durkin said the lease is for more than 10 years.

Montgomery County is moving closer to overhauling a land use master plan to spur more development with a greater mix of uses along its I-270 corridor, particularly in an area of Rockville seen as the epicenter of the county’s life sciences industry. The Great Seneca Science Corridor Master Plan, adopted in 2010, aimed to encourage economic growth across 4,300 noncontiguous acres, with a particular focus on a big area dubbed the Life Sciences Center, just west of the City of Rockville.

Thrive Earlier Detection Corp., a startup company based on early cancer testing technology developed at the Johns Hopkins University, was snatched up three years ago and is now planning to move out of Baltimore. Another startup spun from the same revered Hopkins team called Haystack Oncology was bought last year by New Jersey-based giant Quest Diagnostics but plans to stay long term in the city.

InventWood (IW), an early-stage company born out of its incubator space at the University of Maryland, College Park, Monday signed a lease with Baltimore-based commercial real estate brokerage firm KLNB for a 88,971-square-foot commercial industrial space in Frederick to serve as the company’s new headquarters. Located at 5971 Jefferson Station Court, the property lease was coordinated by KLNB Vice President Kristin Rebeck, who acted as IW’s tenant representative.

Brendan Dorr wonders what caused business at his Dutch Courage gin bar to fall dramatically this year and if the same thing could happen to his upcoming Remington spot. Blame it on Dry January, holiday fatigue, inflation, bad weather or just the winter blues, but Dorr isn’t the only one in Baltimore’s restaurant industry who saw sales drop last month. Some restaurateurs are wondering where the customers have gone, especially during the week.

The newly remodeled Dollar General store in Blue Ridge Summit helped the company surpass 5,000 locations selling fresh produce, a milestone reached in late January. The store at 15038 Buchanan Trail East now sells produce in addition to its traditional products. The Blue Ridge Summit store joins three others in Franklin County, Pa., as well as five in Washington County, Md., carrying the top 20 fresh items typically sold in traditional grocery stores.

With a requirement of adding 1,000 affordable housing units to its housing stock by 2028, Baltimore County government leaders have struck a deal with Baltimore City-based developer P. David Bramble to preserve nearly 500 below-market rate units for as long as four decades. The agreement allows the developer to substitute a negotiated payment for annual property taxes, called a payment in lieu of taxes exemption, or PILOT, for at least 20 years, with the option to extend another 20 years.