Gbc

Kudos to the Greater Baltimore Committee for an Inner Harbor vision with style and scope ("Walking bridge, light shows, park proposed for Inner Harbor," May 26). These ideas stand in stark contrast to the nine prior proposals for amusements that were more suited to a carnival midway than to the heart of a great city. Randolph Knepper

The City Council voted unanimously Monday night to approve a bill that will require businesses getting large city contracts or financial support to hire 51 percent of new workers from Baltimore. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will let the bill become law without her signature, her spokesman said afterward. Approval of the legislation, sponsored by Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young, means Baltimore will join cities including San Francisco and Boston in adopting such an ordinance.

Mayor Schmoke's unexpected proposal for the business community to follow the city's lead and earmark 23 percent of its contracting, purchasing and professional services business to firms owned by women and minorities is a challenge the Greater Baltimore Committee and its members cannot afford to ignore.Schmoke's vision of an "inclusive" future in which minorities and women participate fully in Baltimore's development is an economic necessity as well as a moral imperative. As the mayor told business leaders at the GBC's annual dinner last week: "Our city cannot be the economic success story all of us want if the majority of our people are left behind."

In his remarks to the Greater Baltimore Committee's annual meeting Wednesday night, T. Rowe Price Chairman Brian C. Rogers noted a contradiction in how the world sees Maryland as a place to do business. On the one hand, it is universally recognized for its top-ranked school systems and universities, skilled workforce, research activity, potential for innovation, and great quality of life. On the other, it frequently winds up toward the bottom of rankings of business competitiveness — most recently, by CEO Magazine — largely because of our tax system and regulatory environment.

T. Rowe Price senior executive Brian C. Rogers is to become the chairman of the Greater Baltimore Committee at its meeting Tuesday. Rogers, chairman and chief investment officer at the Baltimore money manager, has served on the GBC board of directors since 2007. He will succeed the outgoing GBC chairman, Charles O. Monk II, managing partner at Saul Ewing's Baltimore office. Hanah.cho@baltsun.com Text BUSINESS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun Business text alerts

In its 38 years as the champion of Maryland's largest city and its metropolitan region, the Greater Baltimore Committee has had only two chief executives. When Donald P. Hutchinson takes over the helm in mid-October, he will become a president of a leadership group with a proud past, confusing present and a challenging future.William Boucher III, GBC's chief executive from 1955 to 1981, brought to the job a business background and an intimate knowledge of Baltimore as a city ruled by old families.

The moment of truth came early yesterday morning. It passed -- and nothing happened.Only about 30 people showed up at the organizational meeting of the proposed Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce, despite the presence of Gov. William Donald Schaefer, City Council President Mary Pat Clarke and Councilman Anthony J. Ambridge. After an hour of presentations and discussion, a steering committee was set up. It has no set membership, no timetable.For the past several weeks, there has been talk about setting up a chamber of commerce separate from the Greater Baltimore Committee, which gobbled up the previous chamber in 1977.

For many decades, visitors arriving in Baltimore by train from the north have received a rude greeting: a panorama of urban decrepitude with block after block of boarded-up homes lining the Amtrak tracks on the city's east side. The Greater Baltimore Committee wants to change that. The business advocacy group is calling on the city and Amtrak to work together to create a more attractive gateway to improve Baltimore's image and the quality of life in the neighborhoods along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.

An influential group of Baltimore business and civic leaders coalesced Friday behind a proposal to build a new downtown arena that would be connected to an expanded Convention Center as part of a large redevelopment project on the Inner Harbor parcel that includes the Sheraton Hotel. The Greater Baltimore Committee said its board voted to study the plan. The project would replace the aging 1st Mariner Arena while adding convention space and renewing a dated wing of the Baltimore Convention Center on a site roughly bounded by Pratt, South Charles and Conway streets.

Talking about building a Baltimore economy based on biomedical businesses was easy.Now comes the hard part -- pulling it off.That task falls to the Greater Baltimore Committee, which announced its shining vision of Baltimore's economic future in May, amid much fanfare. "Baltimore: Where Science Comes to Life" laid down a collective gauntlet to educators, businesspeople and politicians to transform the region's economy from one based on smokestacks to test tubes.It's early yet to gauge accurately how far away that objective might be, GBC Deputy Director Tom J. Chmura said yesterday.

Jan Houbolt may be the most influential Baltimorean you've never heard of. As head of the Greater Baltimore Committee's Leadership Program since 1989, he has helped groom some of the state's up-and-coming leaders through a 10-month-long series of site visits and conversations that help them examine the city in all its complexity. Mr. Houbolt will retire in December, so this year's class, his 25th, will be his last. I talked to him about why a white sociology major from a historically black university took a job with Baltimore's business elite - and some of what he saw along the way. Q: Where did you grow up?

T. Rowe Price senior executive Brian C. Rogers is to become the chairman of the Greater Baltimore Committee at its meeting Tuesday. Rogers, chairman and chief investment officer at the Baltimore money manager, has served on the GBC board of directors since 2007. He will succeed the outgoing GBC chairman, Charles O. Monk II, managing partner at Saul Ewing's Baltimore office. Hanah.cho@baltsun.com Text BUSINESS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun Business text alerts

County Executive Ken Ulman received the Greater Baltimore Committee's 2011 Regional Visionary Award at the group's annual meeting May 25 in Baltimore. The committee is a regional organization comprised of more than 500 businesses, nonprofits and educational and civic organizations. Founded in 1955, the group aims to improve the region's business climate by gathering its corporate and civil leaders to come up with new ideas. Donald Fry, the group's president recognized Ulman for his innovative approach to governance.

Kudos to the Greater Baltimore Committee for an Inner Harbor vision with style and scope ("Walking bridge, light shows, park proposed for Inner Harbor," May 26). These ideas stand in stark contrast to the nine prior proposals for amusements that were more suited to a carnival midway than to the heart of a great city. Randolph Knepper

The Greater Baltimore Committee is offering a tantalizing series of ideas for remaking downtown Baltimore and the Inner Harbor, but unlike many of the flashy artists' renderings boosters hail one day and forget the next, these have the distinction of being fiscally and logistically plausible. In combining a proposal for an expanded convention center, arena and hotel complex with a remake of Rash Field and a water and lights show for the Inner Harbor, the group has hit upon a mix that could keep the area attractive to tourists but also make it inviting to locals.

Construction magnate Willard Hackerman has offered to finance and build an 18,500-seat arena in downtown Baltimore, civic leaders say, freeing taxpayers from having to foot the bill and significantly increasing the chances that plans for a $900 million convention center expansion and arena will become a reality. News of Hackerman's offer was made public Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Greater Baltimore Committee, a private business group that has been exploring ways to build an arena that would be combined with an expanded convention center to bolster the city's tourism business and add life to Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Seven Baltimore-based businesses that have shown marked growth in the last year received the Greater Baltimore Committee's Venture Award yesterday.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke was on hand as Aegon, USA; Carr-Lowery Glass Co.; Curtis Engineering; JCM Controls Systems Inc.; Polk Audio; Port East Transfer; and Waverly Inc. received their awards.The seven companies were honored for exemplifying various kinds of expansion, including growth in facilities, equipment, employees or geographic market, said Charlie Goldberg, director communications for the GBC."

Donald P. Hutchinson jokes that his commute won't change '' much next Monday when he becomes president of the Greater && Baltimore Committee. But the style of the business and civic advocacy group is going to change a lot. And its substance is going to change at least a little.The 47-year-old former Baltimore County executive's new office in the Legg Mason tower at Pratt and Calvert streets will be only 15 floors below his old digs at the Maryland Business Council, the parent of the state Chamber of Commerce, where he has worked since he left politics in 1987.

A new high-rise Sheraton Hotel would be part of any expansion of the Baltimore Convention Center on the site of the existing Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel, under a proposal that the nonprofit Greater Baltimore Committee is studying. GBC president Donald C. Fry said in a radio interview Monday that a new Sheraton could rise on the north side of Conway Street between South Charles and Sharp streets. It would replace the existing Sheraton, which would be razed under the proposal to make way for an 18,500-seat arena and convention center expansion.

An influential group of Baltimore business and civic leaders coalesced Friday behind a proposal to build a new downtown arena that would be connected to an expanded Convention Center as part of a large redevelopment project on the Inner Harbor parcel that includes the Sheraton Hotel. The Greater Baltimore Committee said its board voted to study the plan. The project would replace the aging 1st Mariner Arena while adding convention space and renewing a dated wing of the Baltimore Convention Center on a site roughly bounded by Pratt, South Charles and Conway streets.