Corridor Inc.

Cover photo by John Keith
Medical Marvel
Bethesda braces for mega hospital and traffic nightmare
By This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it | Corridor Inc. Assistant Editor
Originally published May 2008
     Beyond the gates of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Rear Admiral John Mateczun and BRAC Manager David “Ollie” Oliveria are striving to pull off a new kind of medical miracle.
     Mateczun and Oliveria have been charged with combining the U.S. Navy facility and Walter Reed Army Medical Center into “the crown jewel” of the military health care system — a mega hospital capable of treating more than 900,000 patients a year, including the nation’s most severely wounded warriors.
  The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission ordered the amalgamation amid media reports of deteriorating conditions at Walter Reed’s Washington, D.C. campus.
“This is the largest infrastructure investment in a medical facility ever made within the military health system,” said Mateczun, commander of the joint task force that oversees all military medical facilities in the national capital region.

BRAC Bulletin

By This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it | Corridor Inc. Assistant Editor
Originally published May 2008
BREAK GROUND, BRING ON THE OFFICE CHAIRS

Rendering of the new DISA facility at Fort Meade. Courtesy of Army Corps

Project managers plunged into the search for new furniture barely a month after awarding the $370 million construction contract for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) headquarters at Fort George G. Meade.
“This is going to be a fast track operation,” said Scott Drumheller, project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District.
The Corps awarded the contract to Virginia-based Hensel-Phelps Construction Co. in February. The company formally accepted the job in early March, and the clock began ticking.
The Corps and Hensel-Phelps have just 1,065 days, which began March 8, to design, build, furnish and turn over a 1 million square foot facility to the Department of Defense’s primary communications agency.
“Time is not our friend,” Drumheller said.

The BRAC Pack

County coordinators tackle growth challenges
By This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it | Corridor Inc. Assistant Editor
Originally published May 2008

They’ve commanded army bases and guided missile destroyers. They’ve launched job-creation campaigns and shepherded legislation through Congress. They’ve tackled assignments ranging from advising the fledgling government of Croatia to performing satirical skits with the Capitol Steps.
Now they’re spearheading efforts in the Baltimore-Washington Corridor to cope with and prosper from dramatic growth at three military bases in the area.

Q&A with David Williams

President and CEO, Merkle
By This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it | Corridor Inc. Staff Writer
Originally published May 2008

This month, David Williams is moving his headquarters — and 350 employees —to this new building in Columbia. Photo by Lisa Helfert.

When David Williams was 25, he bought his first company.
A Philadelphia stockbroker at the time, Williams decided to try his luck in the marketing industry, a field known to fluctuate with economic times.
Twenty years later, Williams, president and CEO of Merkle, a database marketing agency, has grown the company to more than 1,000 employees in six locations across the country and $181 million in revenue.
Under Williams’ leadership, Merkle has delivered marketing solutions to hundreds of nationally recognized clients.

WEB EXCLUSIVE: You're Hired!

College grads ‘sitting pretty’ in slowed economy
By This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it | Corridor Inc. Staff Writer
Originally published May 2008

Davis Thummalatalli, a Montgomery College student, works part time as a customer service representative at Chevy Chase bank in Bethesda. Photo by Lisa Helfert.
     For the past four years Davis Thummalatalli has been preparing for his future. The 23-year-old Montgomery College student works part time as a customer service representative at Chevy Chase Bank in Bethesda.
    “This is preparing me for when I graduate,” he said. “The performance I show here I hope will land me a full time job here when I graduate.”
     Over the last year Chevy Chase Bank has hired more than 100 Montgomery College students to help fill its new branches with skilled workers.

Venues pull out the stops in slowed economy
By This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it | Corridor Inc. Staff Writer
Originally published May 2008
Lori Kolker (right), president of Elle K Associates Inc., meets with Laura Weiss (left), sales manager of the Hilton in Rockville in the hotel’s Library Room. Photo by Christopher Myers.
For the past 11 years, Lori Kolker has perfected the art of meeting planning. From finding the venue to budgeting for food and sleeping accommodations, meetings are her specialty. A shaky economy hasn’t changed that.
Kolker, president and founder of Elle K Associates Inc., a Rockville-based meeting planning and hotel accommodations firm, organizes anywhere from 600 to 1,000 meetings a year. Her clients, which are 50 percent regional, 45 percent international and 5 percent national, include the government sector, nonprofits and corporate world.
“I’m slammed,” she said. “Everyday I’m getting at least four to five meetings and right now I’m juggling about 40 meetings on my desk.”
With the economy teetering on recession, business meeting budgets decreasing and gas prices rising, the Baltimore-Washington Corridor’s meetings industry may suffer a new set of challenges. In order to make ends meet, local meeting venues are beefing up their sales teams, offering value packages and hitting the pavement for new clients.

Cargo Career Path

By This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it | Corridor Inc. Staff Writer
Originally published May 2008
Tanisha Harris completed BWI’s cargo apprentice program and has worked at John S. Connor Inc. full time since August 2006.
Two years ago, Tanisha Harris was a student at Glen Burnie Evening High School and worked at Kmart to pay the bills.
Today, the 23-year-old mother is a full-time employee at John S. Connor Inc., a Glen Burnie-based freight forwarder where she works with customs and trucking companies to move freight around the world.
Thanks to the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport’s (BWI) Air Cargo Apprenticeship Program, Harris is on a career track in the cargo industry.

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Originally Published May 2008
OPERATING ROOM MAKEOVER
Suburban Hospital rendering. Photo courtesy of Suburban Hospital.
Bethesda-based Suburban Hospital is poised to undergo a $230 million expansion — the first addition to its clinical space in 30 years.
Plans filed with Montgomery County in late March show the venture would add a four-story, 300,000-square-foot building to Suburban’s campus, complete with 108 new patient rooms, physician space and a modern surgical wing.
The hospital requires physically larger operating rooms — some with ceilings as high as 16 feet — to accommodate robotic, laparoscopic and other high-tech surgical systems and the expanded surgical teams that operate them, said Leslie Ford Webber, Suburban’s senior vice president.

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