Best Week, Worst Week: Morgan envisions a medical school; Montgomery Park regroups

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Morgan State University started the new year and new decade with news that could prove transformative for Baltimore and the state, while the owners of Montgomery Park Business Center are regrouping after losing a lease with the Maryland Insurance Administration.

Morgan State could bring a medical school to its campus through a partnership with a private company, a move that would create the first such program at a historically black college in more than four decades.

Higher education writer Tim Curtis reported Thursday the university’s Board of Regents authorized President David Wilson to pursue affiliation with Salud Education LLC, which would bring a college of osteopathic medicine to the university in northeast Baltimore.

Wilson said the university was in a strong position to explore any and all possibilities to create meaningful educational opportunities for its students. He said the creation of a medical school would also reap huge benefits for Baltimore, the state and the nation through increased increasing diversity in the physician workforce.

Wilson hopes that bringing a medical school to Morgan State would help improve the number of black physicians. It would be the first medical school to open at a historically black college in nearly 45 years.

The plans could be in motion sooner than later. The university and Salud are close to an agreement. If the proposal is approved by the regents at their Feb. 4 meeting and it passes state regulatory approval and accreditation from the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation, the $120 million medical school could open by 2023.

Meanwhile, as Morgan State has expansion plans brewing, Montgomery Park lost out in moving the state’s insurance administration out of downtown Baltimore — but it hasn’t quit fighting.

Business writer Adam Bednar reported Wednesday The Board of Public Works voted 2-1 to approve a 10-year lease costing $1.68 million annually to keep the MIA in downtown Baltimore.

Gov. Larry Hogan and Treasurer Nancy Kopp voted in favor of the new lease despite protests from the ownership of Montgomery Park, which currently has protests before the state Board of Contract Appeals. Hogan and Kopp expressed misgivings about the process of choosing a lease but ultimately voted for the deal because of concerns about the potential for MIA to be “homeless.”

Comptroller Peter Franchot voted against the lease because he said the way Maryland treated Montgomery Park hurt the state’s reputation. He offered an unsuccessful motion that the panel hold off on approving a lease until after the Board of Contract Appeals rules on Montgomery Park’s protests.

On Thursday, The Board of Contract Appeals denied a motion from the Department of General Services seeking summary judgment against protests filed by Himmelrich Associates Inc., the owners of the Montgomery Park development. The board then scheduled a merits hearing for Jan. 29.

Montgomery Park initially won the competitive bid process to provide the MIA with office space, which also is home to the Maryland Department of the Environment, Maryland Lottery Agency and United Way of Central Maryland. Moving the agency to Montgomery Park, according to calculations provided by the property’s owner Himmelrich Associates, could produce net savings as high as $15.8 million after deducting the cost of moving the administration.

The state’s competitive bid process, however, was abandoned after MIA Secretary Al Redmer raised concerns about the move. Skilled agency employees, he said, objected to the relocation, in large part because of the lack of mass transit access.

Business leaders with a stake in downtown Baltimore lobbied state officials to keep the insurance administration at 200 St. Paul Place. Franchot said he’d received numerous text messages from business leaders in the city urging him to vote to keep the administration downtown.

The area of downtown where the MIA is now located, particularly north of Lombard Street, has struggled with high vacancy rates. The neighborhood’s retail sector has also suffered, and area business owners and advocacy groups feared the insurance agency’s move would hurt those businesses.