Business

Frontier Airlines is making it easier for Baltimore travelers to visit the west coast of Florida, with new frequent flights starting this fall. The Denver-based airline announced Thursday that it will add daily flights between Tampa and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport starting Nov. 16. Introductory fares start at $39, according to a press release from the airline.

Johns Hopkins University is planning to build a life sciences center in East Baltimore, but graduate students are concerned about how the demolition of several academic buildings to make way for the center could impact their working conditions. Hopkins is demolishing the Hampton House at 624 N. Broadway and two nearby facilities to make room for the new building. A university spokesperson did not disclose the estimated size of the upcoming building or its cost but confirmed that demolition will start in 2024.

A proposed office-to-residential redevelopment in North Bethesda is moving ahead, with final land use applications now headed for planning agency consideration. Missing Middle Jefferson LLC owns the empty 139,000-square-foot, 1980s-era office building located on 5.6 acres at 2115 E. Jefferson St. about half a mile west of the Pike & Rose mixed-use project. Montgomery County’s land use regulatory agency on Aug. 21 formally accepted the company’s preliminary and site plan applications to raze the office and replace it with 86 townhomes.

Prince George’s Community College has become an Amazon Career Choice program partner and the corporation’s employees are eligible to enroll at the college this fall. Career Choice is an educational enrichment benefit that covers tuition and mandatory fees for credit-bearing undergraduate degrees and certificates.

The former manufacturing plant surrounding the Guinness Open Gate Brewery has hit the market as Diageo North America Inc.’s presence in Baltimore County continues to shrink. Diageo listed the 45-acre property — which does not include the Open Gate Brewery — at 5001 Washington Blvd. last week in another move toward downsizing at the site in Relay near Interstates 95 and 895. A leasing brochure from JLL, hired to handle the sale, says the deal aims to close by early October.

A long-simmering legal dispute over vacant waterfront land in Westport could be resolved without a trial, as the developer planning a community there and the operator of proposed high speed rail said Tuesday they hope to reach a settlement. A trial was scheduled to start Tuesday in Baltimore Circuit Court in an eminent domain case that Baltimore Washington Rapid Rail LLC filed in June 2021 against property owners Stonewall Capital and Westport Capital Development.

Iya Kenya MahaliyaDara loves her Northwest Baltimore home, but she’s getting tired of her neighbors. For the past seven years, the 48-year-old Baltimore native has lived in a Park Heights rowhome she inherited from her mother. Next door is a vacant home where rats, mice, roaches, nests of hornets, feral cats and a family of raccoons live.b MahaliyaDara said she has tried contacting the owner — an LLC based in College Park that hasn’t been in good standing with the state since 2007 — and gotten no response. She thinks it’s time for the city to act.

In the last two years, Baltimore County developers received almost 1,000 exemptions from having to pay fees that would have gone toward building public infrastructure, generating far less money than the county expected to recoup. Between January 2021 and December 2021, developers received 539 exemptions. The following year, between January 2022 and December 2022, they received 459 exemptions, for a total of 998 exemptions, according to data from the Baltimore County Planning Board.