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

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.

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Greater Baltimore Committee, saying it would undergo a "course correction," has decided to shift its focus toward the everyday problems of business and economic development.The change of direction comes as the business group is poised to launch a search for a new president and just months afterbeing criticized for ignoring the needs of small- and mid-sized businesses. The discontent culminated in the creation of the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce in January.The GBC said it would strengthen its service to members and expand its focus beyond long-range economic goals and concentrate more on more immediate problems in the Baltimore area.

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.

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.

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.

Greater Baltimore Committee President Donald C. Fry said his group will fight a proposal by General Assembly budget analysts to divert money expected to go toward transportation to the state general fund. Under a state law adopted in 2008, the percentage of the state's sales tax revenue that goes to the Transportation Trust Fund is expected to increase from 5.3 percent to 6.5 percent starting with the budget year that begins July 1, 2013. The state Department of Legislative Services urged the legislature Wednesday to cancel that increase and keep the money for general use. Such a move would cost the fund almost $60 million a year in the early years of the change, which would be permanent.

Baltimore City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake wants to tap a prominent business-group leader to head a commission examining the city's troubled fire and police pension system. Donald C. Fry, president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, has accepted an invitation from Rawlings-Blake and City Councilman William H. Cole IV to lead an effort to review a retirement program whose ballooning costs have created what both call a "fiscal crisis." "You want to make sure that these funds are sustainable and you do have enough money to support them," said Fry, a former Harford County state senator who is also heading a panel to award slot-machine licenses in Maryland.

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."

The Greater Baltimore Committee, the area's pre-eminent business organization, yesterday ended its four-month search for new president by naming Donald P. Hutchinson, who has spent his career in the inner circles of Baltimore's and Maryland's business and political communities.Mr. Hutchinson, the 47-year-old president of the Maryland Business Council, will replace interim GBC President Walter Sondheim. Former President Robert Keller left in May to become president of Detroit Renaissance Inc., the Motor City's version of the GBC, after 11 years at the helm of the Baltimore organization.

Anirban Basu, a regional economist, used the top presidential candidates' own words to highlight significant differences in their economic and tax policies before an audience of more than 300 Baltimore-area business leaders yesterday. In a follow-up presentation before members of the Greater Baltimore Committee, Richard M. Cripps, a financial markets expert with Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., struck an optimistic note by noting how the U.S. investment markets have rebounded over the long term since the Depression.