Economic Impact

The Carroll County Farmer's Market marked its 42nd anniversary Saturday with a bounty of seasonal fruits and vegetables, baked goods, fresh flowers, handmade crafts, even emu products. Because it was a party, customers were treated to punch and cake. The market, which opens from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays through Sept. 1, includes a cafeteria serving breakfast and lunch. Each week features a different demonstration, and Master Gardeners are always in attendance to offer advice on planting and growing problems.

Arts and culture activity in the city had a $388.2 million total economic impact in 2010, according to a study released Friday by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts. A previous version of the study, conducted every five years, found a $270 million impact in 2005. The study, Arts & Economic Prosperity IV, was conducted by the nonprofit Americans for the Arts. For 2010, it identifies about $266 million in total direct expenditures by nonprofit arts and culture organizations, and about $122 million in total direct expenditures by their audiences.

The once financially-troubled Bon Secours Baltimore Health System now contributes $226.3 million to the city's economy, a new analysis has found. The analysis, done by Richard Clinch, director of Economic Research at the Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore, looked at the economic impact of the hospital's direct services and indirect effects.  It found that Bon Secours supports 1,532 jobs that provide $94 million in annual compensation.

Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, who is up for reelection this year, began airing the second in a series of television advertisements Tuesday, this one focused on the economic impact of his efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay. The ad, titled “Oysternomics,” features the senator working on an oyster boat as a narrator explains that “by helping restore thousands of acres of oyster beds, he kept hundreds of oystermen on the job.” The narrator goes...

Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, who so far appears to be in a strong position to win a second term this year, began airing his first in a series of television ads today touting his accomplishments in Congress. The first spot, which will run on broadcast television in Baltimore and on cable in the Washington suburbs, focuses on Cardin's successful effort to guarantee dental benefits for patients covered under the federal Children's Health Insurance program. The legislation came in response to a 12-year-old Prince George's County boy who died in 2007 after an infection from an abscessed tooth spread to his brain.

It's hard to argue that more transparency isn't called for in planning for another Baltimore Grand Prix ("Officials mum on Grand Prix selection process," Jan. 10). As Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke points out, "We lost a lot of taxpayers' money," and this taxpayer doesn't want to see that happen again. I have no doubt that the process being followed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is legal, but that does not ensure that it will be either prudent or responsible. The mayor should, at a minimum, be willing to tell us how decisions are being made.

Baltimore City's current financial distress is caused in large part by the bleeding of population to surrounding counties and elsewhere and the exodus of Baltimore based businesses that have followed the population migration. A financially successful Grand Prix would have given the city a much needed lift. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. While Pittsburgh-based Forward Analytics estimated that the economic impact for the city was $47 million, far less than expected, a UMBC sports economics professor estimated that the race prompted only about $15 million in additional spending.

City officials are calling the Baltimore Grand Prix an economic success, but a new study conducted for the city's tourism arm suggests that it funneled far less money to local businesses than race organizers predicted. The report for Visit Baltimore, released Friday, estimates that spectators from outside the Baltimore region, non-local vendors and race promoters spent almost $28 million in and near the city during the Labor Day weekend event. Baltimore Racing Development, the financially beleaguered race organizer, issued its own report last year that projected about $70 million in race-fueled spending.

If Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has one regret about the Baltimore Grand Prix, it would probably be her use of the phrase "game changer" to describe the event's impact on Baltimore. Given the magnitude of the city's problems and the fleeting nature of the race, that kind of promise set up a level of expectation that three days of cars zooming around the Inner Harbor could not possibly meet. That, essentially, is the point of a new study by Dennis Coates, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Michael T. Friedman of the University of Maryland's School of Public Health.

Baltimore Grand Prix attendees spent as much as $25 million — far short of the $70 million projected by race organizers, according to an economic impact survey released this week. In their report , two Maryland professors also found about three-quarters of attendees came from Maryland and estimated that $10 million of the spending on restaurants and other entertainment over that Labor Day weekend would have happened even without the races as a draw. "Based on our survey information, the Baltimore Grand Prix was certainly not a game-changer," Dennis Coates, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Michael T. Friedman of the School of Public Health at University of Maryland College Park wrote in their report.