Business

I love supporting Black-owned businesses. There’s a certain level of joy I get out of seeing thriving Black business owners in the neighborhoods where they grew up giving back to their communities and living out their dreams. Seeing the passion, creativity, and resiliency in Black-owned businesses is exciting, especially in a city like Baltimore. People from outside of Baltimore don’t get it: Our swagger, our culture, our history that gives us the freedom to operate like we do and have the can-do attitude to push through any obstacle.

Thirty-five years after the Orioles announced their arrival in Baltimore, then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer introduced a “distinguished visitor” to mark the end of a meeting that would redefine the MLB team’s relationship with the state of Maryland. The Oriole Bird came into the conference room and rallied the elected officials and bureaucrats with a chant of “O-R-I-O-L-E-S.” The occasion — final approval of a state-of-the-art, taxpayer-funded stadium in exchange for the Orioles’ long-term commitment to Baltimore — came on the heels of the painful departure a few years earlier of the NFL’s Colts.

The team leading the development of Baltimore Peninsula in South Baltimore’s Port Covington neighborhood unveiled a conceptual design of The Exchange, a brick-and-mortar marketplace designed to bolster small and local merchants. Scheduled to open late next year, The Exchange — which is using BCT Design Group, the designers behind the newly reopened Lexington Market in Downtown Baltimore — will consist of 13 spaces ranging from 90 square feet to 165 square feet as well as a food stall, seating area and space for a yoga studio and multipurpose room.

With their lease expiring in five weeks, the Orioles and the state of Maryland are considering separating the complex — and potentially contentious — issue of stadium-area development rights from the pressing need to finalize a lease binding the team to Baltimore for the long term, according to two people with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

Oak View Group (OVG), the company that redeveloped CFG Bank Arena and has a 30-year lease on the property, considered building a new arena before committing to renovating Baltimore’s existing Downtown arena. OVG CEO Tim Leiweke was a guest on Weller Development’s ‘From The Ground Up’ podcast and detailed the different opportunities the organization considered in the years leading up to the CFG Bank Arena renovation.

Green Street Housing and TM Associates Development, two of Maryland’s largest affordable rental housing developers, hosted a groundbreaking ceremony Monday for Sligo Apartments, a 98-unit apartment community in Silver Spring. Sligo Apartments, at 715 Sligo Ave., is a new construction residential development that is 100% affordable with restricted rents.

For three months running, Maryland has had the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. But that’s not necessarily cause for celebration. The state’s jobless rate dropped to 1.7% in August, then fell to the lowest level ever — yes, ever — recorded for any state in September at 1.6%, government figures showed. It edged back up in October to 1.7%, beating out North Dakota for the low mark, the U.S. Department of Labor reported recently.

The union for Southwest Airlines Co. pilots will open a Baltimore-area “strike center” as negotiations for a new contract continue. The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, also known as SWAPA, will open a regional strike center in Columbia on Nov. 28, which will act as a centralized space for pilots if a strike occurs. The center’s opening comes ahead of a last attempt at negotiations with the assistance of the National Mediation Board on Nov. 30 and is the latest development after more than three years of contract talks.