Maryland Business

This weekend, it’s going to be a little hard not to get your Preak on. Or hail Kegasus. Or whatever you really want to call it. Maryland’s Christmas of horse racing is in town this Saturday, and all eyes will be on Animal Kingdom to win the second leg of the Triple Crown at Pimlico Race Course.

If you’d rather just watch the Preakness Stakes festivities from home, there are other events to enjoy too:

As part of the Preakness Celebration, hot air balloons start Thursday at Turf Valley and go until Saturday at 6 p.m. Admission is free, while tethered ballon rides cost a small fee.

And the Children’s Hospital at Johns Hopkins will hold its 80th annual turtle derby Friday. For a small fee, spectators can name a turtle and enter it to win a cash prize. Races begin at 12:30 p.m. in the Preclinical Teaching Building courtyard on the Johns Hopkins medical campus.

And if you’re looking for something more refined than the infield, there’s the annual Wine in the Woods event at Symphony Woods in Columbia. Going on both Saturday and Sunday, wine tasters can enter for $25 to $30, designated drivers can join for $10 to $15, and children older than 3 years get in for $5. (The super underage set gets in for free.)

The Chesapeake Bay Blues Festival is also going on this weekend at Sandy Point State Park Saturday and Sunday. Tickets cost $55 to $120 and all the action starts at 11 a.m. The lineup includes The Lee Boys, John Mayall, Chris Isaak, Dana Fuchs, Little Feat and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

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Willard Hackerman, the politically connected civil engineer whose Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. built local landmarks like Ravens Stadium, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture and the Walters Art Museum, will soon get a structural namesake of his own.

On Sept. 15, Johns Hopkins University will name its computational science and engineering building Hackerman Hall.

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The college application process is always a stressful time. I remember checking my mailbox every day during my senior year of high school, anxiously waiting to hear from my top schools.

Can you imagine the pressure medical students nationwide felt yesterday, knowing that they would be opening a letter that seals their fate for the next 3-5 years?

Yesterday, I attended the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s “match day” with fellow reporter Danielle Ulman.

Danielle illustrated the drama of the event well in the lede of her story in today’s paper. She wrote:

Thirty minutes and a velvet rope stood between medical students and their futures. As the clock ticked down to noon Thursday, anticipation seemed to bubble over in a room filled with fourth-year medical students…

Watch the video below to watch students’ reactions from beginning to end.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

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For those of us in the newspaper industry who have been paying attention to the mainstream media’s struggles, the subject of the New York Times’ new headquarters building has been of particular interest.

The 52-story building on 8th Avenue near Times Square, estimated to be worth between $850 million and $1 billion, was designed by superstar Italian architect Renzo Piano and completed in 2007, right around the beginning of what we now know is a major recession, and at the beginning a tumultuous period for newspapers in general. Over the course of its first year in the new building, the Times’ dividend tumbled 75 percent as ad sales and classifieds dried up.

In December, the New York Times Co. announced that it would mortgage its portion of the building — the rest of it is owned by New York real estate giant Forest City Ratner Cos. — for $225 million to raise cash for a $400 million debt payment due in May.

Now, the news comes today from Mediamemo.com that the Times has entered into a sale-leaseback agreement on the property with the W.P. Carey Co., led by Baltimore-born real estate investor William Polk Carey, who was profiled in our newspaper last year. Carey’s company specializes in the sale-leaseback method of investment, in which it buys headquarters of cash-poor companies and leases them back to the companies at higher rates.

In this case, the New York Times will pay $2 million a month on a 15-year lease, and after 10 years, will have a chance to buy the space back for $250 million. If that were to happen, Carey would have literally doubled his investment in 10 years, at the expense of a pretty high risk factor — the Times is in bad shape in general, and has another big line of credit, worth $366.3, coming due in two years. It’s not clear which company is in better shape, at the end of the day.

ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer

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At least one Southerner will be pleased at last week’s announcement of the selection of Ronald Daniels as the new president of Johns Hopkins University.

Posting on the Old Virginia Blog on Nov. 14, writer and Civil War preservationist Richard G. Williams Jr. called “John [sic] Hopkins” University “Rude, Unprincipled & Unpatriotic” for refusing this year to rent out a room in Hopkins’ Shriver Hall to host an annual General Lee and General Jackson birthday party.

Apparently, every year, a veritable — ahem — confederacy of Maryland groups, including the Sons of Confederate Veterans, get together in January at the statue of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Baltimore’s Wyman Park to celebrate the generals’ birthdays, then retire to Johns Hopkins’ Clipper Room for refreshments.

Not so this year. Apparently, outgoing JHU president William Brody has denied the group’s petition to rent the room because they are “a Confederate organization:”

In the post, Williams said he received a notice from the Baltimore chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans that said, in part: 

“Make no mistake about it, we were not denied because the facility was unavailable, or for any other legitimate reason, we were denied because of who we are. In addition, the Hopkins representative stated that this ruling came directly from the President of the Johns Hopkins University, Mr. William Brody.”

We’re not sure, exactly, if the incoming president will have any stronger sympathies for Confederate memorialists, but this little kerfuffle points to a larger question: Why, in Baltimore, is there still a statue commemorating generals Lee and Jackson? Given that what they stood for was, among other things, a divided America with a South that depended on slave labor, how must Baltimore’s 400,000 African-Americans feel about having such a statue in front of a public park — especially so close to one of the state’s most enlightened learning institutions?

ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer

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The U.S. News & World Report’s 2009 college rankings are out, and Maryland schools performed pretty well.

Hopkins is 15th overall among national universities — no great surprise there. The University of Maryland at College Park came in at No. 53.

Maryland’s liberal arts colleges should be proud. In the Liberal Arts Rankings, we had: the U.S. Naval Academy, 22; St. Mary’s College of Maryland, 84; Washington College, 94; and Goucher, 111. I know my dad will be pleased for the state. “It’s important to have a good liberal arts education,” he always says.

Take a look at the various ranking categories and see where your alma mater fell. And be sure to use the info to start arguments throughout your office for the rest of the day.

JOE BACCHUS, Web Specialist (graduate of No. 18)

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Aptly enough, JHU President Bill Brody will be on Retirement Living TV.

He’s conducting the interviews for a special on health care.

“Healthcare ‘08: Search for Solution” is being produced by RLTV and Maryland Public Television, with help from Johns Hopkins University and the National Coalition on Health Care.

The program will feature Brody having “in-depth conversations” with public figures about the present and future state of health care.

“This series presents an insight into both how our health care system really works and what needs to be done to fix it. Dr. Brody does an exceptional job at challenging conventional wisdom in these interviews,” said Elliot Jacobson, VP of programming and production, RLTV.

Here’s the schedule:

MPT – 8 p.m. EDT

May 1: Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City

May 8: John Erickson, CEO, Erickson Retirement Communities

May 15: Bill Novelli, CEO, AARP

May 22: Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House

TBA: Elias A. Zerhouni, MD, Director, NIH

If Brody asked you, what would you say about the future of health care?

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

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Is the mayor of the Big Apple considering the soon-to-be open position of Johns Hopkins University president?

The AP seems to think it’s possible.

From their story:

Consider his answers this week when he was asked about two of the most recent rumors: that he would buy the Times or could be president of Johns Hopkins University, his alma mater, to which he’s given more than $100 million.

……

Regarding the buzz about taking over Johns Hopkins, where a fraternity brother has reportedly circulated a letter to get the idea going, Bloomberg said his average grades in school likely keep him off the short list.

“Nobody thinks I should be president,” he said.

From Karen Buckelew’s March story about Brody’s retirement:

Standing on Decker Quadrangle, a swath of grass adjacent to the visitor’s center on the university’s Homewood campus, he squinted into the brisk wind and recalled what Michael Bloomberg told him May 2002, when the recently elected mayor of New York resigned as Hopkins board chair.

“He turned to me and said, ‘Don’t screw it up!’” Brody recalled, laughing.

What do you think? Should Michael Bloomberg replace William Brody?

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

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One of the Johns Hopkins University’s most famous graduates has passed away at 96. John A. Wheeler, who earned a doctorate in physics from Hopkins in 1933, was involved in the Manhattan Project and made a number of major scientific advancements.

If the name sounds at all familiar to you, it’s because he’s also the father of the term “black hole.”

I don’t suppose there’s too much “new news” to this story, but he was a major figure in science, and I wanted to get the word out.

JOE BACCHUS, Web Specialist

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You’ve probably heard by now that the first building at The Science and Technology Park at Johns Hopkins opened today after a ceremony honoring businessman (and contributor) John G. Rangos Sr., the building’s namesake.

The 278,000-square-foot research building, at 855 North Wolfe Street, will house life science research companies.

A new branding campaign for the New East Side was also revealed…

And you know what a new branding campaign brings: pastries!

(Well, technically real estate reporter Robbie Whelan brought them).

From the release:

“The Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins is one component of the transformation that is happening on the New East Side,” said Jack Shannon, President and CEO of East Baltimore Development Inc. “With new senior and workforce housing now available and job development training taking place, the community is ready to meet the growing demands of current and future tenants of the Park.”

The New East Side project will provide 850 new residential units in mixed-income housing for new and returning residents and graduate students as well as offer new life science, office and retail space. A new K-8 community school and open spaces are also planned.

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

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