Business

With a strike deadline looming, the group representing East and Gulf Coast ports is asking a federal agency to make the Longshoremen’s union come to the bargaining table to negotiate a new contract. The U.S. Maritime Alliance says it filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that the International Longshoremen’s Association is not bargaining in good faith.

Potomac Edison has sent a group of approximately 30 line workers to the Carolinas to assist Duke Energy with anticipated outages related to Tropical Storm Helene. The crew members are from service centers throughout Potomac Edison’s Maryland and West Virginia service territory and left early in the morning on Wednesday, Sept. 25.

A growing youth and amateur sports company is launching its first social pickleball club location complete with a beer garden and a nearby cafe. Coppermine’s latest venture, Copper Union, will celebrate its grand opening at the company’s complex at 5700B Cottonworth Ave. in Mt. Washington on Oct. 4-5. The more adult-centric club, which is open to the public, is accompanied by a beer garden area next to its eight courts and the Copper Cafe & Soundbar on Falls Road.

The Maryland Department of Health has agreed to renew Kaiser Permanente’s contract as a Medicaid provider, averting an outcome that one prominent health care advocate said would have amounted to a blow to public health. Gene Ransom, CEO of the independent Maryland State Medical Society, said Tuesday that a tentative decision made by the state health department last week to remove the health care giant from its list of managed care organizations (MCOs) that provide care through Medicaid would have left about 110,000 Marylanders without health care coverage and seeking new doctors with little time to adjust their status.

On a recent Friday afternoon, the scene outside the decades-old office buildings of Columbia Gateway is eerily quiet. Few people are strolling outside, and there are parking lots as far as the eye can see. The tired late-summer sun shines on the occasional car driving along the streets, which pass “For Lease” signs at almost every other building.

Pava LaPere’s colleagues at EcoMap Technologies helped make one of her dreams come true on Tuesday. LaPere, an up-and-coming tech CEO, was remembered at the EcoMap SuperConnect Conference. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and LaPere’s colleagues had a lot to say. “Her loss was not only tragic, it was heartbreaking,” Moore said.

Steak and fries chain Medium Rare has closed its Baltimore location after less than a year in operation, according to founder Mark Bucher. Since the restaurant opened in Hampden’s Rotunda in November, “our losses were massive,” Bucher said, totaling $480,000. The restaurant — which originated in Washington, D.C., and has locations in Columbia and Bethesda, Dallas, New Orleans, and Arlington, Virginia — is “killing it everywhere else.”