State Ownership of Building
The building is owned by the Maryland Port Administration. As a result, there have been public discussions about whether it should be sold in debates over state budgets. In the "Maryland Transition" report to the incoming Governor Martin O'Malley in January 2007, the Transportation work group noted that former Governor Robert Ehrlich favored selling the Baltimore World Trade Center. Governor O'Malley chose to maintain state ownership.
During the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008, the Baltimore World Trade Center incurred an operating loss of $2.3 million. This was due to an occupancy rate that had declined to 43 percent by March 2008. A low occupancy level was expected "to make it easier to sell."
The Maryland Board of Public Works took two important steps in 2007 and 2008 toward improving occupancy at the World Trade Center: streamlining lease approvals and hiring an agent. In December 2007, the Board delegated its lease approval authority to the Secretary of Transportation. Meridian Management Corp. was awarded a 5-year contract, beginning on June 10, 2008, to serve as the World Trade Center's leasing agent. Meridian's contract, approved by the Board of Public Works on May 21, 2008, also includes operation and maintenance of the building.
Read more about this topic: Baltimore World Trade Center
Famous quotes containing the words state, ownership and/or building:
“Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace; the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinquepace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“They had their fortunes to make, everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were schooled in and anxious for debates; forcible in argument; reckless and brilliant. For them it was but a short and natural step from swaying juries in courtroom battles over the ownership of land to swaying constituents in contests for office. For the lawyer, oratory was the escalator that could lift a political candidate to higher ground.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)