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Originally Published May 2008
OPERATING ROOM MAKEOVER
 Suburban Hospital rendering. Photo courtesy of Suburban Hospital.
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.
The expansion also includes a new parking garage, which would replace an existing structure and create 700 additional parking spaces.
The hospital currently spends more than $1 million a year shuttling employees to commuter lots and operates a valet parking service for patients and visitors. Difficulty parking on site occasionally persuades would-be patients to go elsewhere, Ford Webber said.
Suburban must get development approvals from both county officials and state hospital regulators.
Hospital officials hope to raise at least 25 percent of needed funds for the expansion from donors and break ground in 2011, Ford Webber said.
- Linda Strowbridge CONSTRUCTION BOOM
Anne Arundel County issued commercial construction permits exceeding $113 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. That’s a 58 percent jump over the value of commercial development permitted during the same period in 2006.
Overall, the value of commercial permits in the county rose 29 percent for the year, fueled mostly by large developments such as Annapolis Towne Center in Parole, Park Place, Quarterfield Crossing and two hospital expansions.
Anne Arundel, however, continued to lag behind other counties in the Baltimore-Washington Corridor in terms of commercial tax base. Commercial space constitutes 18 percent of all assessed property in Anne Arundel, compared to 22 percent in Prince George’s County and 20 percent each in Howard and Montgomery Counties.
“It is a goal of this office to increase our industrial and commercial space by 2 percent over current levels,” said Robert Hannon, president of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp.
The county, Hannon said, has issued permits to build 16 million square feet of office, retail and residential space near Fort George G. Meade and MD 295. BRAC-related growth will create demand for that space, but probably won’t consume all 16 million square feet for another five to 10 years, he said.
Other economic indicators released by Hannon’s office last month showed that the number of new residential permits issued by the county in 2007 jumped 29 percent to a total of 1,830. The vacancy rate in office space jumped 36 percent in 2007 while the vacancy rate for industrial space plummeted 62 percent, partly due to large leases signed by Under Armour in Marley Neck and Shaw Industries in Preston Gateway.
-Linda Strowbridge
NEW SHOPPING HORIZONS
 The first shops at Arundel Preserve are about to open their doors to customers.
Starbucks Coffee, Maiwand Kabob, Arundel Preserve Wine & Spirits, Pearl Nails and Spa and Red Parrott Asian Café have all signed leases and are expected to open this month, said Neil Greenberg, chief operating officer for Somerset Construction Co., the project’s master developer.
The Columbia Bank opened a branch onsite last month — it’s first full-service location in Anne Arundel County. The 3,900-square-foot bank currently has seven employees but has the capacity to grow to 25.
“We feel Anne Arundel County is a homerun and our style of community banking definitely fits there,” said Mike Galeone, executive vice president of community banking
at Columbia Bank. “We looked for ways that create more opportunity
for us to have more prospective customers.”
Arundel Preserve will ultimately include more than 2.3 million square feet of office and retail space, 1,000 housing units and two hotels.
The 268-acre mixed-use community, estimated to cost $1.3 billion, at the intersection of MD 295 and MD 175, is part of the 1,100-acre Arundel Mills Development.
“This is bringing an urban development scheme to a suburban area and something we don’t have anywhere around here,” Greenberg said.
“The retail component is set up boulevard style and modeled after Reston Town Center.”
-Tammi Slater
WIRED FOR COWS
A program that helps service-disabled veterans compete for government contracts has delivered a $15 million payoff to a Glen Burnie company.
Vision Technologies secured a disabled veterans contract more than a year ago to provide information technology services to government agencies.
“At the time, the value of that contract was zero,” said Al Saxon, vice president of Vision Technologies. No specific work or payment was attached to the contract.
“But it essentially was a hunting license” for government work, Saxon said.
Last month, that license bagged Vision Technologies a five-year contract to service 2,500 computer systems nationwide for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Services Agency.
It isn’t the largest contract the 8-year-old company has ever landed, Saxon said. The 140-employee firm, which recently opened its first branch office in Chantilly, Va., lists the Discovery Channel, Care First, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and several branches of the military among its clients.
The Farm Services Agency contract, however, should position Vision Technologies to land a much larger contract when the agency replaces its nationwide computer system in about four years, Saxon said.
“That could be big,” he said.
-Linda Strowbridge BOUTIQUE STYLE
Montgomery County is bringing more options to travelers with the opening of the Legacy Hotel and Meeting Center, a boutique hotel.
“This brings an upscale alternative to big box hotels,” said Eric Siegel, executive vice president and legal counsel for Cohen Cos., the local family real estate developer that is building the hotel.
The hotel and meeting center, which is slated to open this month, is offering boutique-style amenities such as iPod clock radios, flat-screen HDTVs, wireless Internet access and luxury bedding. It will be managed by Interstate Hotels and Resorts.
The Rockville Pike hotel has 162 rooms, a 9,000-square-foot meeting center and the first full-service Phillips Seafood restaurant in Montgomery County.
Giving affordable rate options for meeting space and providing a food package was an important part of the hotel’s plan, said Siegel.
“We wanted to provide a niche so that people would have options no matter what they can afford for a meeting space,” he said. “We can allow people to do events here at a reasonable cost.”
-Tammi Slater MARKETING MARYLAND
Legislation passed in the final hour of the General Assembly session could funnel additional money into Maryland’s tourism industry.
“It’s been 20 some years since there’s been any legislation provided for marketing Maryland and tourism,” said Connie Del Signore, president and CEO of the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Conference and Visitors Bureau. “Outside of Missouri we are the only state to have a tourism promotion act.”
Maryland’s act, which will take effect in 2011, sets up a system that rewards the industry for making greater contributions to state tax revenues. If tax revenues from tourism rise at least 3 percent annually by 2011, the state would kick back some of that extra revenue to the Maryland Tourism Board. The governor would have to approve the expenditure.
The system, Del Signore said, could give the state board as much as $3 million annually to boost tourism promotion.
-Tammi Slater
EXPANDING IN ANNE ARUNDEL
Frank Parsons Paper Co. is moving its headquarters, regional offices and business products division to Linthicum.
Currently located in Baltimore City and Landover, the 70-year-old paper company will bring approximately 200 jobs to Anne Arundel County. The company’s primary business is distributing paper and other products to printers, advertisers, magazine, catalog and book publishers.
Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp. and the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development provided professional assistance to Parsons for the relocation and expansion.
Parsons is slated to occupy its new facility, located in the former Mercedes Benz building in Baltimore Commons Park, in October. Company officials expect to add 150 to 200 new jobs at its new site, which has five acres available to accommodate the growth.
“We were careful to select a location where we could consolidate our local operations, improve efficiencies and enhance the environment where our employees work,” said CEO Mike Lane.
The new facility will be tailored to Parsons’ fine paper business and will accommodate an expanded range of business products and services, he said.
The company has warehouse distribution facilities, sale offices and retail stories in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia and New York.
-Tammi Slater
LANDING THE JOB
Fifty of the nearly 800 people who attended a job fair at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), walked away with new jobs in March.
BAA Maryland, the developer and manager of concessions and retail at the airport, partnered with the Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corp. to host the job fair.
Food, retail and beverage operators are currently seeking employees in positions that range from food and beverage servers to retail sales associates and managers.
Retail operators who accepted applications and conducted interviews at the fair, included Silver Diner, Ram’s Head Tavern, Starbucks Coffee, California Tortilla, Potbelly Sandwich Works and the Greene Turtle.
Dedication to customer service is an important attribute in applicants, said Mark Knight, president of BAA Maryland.
The company conducts traveler interviews to measure effectiveness of customer service by all retailers at the Airmall.
BAA was the first airport retailer to use the monitoring system, Knight said. The “program acts as a guide and benchmark to Airmall retailers, giving them a report card on how they are doing and on how they can improve.”
-Tammi Slater |
