Baltimore Development Corp

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels told the Baltimore Development Corp. board Thursday that the academic powerhouse has a moral obligation to "share our bounty" with the city. Daniels said that he sees Hopkins students, faculty and staff as privileged and that each has a responsibility to help revitalize Baltimore by addressing homelessness, preparing children for good jobs, ending violence and reversing significant health problems. "You can't sequester our institutions from the community," Daniels told the development board at its monthly meeting.

When asked 16 years ago to head Baltimore's economic development agency, M.J. "Jay" Brodie really didn't want the job. The 75-year-old Brodie, who will retire from the Baltimore Development Corp. after serving as president under four mayors, is credited with helping to usher in major waterfront redevelopment, strengthen neighborhood commercial districts and attract and retain employers. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Brodie will leave a legacy as a major contributor to the city's continuing renaissance.

JAY BRODIE WAS Baltimore's housing commissioner in the 1970s at a time when urban homesteading and other innovations created a feeling of optimism about the city's future. His return to local government as president of the Baltimore Development Corp. shows Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke is serious about correcting some of the past deficiencies of his administration.To further enhance BDC's credibility as a professional organization, Mayor Schmoke authorized the termination of Shapiro and Olander as the agency's chief counsel.

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels told the Baltimore Development Corp. board Thursday that the academic powerhouse has a moral obligation to "share our bounty" with the city. Daniels said that he sees Hopkins students, faculty and staff as privileged and that each has a responsibility to help revitalize Baltimore by addressing homelessness, preparing children for good jobs, ending violence and reversing significant health problems. "You can't sequester our institutions from the community," Daniels told the development board at its monthly meeting.

WITH development activity heating up east of Baltimore's Inner Harbor, civic leaders plan to hire an urban design expert to help coordinate it all.The Baltimore Development Corp. sought bids this year from urban experts who would like to be consultants for the design study, set to begin this spring.The study area is bounded by the Inner Harbor on the south; Frederick Street on the west; East Baltimore Street on the north; and Central Avenue on the east. Attractions include the old city fish market; the Brokerage at 34 Market Place; the new city police headquarters annex; Museum Row and the Inner Harbor East Metro stop.

Four of Baltimore's 10 Main Streets initiatives would be eliminated under proposed budget cuts to the city's economic development arm. Officials from the quasi-public Baltimore Development Corp., which works to create and retain jobs and redevelop commercial property in the city, outlined a scaled-back version of the agency's activities for Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake at a budget hearing Tuesday. The Main Streets program, which is based on a plan developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, makes grants to small businesses for facade and streetscape improvements as a way of attracting more business and foot traffic to certain areas of the city.

Baltimore's Inner Harbor already enjoys a reputation as an urban success story, but many of the country's leading designers are eager to help make it even better. Fourteen teams have expressed interest in formulating a new master plan for the Inner Harbor, after the Baltimore Development Corp. issued a formal request this fall. The bidders range from local firms such as RTKL Associates and Design Collective to nationally prominent designers such as Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Cooper Robertson and Partners - two firms that have been hired to redesign the former site of the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan.

Return the phone calls, M. Jay Brodie admonishes his people. Get the little stuff right. Push the sanitation department to install sidewalk trash cans for the litter-bound merchant. Help the guy who needs a zoning change."Of such great things is economic development made," says Brodie, the president of Baltimore Development Corp. since January. "I'm not being facetious."He's really not.BDC, the city's economic development agency, was bashed in the past for getting the little stuff wrong -- for ignoring messages, losing paperwork and failing to help its main customers, Baltimore's businesses.

M.J. "Jay" Brodie, who has headed Baltimore's economic development agency under four mayors and helped shepherd projects such as the Harbor East redevelopment, said Thursday he plans to retire. The Baltimore native and former city housing commissioner is credited with overseeing initiatives to create thousands of jobs and to attract and keep hundreds of businesses in the city during his 16 years as president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's quasi-public economic development arm. Brodie, viewed as highly influential in city development, also has drawn criticism from residents and business owners who have complained about being pushed out by urban renewal and about the secrecy under which they say his agency has operated.

The Baltimore Development Corp., the quasi-public agency that has shepherded countless major building projects in Baltimore to completion, has certainly done its share of good over the years in helping to revitalize the city. But the progress the agency has made also has come at a cost: The BDC operates under a shadowy set of rules that, even agency alums acknowledge, are rarely codified and instead are more or less handed down from generation to generation in a kind of municipal oral tradition.

M.J. "Jay" Brodie, who has headed Baltimore's economic development agency under four mayors and helped shepherd projects such as the Harbor East redevelopment, said Thursday he plans to retire. The Baltimore native and former city housing commissioner is credited with overseeing initiatives to create thousands of jobs and to attract and keep hundreds of businesses in the city during his 16 years as president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's quasi-public economic development arm. Brodie, viewed as highly influential in city development, also has drawn criticism from residents and business owners who have complained about being pushed out by urban renewal and about the secrecy under which they say his agency has operated.

Among the many advantages Constellation Energy's headquarters gives Baltimore — Fortune 500 cachet, hundreds of well-paid workers, millions in charity — is this: The building pays sticker price on property taxes — $745,000 a year. You probably won't be able to say that about its replacement, which Exelon Corp. and developer John Paterakis propose to build at Harbor Point. Exelon is close to a deal to buy Constellation, which owns Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. Sensitive about seizing a Maryland corporate heirloom, Chicago-based Exelon promised to put the green energy and retail marketing divisions of the combined company in a new Baltimore building.

The City Council's finance committee chairman threatened Thursday to impose a moratorium on tax breaks for developers until City Hall implements more transparency in the process and funds more projects outside of downtown. Carl Stokes, who chairs the Taxation, Finance and Economic Development Committee, said he wants to see City Hall implement nearly a dozen recommendations from a task force composed of some of Baltimore's best-known business and political leaders before he would allow any more PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes)

A historic former school in East Baltimore that has been vacant for years could be transformed into college classrooms or offices under proposals heard by city officials Wednesday. Two groups have submitted plans to the Baltimore Development Corp. to buy and renovate the four-story Gompers Building at 1701 E. North Ave. The 1905 structure housed Eastern High School until 1950. Afterward it served as a vocational school and then as affordable apartments through a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program.

A city-owned inn in Midtown-Belvedere has been sold to a private developer with plans to convert the property into a boutique hotel, according to the city's economic development entity. The corporate buyer agreed to pay $725,000 for the Inn at Government House, a three-building complex that was converted under then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer, said Darrell Doan, the Baltimore Development Corp.'s director of economic development for the eastern half of the city. Mount Vernon Mansion LLC, the purchasing company, is led by Eddie Brown of the Baltimore investment firm Brown Capital Management and Martin Azola of real estate developer Azola & Associates.

A neighborhood meeting in Northwest Baltimore to discuss a new supermarket opened with soft organ music and bowed heads, demonstrating the importance of such a facility to a community that has done without one for more than a decade. "We pray this night for this area, called Howard Park, in particular," the Rev. Donald Sterling said Friday at the pulpit in New All Saints Catholic Church, off Liberty Heights Avenue. On either side of the altar were displayed plans for a 68,000-square-foot state-of-the-art grocery store with more than 200 parking spaces.

A city-owned inn in Midtown-Belvedere has been sold to a private developer with plans to convert the property into a boutique hotel, according to the city's economic development entity. The corporate buyer agreed to pay $725,000 for the Inn at Government House, a three-building complex that was converted under then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer, said Darrell Doan, the Baltimore Development Corp.'s director of economic development for the eastern half of the city. Mount Vernon Mansion LLC, the purchasing company, is led by Eddie Brown of the Baltimore investment firm Brown Capital Management and Martin Azola of real estate developer Azola & Associates.

Baltimore's $1.2 million settlement agreement with a group it had picked to develop a parcel the city now wants to make available for a slots casino was the right thing to do. There was no indication that the Gateway South sports/office complex originally slated for the site was going to come to fruition anytime soon, and it was important to resolve any legal entanglements over the parcel — which fronts Russell Street between M&T Bank Stadium and...

The head of the quasi-public city agency that negotiated a 2007 deal over a parcel of land near the city's planned slots parlor defended the handling of the agreement Wednesday, as the city approved a $1.2 million settlement to free the land for gambling development. Baltimore Development Corp. President M.J. "Jay" Brodie said high-ranking city officials were well-versed in the terms of the original deal with the developers behind the 11-acre Gateway South sports complex, including a clause that would require the city to repay the developers for studies they undertook in planning the project if the city terminated the deal.