By: Robbie Whelan

Last time we checked in with a round-up, we were waiting to hear who would be the next two-floor tenant at 100 Light Street. That deal, we are told, has since fallen through, and we still don’t know who the prospective tenant was to be.

Since then, things have been chugging along at a relatively slow pace, but it only seems that way if you’re mentally comparing 2009 to the boom years. In fact, Maryland’s building industry is seeing a few green shoots of its own, with investors taking chances and projects nearing completion. Read on, dear reader.

* Folks are getting riled up again about Baltimore’s high property tax rate, and Clerk of the Court Frank Conaway held a meeting to (sort of) discuss a plan to encourage investment in the city by slashing the tax 25 percent. Some other developers are a bit worried about the costs associated with a new green building law that insert LEED requirements into the building code. The green building law, according to my buddy Rich Lord over at the Post-Gazette, inspired one that was proposed last week in Pittsburgh.

* M on Madison, a proposed luxury condo project on downtown Baltimore’s West Side, is no longer going to be so luxury. More like work force housing.

* The Corporate Office Properties Trust started building a BRAC-related office property that they hope gets filled by intelligence-security businesses. This is the first speculative groundbreaking round these parts for some time.

* Foreclosures are going down in cities, but up in the country.

* The BBJ gets Baltimore Development Corp. head Jay Brodie to spill the beans about how the $300 million, city-funded Hilton convention center hotel won’t be profitable in 2009.

* There’s going to be some tasty soup and rosy perfumes in the air at Annapolis’s Market House. 

* Federal stimulus money is going to be used to run more water taxis across the harbor, including one from Locust Point to Canton, presumably for those so overcome by nostalgia at the Baltimore Museum of Industry that they need not just a brewski, but an entire O’Donnell Square pub crawl.  Oh, and speaking of brews, here’s a website that doesn’t think the math on the this plan really bears it out as a good idea.

* The real estate bust is killing the city’s bottom line. Building a mansion on city-owned land is killing this guy‘s bottom line.

* This project, which we covered way back in the design stage, is almost ready to start.

* Embattled Baltimore development Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse has been sued (again) by one of its creditors, this time on the $1.5 billion Southwest Waterfront project in Washington.