Ground Up

Arsh Mirmiran, of Caves Valley Partners, decided to move back to Baltimore nearly two decades ago after being diagnosed with melanoma to be close to family.

Outside a two year stint while attending business school at the University of Virginia the city has been his home ever since. Now married with two daughters, ages 5 and 7, he’s bucked the trend of moving to the suburbs after starting a family. In this week’s episode we discuss why he stayed, why so many of his peers in the business community live outside the city, and his belief in Baltimore’s potential, despite all its blemishes.

“We actually moved to a new home we built in the city, essentially committing us to living in the city until the kids are gone, and then we’ll probably end up moving back downtown,” Mirmiran said. “To me it was very important to live in the city.”

Preservation Maryland’s Executive Director Nicholas Redding joins the Ground Up podcast. We discuss his organization’s opposition to raze roughly 20 percent of the buildings on Main Street in historic Ellicott City.

Kate Jordan’s career in commercial real estate started in 2007 with Lee & Associates and a decade later she’s already been promoted to principal.

Despite a rough start, Jordan remained confident the industry was for her, even when she was barely making a living.

“I think when you start at $12,000 your first year you kind of have to be not thinking about the money the whole time,” Jordan said in the latest episode of the Ground Up podcast. “You have to be thinking about, ‘OK, am I doing the right things for my clients, am I doing the right things for the landlord, the tenant, or whoever it is you’re representing.’ I think if you just follow that moral compass… the money just kind of follows.”

Patrick T. Campbell, who bought his first home in Baltimore in 1998 and moved to Patterson Park from Washington more than a year ago, launched a campaign with the slogan “pay the tax, get the facts.”

Live work and play developments are popping up in suburbs throughout Maryland.

These projects, such as such as the Merriweather District in Columbia, Towson Row, Greenleigh at Crossroads in eastern Baltimore County, and Metro Center at Owings Mills, aim to compete with the amenity rich environments found in city centers.

Marc A. Menick, president of KLNB, discussed how retailers perform in these settings, what’s needed to make these projects a success, and potential problems these developments face. Menick, based in Washington, spoke on the phone with The Daily Record.

Marc Menick, president of KLNB, talks with The Daily Record’s Adam Bednar about Maryland’s retail market, and how ecommerce firms are boosting brick and mortar retail in some cases, and the increasing importance of entertainment venues in retail.

Ryan Burrows, vice president with JLL’s Mid-Atlantic Industrial Practice Group, is hardly surprised by the range of tenants interested in moving to Tradepoint Atlantic.

The development is transforming 3,250 acres of land at Sparrows Point into a state-of-the-art logistics park, with 15 million square feet of vertical construction planned, deep-water port frontage, and connections to Class 1 railroads CSX and Norfolk Southern

Marc Weller and Steve Siegel, partners at Weller Development Co., talk about plans for the $5.5 billion Port Covington development, how they deal with skepticism, and whether they’ve been able to appreciate the magnitude of the undertaking.