Baltimore has begun installing charging stations for electric cars in city garages, and The Daily Record investigates two mansions in Potomac that are owned by African dictators with documented human rights violations. Those stories and more in this week’s business top 5.

1. EBDI head walks out of City Hall during meeting – by Melody Simmons

A meeting to address construction and communication problems between residents of Middle East and East Baltimore Development Inc. was abruptly halted Tuesday after two top executives from EBDI walked out when a reporter showed up.

EBDI’s CEO, Christopher Shea, and its senior vice president of real estate development, Dennis Miller, stopped the scheduled two-hour meeting minutes after it began.

2. Downtown Partnership looks to continue growth in ‘The 401′ – by Nicholas Sohr

Encouraged by robust population growth in the city’s center, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore Inc. will soon launch a marketing effort with billboards, bumper stickers and even a signature cocktail to attract more residents to “The 401.”

“We have this growing downtown that is incredibly diverse, that is flying under the radar, and we need to draw some attention to it,” partnership President J. Kirby Fowler said before the organization’s annual meeting Wednesday night.

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While much of the talk about restarting the tight job market centers on small businesses, there is a crisis in the works in Federal Hill where such entrepreneurships are concerned.

Many small businesses have closed shop over the past six months, leaving a budding retail hole on the south Baltimore peninsula.

Last week, Amy Mutch announced she was shuttering her popular upscale women’s clothing boutique, Amy’s, at 1133 S. Charles St.

It is the third small clothing shop to close in six months in SoBo, following Babe, which recently relocated to Fells Point, and Whimsy Boutique, which went out of business in September. Their retail spaces remain vacant.

Mutch was living her dream by opening the boutique five years ago. She hired Owings Mills sculptor David Bacharach to help design lighting and displays for the small shop, located on a tree-lined block with other businesses, restaurants and bars.

“We were catering to the urban woman who had an edginess to her style,” she said this week as a 30-50 percent off sale whittled away her inventory. “We offered cutting-edge fashion.”

When the deadline approached to make orders for spring 2012 togs, Mutch said she decided to fold.

One problem Mutch pointed out is the high cost of parking meters in SoBo — $2 per hour. That’s a whopper when compared to the meters at Belvedere Square in north Baltimore, where 20 cents will get you in a parking space for an hour without threat of a city meter maid wielding a ticket book. Of course, there are not two sports stadiums located within walking distance of that location.

Mutch reminisced about her business: “The first two years, business was growing 25 percent — I made a tiny profit the first two years. Then it literally tanked in 2008. I’m proud I kept the doors open, but I never made money.”

The recent Baltimore Grand Prix race also hampered business, she said, choking off foot traffic to SoBo over the Labor Day weekend.

She plans to close the doors for good after Thanksgiving — or whenever her inventory runs out — and return to her roots as a nurse practitioner.

Mutch said she plans to use her experience to help others in the community. She was just elected president of the South Baltimore Neighborhood Association and is on the board of the Federal Hill Business Association.

“People need to look at small businesses and what that means to a community,” she said. “It is such a hard business,” she added, of the life of a sole proprietor. “As a nurse practitioner, I used to say that cardiologists were the real heroes. Now, I say it’s the small business owners.”

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Occupy Baltimore’s deadline of evacuating McKeldin Square is looming, and with it, looms the future of the city’s offshoot of the movement.

The city has asked the group to reduce its presence at the square to two people overnight. In exchange, they have offered to provide 10 pop-up shelters for daytime use.

I’ve been down to McKeldin Square about a half-dozen times since they first set up on Oct. 4, and each time it has been different — in the mood and in the setting.

On Tuesday morning, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before: a small child, maybe 2 or 3 years old. She was hanging around a group of Occupy Baltimore participants playing a game of chess. She was also wearing a bag of Utz Salt’n Vinegar chips on her sleeve, removing her arm every few minutes to eat a chip. It was not clear who the child’s parents were.

I spent some time watching this group and the child. When one of the chess players stepped away to go to the food tent, the child — with her Utz bag in-tow — took his place and curiously began reaching for the pieces on the board.

As she did, a young woman, also sitting around the table reached out with a broom handle and began to prod and lightly whack the child’s hand to keep her from ruining the game.

About 100 feet away, in the small village of camping tents, Whitney Saraglou and Cody Parsons (who both appeared in this video) were waking up and climbing out of their tent — which was donated to Occupy Baltimore. The two had been living on the site for five days, and both said they would be willing to go to jail for the cause. Both are unemployed, and Saraglou said she had been sleeping under an overpass until recently.

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The latest entrant in the deal-of-the-day websites targeting Baltimore kicked off today in the form of Google Offers.

The search giant, which had tried to buy Groupon, launched its beta Offers program today for Baltimore. It joins skads of others including, of course Groupon, but also Living Social and local deal site Chewpons.com.

Google’s inaugural offer? Thirty dollars in drinks and fare at Blue Hill Tavern in Highlandtown for $15.

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A $759,000 federal community development grant was given to officials of the city’s Howard Park community Monday to help build a new grocery store there.

The grant was made as part of a national Healthy Food Financing Initiative and is one of 12 nationally. The initiative aims to eliminate “food deserts” in low-income and rural communities by helping to construct supermarkets and small grocery stores that offer fresh, healthy foods.

The award was made as part of the city’s first Food Day. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and city agency heads, representatives of the United Way of Central Maryland, urban farmers and healthy food advocates gathered at City Hall to commemorate the event that is part of a national movement to raise awareness for improved food policies.

The Food Day focuses on six principles that include expanded access to food, reduction of  diet-related diseases, promotion of health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids and greater support for sustainable farming.

The Baltimore Food Policy Initiative has received national recognition for its efforts to improve access to healthy, affordable foods in food deserts – areas where residents lack access to healthy food options.

“For preventing heart disease, diabetes and other chronic conditions, having access to healthy foods is nearly, if not equally, important as having access to quality health care,” said Baltimore Commissioner of Health Dr. Oxiris Barbot.

The federal grant to help fund a new grocery in Howard Park will help with that, city officials said.

“These federal funds will not only help build a new grocery store, but also support the development of a commercial kitchen, and revitalize farmers markets in the area,” said Department of Planning Director Thomas J. Stosur. “This is a great example of how a grocery store can increase a community’s access to healthy foods and spur job creation.”

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A proposed bowling alley in Hunt Valley, in which Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis is a partner, is still looking for financing, and a Baltimore hospital is being sued for Medicare fraud. Those stories and more in this week’s business top 5.

1. State readies $9.5M offer to keep Bechtel workers in Frederick – by Nicholas Sohr

Maryland is poised to offer Bechtel Corp. $9.5 million to keep the majority of its Frederick County workforce in place until 2018.

The engineering and construction management firm, one of the largest employers in the county, has been considering a move to Northern Virginia.

“It’s sad that the state has to consider something like this,” said Sen. David R. Brinkley, R-Carroll and Frederick. “You have someone who has been there, and it’s been their worldwide headquarters.”

2. Ray Lewis’ MVP Lanes still looking for financing – by Ben Mook

MVP Lanes LLC hired RI Hispanic BancGroup LLC in June because its owner said it could help secure the financing that would help MVP move forward with a planned sports bar and bowling alley in Hunt Valley.

MVP Lanes, which counts Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis as a partner, has had to head back to the drawing board to line up financing after RI Hispanic’s promise did not materialize. In the course of the lawsuit against the Providence, R.I.-based company, MVP learned that RI Hispanic has no assets, no relationship with a bank and no trace of the $90,000 it had collected from the developers as a fee.

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A third-quarter survey by the University of Baltimore’s Jacob France Institute has found t Maryland’s economy has been “staggered” by the gridlock in federal spending and the European debt crisis.

The Maryland Business Climate Survey found that stands in marked contrast to its findings in the second quarter, when business owners in Maryland said they were optimistic about the state’s economy.

One bright spot is that overall sales growth continues to hold steady, according to the report, produced every quarter by the institute at UB’s Merrick School of Business.

“It appears that the general improvement in expectations for an economic recovery that we were seeing during the first half of the year have evaporated,” said Richard Clinch, director of economic research at the Jacob France Institute, in a statement.

“Across the board, all over the state, we’re finding that Maryland firms have ratcheted back their expectations for market expansion, with just over half expecting their market to expand in the coming year—that’s down from 63 percent in the first and second quarters,” Clinch said. “About 20 percent of the businesses in our survey are expecting declines, and that’s more than double the level of the previous two quarters.”

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This week, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake joined Department of Public Works Director Alfred H. Foxx for the re-opening of the Northwest Sanitation Yard – gussied up to become the new “Super Citizen Convenience Center.”

The center, at 2824 Sisson St., offers what city officials call “easier access for residents to dispose of trash and recycling” and will be a site to dump hazardous waste in a collection container. In the past, city residents had to dispose of trash or recycling at the open gate or toss it over the side of the fence there into a large container.

City officials lauded the new drop-off design, which features a raised, permanent platform for easy, drive-by trash and recycling dumps. Who said city government was out of touch?

“It is important that we are always looking for creative and innovative ideas that will make the services we provide more convenient for residents,” the mayor said in a statement. “We need to constantly evaluate ourselves so we can improve City services and grow our city.”

The site will also be the new home for the Bureau of Solid Waste’s entire Mechanical Street Sweeping Operation where 10 new street sweepers will be housed.

*****

All is right with the world again. The lunchroom at the Woman’s Industrial Exchange at 333 N. Charles Street in Mt. Vernon will soon reopen.

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On Wednesday night, around the time I’m usually thinking about a pre-bedtime snack, I found myself at the mercy of a DJ trying to figure out the right sound levels for his thumping club music.

I was attending the “soft opening” of Bond Street Social, a new restaurant and bar in Fells Point. (Full disclosure: It was an event for friends and family of the new staff, and I was there at the invitation of my best friend, who is working as a waiter.)

Bond Street Social took over the space at Bond and Thames streets formerly occupied by the DuClaw Brewing Co. The interior is very sleek and modern, all hardwood floors, wrought iron and leather-backed chairs. Flat-screen TVs hung behind the two, long bars, where the bartenders appeared to be generous with the alcohol.

Such generosity comes at a price, of course. The cheapest beer is $5, and cocktails start at $9. Bond Street Social is upscale and not afraid to admit it, especially since it won’t admit anyone under the age of 23 after 10 p.m.

Talk about upscale bars in Fells Point (and other parts of Baltimore) and their chances for survival are not new. But I can’t think of a place that is attempting to stake its claim the way Bond Street Social is. They might lose some customers who are just looking for a bottle (or four) of Bud Light and a chance to mingle, but these people probably weren’t going to spend $50 for an 80-ounce “social drink” in the first place.

I can easily see Bond Street Social becoming a go-to happy hour spot for young professionals in Harbor East and hipsters across the city, especially in good weather when people can sit outside. It’ll be interesting to watch how it fares beyond that.

(Incidentally, the DJ figured out the music volume, which to me still seemed a bit loud for a place that doesn’t have a dance floor. And then I went home and had some Teddy Grahams before I went to sleep.)

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Solar energy company SunEdison announced it will be moving its headquarters to California, and speaking fees for pharmaceutical companies are going down. Those stories and more in this week’s business Top 5.

1. Maryland’s top lobbyists got $15.5M during 2011 session – by Nicholas Sohr

Maryland’s biggest businesses, interest groups and labor unions increased spending on lobbyists to $15.5 million during the 2011 General Assembly session, according to the State Ethics Commission.

That was a 14.4 percent bump over the 2010 session, when the top spenders had $13.5 million in lobbying expenses.

2. Speaking fees declining for pharmaceutical firms – by Ben Mook

The amount of money paid by pharmaceutical firms to physicians and other health professionals to speak about their products seems to be slowing, but a look at 12 companies that disclose those figures shows it still amounts to millions of dollars in Maryland.

A review of the payments reported by eight major pharmaceutical firms including Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer and Novartis show that in 2010 in Maryland, doctors were paid more than $4 million in speaking fees. This compares to the first half of 2011, when reporting companies paid only $836,330 in speaking fees.

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