Business In Baltimore

A 33-year-old man was found fatally shot inside a business in Baltimore's Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood Saturday afternoon, city police said yesterday. The victim, Mitchell Briggs Jr., was found by officers responding to the 1600 block of Abbotston St. for a shooting reported at 3:34 p.m. He was inside a business that police did not identify. He had been shot several times with a handgun, said Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman. Briggs, of the 1500 block of Carswell St., was pronounced dead an hour later at Johns Hopkins Hospital, police said.

Baltimore is undergoing a transformation. At least that's what Anne M. McCarthy says. And as dean of the University of Baltimore's Merrick School of Business, McCarthy plans to see the school transform with the city. "Business in Baltimore is changing, from Sparrows Point to Locust Point, from old, larger corporate firms to young, smaller entrepreneurial firms, and that's the future of building business in Baltimore," McCarthy said. And so the business school is expanding its entrepreneurial focus: Its Web site will help local entrepreneurs who want to open businesses.

A Business section article Jan. 6 reported that the Swiss line Mediterranean Shipping Co. made Baltimore the first port of call for its North Atlantic service, bypassing Hampton Roads, Va. The story did not make clear that Virginia remains on the shipper's port rotation. The Sun regrets the errors. One of the port of Baltimore's biggest customers has reduced or dropped service at two competing ports to bring more business up the Chesapeake Bay, a rare reversal in the world of East Coast containerized-cargo shipping.

James J. White, who left the port of Baltimore because of political tension with his new bosses in the Ehrlich administration, began a new job yesterday in New Jersey with a company that does business with about a dozen U.S. ports, including Baltimore's. White became senior vice president and chief operating officer of the Weehawken, N.J.-based stevedoring and terminal operating company Ceres Terminals Inc. The move eases the fears of some in Baltimore's maritime industry who thought White might take his reputation and contacts to a competing port.

Baltimore County is testing the power of pavement. Local and state leaders have bet more than $60 million that extending a four-lane highway almost four miles from White Marsh to Middle River will bring at least 10,000 jobs to an area in need of a shot in the arm. Usually, a road project is as much about getting commuters safely and speedily from point A to point B as getting businesses to move in. Baltimore County's Route 43 extension was conceived purely...

Charles Herbert Thompson, a retired assistant superintendent of building maintenance for the city who also had a catering business featuring West Indian food, died Tuesday of an infection after surgery at Bon Secours Hospital. He was 74 and lived on Druid Park Lake Drive in Baltimore. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Mr. Thompson joined the U.S. Navy in 1952 -- where he learned to cook -- and was honorably discharged in 1959. He later served in the merchant marines from 1966 until 1968, when he settled in Baltimore.

Joseph L. Wilner, a former Baltimore men's clothing manufacturer and champion golfer, died of dementia Tuesday at Manor Care Roland Park. He was 97. Born and raised in Baltimore, Mr. Wilner was a 1924 graduate of City College. He attended the Johns Hopkins University until leaving to help his father, a Russian-born clothing-cutter, establish a business making men's suits. They opened the business in Baltimore's old garment district at Baltimore and Howard streets in 1926. The firm, which became known as Kass Wilner & Sons, manufactured and sold men's suits, slacks and sports coats to stores in Baltimore and throughout the South.

IRECENTLY walked past the long closed Danny's Restaurant at Charles and Biddle streets and thought about how its patrons would fill the place, maybe after a day at Pimlico, possibly the Preakness. And of how so many of Baltimore's restaurants and nightspots had their house musicians, those wonderful pianists, sidemen and singers whose versions of a song will always stay with you. And while I never knew him, I think of men like Howard "Church" Anderson Sr., who died May 6 at age 90 in his West Baltimore home.

Willard W. Scruggs, 71, Bethlehem Steel worker Willard W. Scruggs, a retired steelworker and active member of Fulton Baptist Church, died Monday of an aneurysm at University of Maryland Medical Center. He was 71 and lived in West Baltimore. Mr. Scruggs worked for 30 years as a sheet handler at Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point plant, retiring in 1986. Born and raised in Buckingham, Va., where he also graduated from high school, Mr. Scruggs moved to Baltimore in 1950. Mr. Scruggs was a member for more than 30 years at Fulton Baptist, where he was a deacon, choir member and usher, and also worked as a sexton for seven years.

One might think that a company in the business of private and corporate aviation would have little business to speak of after two weeks of airport closures and frightened fliers. But Signature Flight Support, which services general aviation at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, reports just the opposite. At a time when major airlines are laying off thousands of workers, Signature's 40 employees at BWI are scampering to meet increased demand. They serve about 35 flights a day. "It's a different story at Baltimore than at a lot of other airports we serve around the country," said Steve Lee, the Florida company's senior vice president of marketing and business development.