In a filing in the foreclosure case of Spacey’s harborfront home in Baltimore’s Federal Hill, the actor asked the court to revoke the sale to a Potomac real estate investor. Trustees mishandled the auction, leading to an inadequate price of $3.24 million, and the buyer should be disqualified because of harassment, the document says.

A representative of buyer Sam Asgari called the claims “frivolous” and without merit.

“This is still the house of cards,” said Sam Sheibani, a Compass real estate agent who is representing Asgari, on Monday, referring to the popular Netflix TV series filmed in Baltimore in which Spacey starred.

Asgari is preparing a response to the latest filings in Baltimore City Circuit Court and plans to pursue eviction, Sheibani said.

Attorneys for Spacey, listed as Kevin Spacey Fowler, principal of home owner Clear Toaster LLC, accused Asgari of acting in bad faith.

“Mr. Asgari has continuously harassed Clear Toaster’s principal, Kevin Spacey Fowler, and has published false and defamatory statements and accusations against Clear Toaster’s principal, Kevin Spacey Fowler, who occupies the property as his home,” said Spacey’s attorney, Edward U. Lee III, in a motion Friday.

Spacey purchased the two-unit condo in the gated The Pier Homes at Harborview for $5.7 million in 2017. His friend and manager Evan Lowenstein owned the home, but the former “House of Cards” star recently laid claim to it, Lowenstein previously told The Sun.

The Oscar-winning Spacey, who has said he was left with millions of dollars of debt from fighting several lawsuits in the U.S. and Britain alleging sexual misconduct, owed back payments for the home.

Last summer, a city Circuit Court judge approved a foreclosure sale.

Spacey’s attorneys are arguing the court should revoke the July sale, which took place outside Baltimore Circuit Court and require trustees to resell the property.

They say trustees failed in their obligations to maximize the home’s price. They advertised it as a dwelling, the filing said, but left out details such as its size, 9,000 square feet on five levels, and amenities, such as seven full baths, a sauna, elevator, home theaters, a rooftop terrace and four-car garage.

The price at auction fell well below both the property’s assessed value of more than $5.4 million in July, and the outstanding principal balance of more than $3.8 million, the court document said.

It says Asgari should be disqualified, in part because he threatened eviction before the auction sale had been ratified and before he had possession of the home, placing a “notice about eviction” on the home Spacey has occupied as his primary residence. The sale is not final, the filing says, until an exception period expires and the court ratifies the sale.

Yet, Spacey’s filing says, the notice placed on the property on the day of the auction gave anyone residing in the home 15 days to notify Asgari, or the property would be considered abandoned and the locks changed, without a court order.

Asgari knew the home was not abandoned and intended only to “harass and coerce [Spacey] to leave his home when he was in no way obligated to do so,” the filing said. “In Mr. Asgari’s wrongful demand to have [Spacey] vacate the property, he threatened to pursue eviction as a result of the property being ‘abandoned.'”

Lee said Asgari contacted him in mid-August, “threatening to proceed with interviews with Inside Edition and CBS News that same day unless an immediate response was provided regarding the vacancy date and further threatening to start eviction proceedings the following Monday.”

Asgari views the chain of events differently, Sheibani said. Spacey simply won’t return something that no longer belongs to him, he said.

He is taking advantage of “my client’s generosity, requesting a large sum of money and a long time to vacate the property,” Sheibani said. “We simply want the property that rightly belongs to my client to be vacated and handed over.”

Lee, Spacey’s attorney, countered in the filing that Spacey has never “refused or threatened to refuse” to leave the home.

The document said Lee spoke with Asgari’s attorney Aug. 6 and proposed that Spacey be allowed to stay until about Feb. 1 in exchange for giving Asgari early entry to the home to begin planning to sell to an investor and agreeing not to file an objection to ratification of the sale.

But then a week later, Asgari offered $50,000 if Spacey would leave by Sept. 15, the filing says.

MAG Partners and MacFarlane Partners, developers leading construction of the South Baltimore waterfront community, announced the sale Wednesday. MAG and MacFarlane are redeveloping the 235-acre site south of Interstate 95, formerly called Port Covington, along with Kevin Plank’s private investment firm, Sagamore Ventures, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

The new owners, including Jim Weisgerber, Eric Sugrue and Steve Montgomery, have operated the seafood restaurant overlooking the Patapsco River’s Middle Branch since 2015. The sale, which included the restaurant building and property, closed Thursday.

The developers did not disclose a sales price.

Last month Sagamore Ventures sold the marina next to NIck’s, Baltimore Yacht Basin Marina, to BYB Prop Real Estate Partners, led by Marcellous Butler, co-founder of Baltimore-based floating home company Flohom.

Sagamore had brought Weisgerber, Sugrue and Montgomery in to operate Nick’s as the mixed-use community’s first tenant in 2015. That led to nearly a decade of “astonishing success,” the developers said. Nick’s employs nearly 200 people.

“We’re thrilled to be handing the reins over to the folks that have been integral in making Nick’s the iconic, beloved spot it is today,” said Greg Resh, Sagamore’s CFO and executive vice president, in a news release.

Carly Eutsler, longtime director of operations at Nick’s, will become the restaurant’s managing partner. She said holds NIck’s holds “a special place in the hearts of so many Baltimoreans.”

As owners, the former operators plan to expand and upgrade a restaurant known for its crabcakes, orange crush cocktails and waterfront views.

The ownership change comes at a time when an influx of tenants and businesses are expected this year and beyond in Baltimore Peninsula.

The development so far includes a Roost Baltimore hotel, two apartment buildings that are half leased, and Rye Street Market, where Slutty Vegan and Bar Vegan restaurants are coming by the end of the year. Future tenants include Jersey Mike’s, BK Lobster, Urbano Mexican Fare and LIVE-K karaoke. The Exchange, a multivendor retail space, will open later this year.

CFG Bank opened its new headquarters at Baltimore Peninsula in April; the Baltimore Ravens secured office space as part of their stadium renovation plans and the city recently opened the 28,000-square-foot Elijah’s Park.

Sheetz plans to open Thursday in Middle River, its first location in the county as the Altoona, Pennsylvania-based chain continues its expansion throughout the mid-Atlantic.

Before now, its closest stores to Baltimore, the longtime home of Royal Farms, were in Joppatowne and Westminster.

Sheetz, operator of more than 750 mid-Atlantic stores, joins a larger push by convenience chains to expand in the region as consumers increasingly view the stores as more than a gas station and last resort to grab breakfast, lunch or dinner. Some people even have go-to meal favorites among the brands.

Known for made-to-order sandwiches and salads, Sheetz now has 36 stores in the state, mostly in Western Maryland. The new store/gas station at 10499 Campbell Blvd., is part of a further expansion in the state. Another location is planned off Route 22 in Bel Air.

Wawa, which runs more than 1,060 locations, took on the more deeply entrenched Royal Farms in 2019 when it began an aggressive expansion in Maryland, with a focus on Baltimore County and a new store in Canton. That year, the Wawa, Pennsylvania-based chain also announced a multi-year agreement with the Ravens to make Wawa the team’s “official hoagie.” It now has 59 Maryland stores.

Last month, Wawa launched a marketing campaign featuring Jason Kelce, the recently retired Philadelphia Eagles center, and his wife, Kylie.

Royal Farms, which traces its roots to Baltimore’s Cloverland Dairy and has grown from a single “milk” store in 1959 to 255 stores, 142 in Maryland, also has NFL stars pitching its offerings.

It has a long marketing relationship with Ravens kicker Justin Tucker, who in 2015 performed opera in a tribute to Royal Farms’ coffee, singing, “two sugars and some cream, that is my dream.”

A recent commercial shows Tucker running errands for his wife, stopping at Royal Farms for gas, a car wash and the chain’s “famous” fried chicken.

“I can do it all, right here,” Tucker says.

The agency’s board approved a contract that will allow preconstruction and design work to start next week, marking a notable chapter in the five-months-long saga of the Key Bridge collapse and aftermath.

“It’s really good that we are at this stage to have that partner on board with us to advance the project,” MDTA Executive Director Bruce Gartner said after the vote. “We’ve had so many milestones that we have felt were significant, but we’ve always seen this date as a really major one.”

In the early hours of March 26, an adrift, massive container ship named the Dali crashed into the bridge, sending 50,000 tons of steel and roadway into the river below and killing six construction workers filling potholes on the span. That blocked the shipping channel underneath — the Port of Baltimore’s principal commercial artery — for a little more than two months.

The port continues to recover economically from the shipping shutdown and the bridge’s absence can be felt by any commuter or shipper seeking to cross the harbor.

The $73 million design phase contract awarded to Omaha, Nebraska-based Kiewit Corp. is a down payment on what is expected to be at least a $1.7 billion project to replace the Key Bridge over the Patapsco River. State officials noted that Kiewit has done work for MDTA in the past and boasts a portfolio of similar projects around the nation and globally.

A spokesman for the contractor said it will work in partnership with the MDTA, local subcontractors and suppliers and its workforce “to safely deliver and restore this vital transportation link in the city of Baltimore and the greater region.”

“Our long track record of delivering complex, schedule-intensive work through our extensive bridge, marine construction, dredging and related experience will serve us well to successfully execute this important project,” said Bob Kula, the Kiewit spokesperson, in an email.

Although a contractor has been identified, the specifics of the new bridge have not been decided. The new span is expected to open, though, by October 2028 and likely to be cable-stayed — meaning it would have tall towers, similar to a suspension bridge, with a web of cables connected to the bridge’s deck, or roadway — and will be taller, longer and slightly wider than the old truss bridge.

The new span’s vertical clearance will be at least 230 feet, substantially higher than the old height of 185 feet, and it will be longer to allow the roadway to reach the increased height without requiring drivers to climb a steep incline. The span will be built on the same center line as the old bridge and, like the felled structure, will have four lanes, although the shoulders will be substantially wider in accordance with updated federal bridge code.

The new bridge will be constructed using a design-build method, allowing construction to begin even as the planning process is ongoing, in an effort to expedite the structure’s opening.

Kiewit has experience with design builds and with using that method to construct a cable-stayed span; it was among the builders of the cable-stayed Port Mann Bridge in British Columbia, Canada, which opened in 2012.

Kiewit is involved in another large transportation project in Maryland: the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, which will accommodate rail traffic and replace Amtrak’s Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel under West Baltimore. Kiewit is taking on that project, estimated to cost roughly $6 billion in total, with California-based J.F. Shea Construction Inc. The company also has done work for MDTA on the Bay Bridge.

The state in June received four bridge construction proposals. Besides Kiewit, proposals came from Archer Western/Traylor Brothers Joint Venture, Flatiron Halmar Dragados Joint Venture and Maryland Key Connectors.

The state rejected Archer Western’s proposal Aug. 1 after finding it failed to meet contractual requirements. A protest by the company was denied and the company did not appeal to the state’s board of contract appeals by a deadline.

The agency evaluated the remaining proposals and assigned technical and financial rankings. Kiewit ranked first in the technical evaluation, which was weighted more heavily, and third financially.

“We don’t have a design, so we were asking the proposers to give us the team that they can put together,” James Harkness, MDTA’s chief engineer, said about the technical measure in an interview. “What are their capabilities? What have they done previously? How would they estimate? How would they collaborate?”

To arrive at financial rankings, for both bridge design and construction, the MDTA evaluated each contractor’s proposed percentage markups over figures the agency provided. Kiewit proposed higher markups than the others, but ranked more strongly on the technical side.

“That’s the nature of this type of procurement where we don’t have much design,” Harkness said. “We don’t have much for them to tell us the pricing on, because we haven’t worked together and collaborated on that yet.”

One of Kiewit’s first tasks — in addition to designing the new bridge alongside the transportation authority — will be ridding the Patapsco River of the old bridge’s vestiges. The ramps-to-nowhere that remain, as well as the artificial, concrete islands (called “dolphins”) designed to protect the piers will be blasted and demolished either this fall or in the spring.

After about half the design work is done, the state will negotiate a “guaranteed maximum price” with Kiewit on the second, construction phase. Those negotiations will likely include additional opportunities for local firms to participate, Harkness said.

Then, the construction can begin.

“It’s a significant milestone today,” Gartner said in an interview. “It’s the beginning of a really hardworking phase.”

The federal government is expected to foot the bulk of the $1.7 billion bill. Democratic President Joe Biden promised immediately after the collapse that the federal government would pay for 100% of the rebuild, but that has yet to be coded into law. The default for any interstate project is for the federal government to pay 90% of the cost; in that situation, Maryland would be on the hook for roughly $170 million.

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat, said this month of the federal government covering the entire cost: “We’re on our way to get that legislation passed.”

On Thursday, the MDTA board voted to use $350 million in property and business interruption insurance proceeds related to the bridge collapse to reimburse the federal government for current and future bridge debris and replacement costs.

Federal authorities also have said they’ll seek to reimburse themselves with funds from culpable parties — such as the container ship’s owner and manager.

Small businesses and the City of Baltimore have already filed suit against the Singaporean owner and manager Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group, respectively. A local propane transportation company this week stated in a federal filing that it has “lost profits and lost business” as a result of the collapse and that “an example should be made of” the ship’s owners.

U.S. Department of Commerce officials toured artificial intelligence and biofuels research labs at Morgan State University, met heads of downtown Baltimore manufacturing firms, and heard how high school students are being prepared for future technology jobs.

The site visit, an effort to measure the region’s ability to boost U.S. competitiveness in key industries, was one stop on a monthslong tour of all 31 cities or regions in the federal Tech Hubs Program. Baltimore’s selection last October enables the area to compete for a share of $10 billion in federal funding over five years as it works to establish itself nationally and globally as a center for artificial intelligence and biotechnology.

Despite the designation, the Baltimore area missed out on a first phase of funding that could have meant up to $70 million. The Commerce Department announced in July that tech hubs in states such as Colorado, Indiana, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Montana were in line for about $504 million in grants.

Since then, tech hub consortium members, led by the Greater Baltimore Committee, have been gearing up to win a share of funding that could be distributed next year. Baltimore’s initial application to the program drew more than 100 letters of support from consortium members, elected officials and private sector partners, with $800 million in investment pledged.

For the next round of funding, Commerce officials will look for proposals that advance the nation’s economic competitiveness and national security, said Eric Smith, tech hubs director for the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration, in an interview Wednesday.

“What we want to understand is what’s the path to economic competitiveness [and] how do the economics of these particular industry focus areas work?” Smith said.

He said the Baltimore region has a “great” foundation and ability to leverage existing assets to accelerate growth, “and we very much saw that here.” But the region, he said, may need to better define a strategy to capture greater shares of the global market.

“You have the assets. It’s figuring out how to align those and telling that story around the [global] economic competitiveness piece that will be key in future rounds,” he said.

Wednesday’s site visit offered a chance for the 40-member consortium, from sectors such as business, economic development, manufacturing and academia, to showcase new and ongoing biotech and artificial intelligence initiatives.

Ken Malone, co-founder of Early Charm, a company that creates, owns and operates businesses that commercialize new technologies, told Commerce officials that biomanufacturing already has an established base in the city. Early Charm opened a Baltimore manufacturing plant a year ago to make products such as 3D-printed plastic, metal, ceramic and biologic parts, nanofiber filters, membranes and textiles. It has 92 products under development, he said.

“Largely we are quite accustomed to taking something very early stage all the way through production and keeping it in town and continuing to do production here,” Malone said.

Curt Schwab, president of Catalyte, a Baltimore-based software company, said consortium members believe new approaches are needed for workforce development in biotech, and that the region has a potential to connect 10,000 people over a decade with meaningful careers. His company, for example, has developed artificial intelligence that uses data points to find workers for apprenticeships.

“We have all of the technology talent and biotechnology talent right here in Baltimore,” he said. “We don’t need to outsource jobs.”

Officials toured research labs at Morgan State, then planned stops at 4MLK BioPark, the city’s biggest private biopark investment, on downtown Baltimore’s west side and Spark Coworking Space and Fearless Technology’s headquarters near the Inner Harbor.

Commerce officials launched the site visits in July to build relationships with the 31 hubs, Smith said.

“We really want to just see what you’ve done,” Smith said during a morning roundtable meeting. “This is a long-term relationship that we’re going to have with you. … We’re going to be working with you over the course not just of months but years and hopefully decades.”

The Baltimore region’s five proposed projects would create a sustainable pipeline of workers, establish state-of-the-art biomanufacturing plants, and support entrepreneurship and innovation. The next application would look to fine-tune and strengthen the case for those projects.

The White House and the Commerce Department have requested $4 billion in funding for requests in the next phase, which could be split into multiple rounds.

The Biden administration initiative aims to invest in and boost tech economies in overlooked communities across the country and help make them globally competitive in emerging technologies. The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law in August 2022, authorized $10 billion for the federal program over five years. So far, $541 million has been appropriated for the program.

If additional funds are allocated by the end of the year, the new application period could open in January with a new round of applicants funded by next summer.

During the roundtable discussion, Kevin Anderson, secretary of the Maryland Department of Commerce, said the region stands apart from others in that “we have an opportunity to create the most equitable, the most balanced ecosystem that the country and the world has ever seen.”

The Boston Street center, a former can-making factory that closed in the late 1980s and was redeveloped with shops and offices in the late 1990s, is slated to be sold for $12 million to Greenspring Realty Partners and Reba Holdings.

Baltimore-based MCB Real Estate, the developer rebuilding Harborplace, and other investors are selling the high-profile property, which is nearly 60% vacant.

MCB and New York-based Angelo, Gordon & Co. bought the three-building, 205,865-square-foot former industrial property in Aug. 2017 for nearly $43 million.

A spokeswoman for MCB said the company could not discuss details of the pending contract, but “we will confirm that our partnership has entered into a contract to sell the property at a significant discount.”

The complex has about 60,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, with tenants such as Outback Steakhouse, Chipotle Mexican Grill and Cold Stone Creamery, and about 145,000 square feet of loft-style office space. Of that, about 100,000 square feet will be vacant as of Sept. 30 when Yahoo’s lease ends, said Jeremy Landsman of Owings Mills-based Reba Holdings.

He said the new owners’ plan has not determined uses for the vacant space.

“We will work with the neighborhood to determine what is best,” Landsman said in an email. “It could be anything, from staying an office use, to creative space, apartments, hotel or anything else.”

Landsman added that “the buildings are in great condition, and have tons of soul.”

The Greater Baltimore Committee and the Baltimore Community Foundation said they are accepting letters of interest on a rolling basis.

While the reopening of the Port of Baltimore has returned shipping to the area, many small businesses in the city and Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties will struggle until a bridge is rebuilt, the groups said.

The bridge fell March 26 after a cargo ship struck a support pier, collapsing the structure and killing six road maintenance workers. The Maryland Transportation Authority expects to select a builder for a new span by the end of the summer, but the new bridge isn’t expected to be completed before 2028.

The Maryland Tough Baltimore Strong Key Bridge Small Business Support Grants are designed to stimulate economic growth through technical and operational assistance. Grants will be given to nonprofits that work in impacted communities instead of directly to businesses.

The GBC and other groups will review grants for the community foundation, which manages the charitable fund. The fund had provided assistance to port workers and their families after the bridge collapsed, but small business support has emerged as a need, said Shanaysha M. Sauls, the foundation’s president and CEO.

Grants can be used for small business and entrepreneurship programming, developing small business networks, supplementing existing small business improvement grant programs, and investing in business districts’ physical improvements and marketing.

The city’s 2006 agreement for New York-based La Cité to redevelop nearly 14 acres of the neighborhood was unconstitutional and unlawful and resulted in the government seizing more than 500 homes with no public benefit, says the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

The Poppleton Now Community Association and six residents filed the civil rights case, alleging the city’s contract with the developer violates both federal and state law and should be voided. It names as defendants La Cité and its president, Dan Bythewood, Baltimore’s mayor and City Council, former Mayor Sheila Dixon and other officials.

“They took private property and handed it to a private developer without delivering a public use,” Thomas K. Prevas, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an interview. “Poppleton was targeted because it was a minority neighborhood, near amenities like the University of Maryland Medical Center.”

Baltimore officials had not yet been served with the complaint, said Tammy D. Hawley, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development. A representative of La Cité did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

City housing officials had announced in June that they were trying to cut ties with La Cité, which officials said defaulted on its land disposition agreement after failing to prove it had financing in place for a senior apartment building long planned for the site. Over 18 years, the developer completed just one apartment complex out of an array of proposed mixed-use buildings across nearly 33 acres.

La Cite responded with a statement that argues it’s Baltimore, not the developer, that’s in breach of the agreement.

The Poppleton residents allege in the lawsuit that the city’s original agreement with La Cité violated their rights because it “takes land from private people by eminent domain but doesn’t even know what the public use is yet and decides they’re going to figure it out later,” Prevas said.

Many of those homes in the historic Black neighborhood were owner-occupied, the lawsuit said.

One plaintiff, Yvonne Gunn, lives in a house on West Fayette Street that her grandparents moved into in 1918, a home affected by condemnation but not itself condemned, the lawsuit said. She and her husband bought the home from an uncle in 1985.

“Over the past decade the long-stalled development project created a sense of fear as the Gunns lost their neighbors, endured tall grass and weeds, and became embarrassed when family would come visit,”  the lawsuit says.

She watched as some 70 to 80 neighboring three-story rowhouses similar to hers “were wiped off the face of the earth,” Gunn, a past president of the community association, said in the complaint. “If my house was in Federal Hill or Canton it would have always been worth a half-million dollars.”

But despite her family’s years of care and renovations and after displacement, demolition and disinvestment in Poppleton, her home was assessed at just $50,000, the lawsuit says.

The idea to redevelop Poppleton came about because of the thinking in the early 2000s that revitalization required “heavy-handed government intervention” that could “repair blight caused by segregation, white flight and the end of industry by forced land acquisition and redevelopment,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs also questioned Bythewood’s qualifications.

“The City gave-away more than 500 people’s homes to this Developer because of his campaign of influence over elected leaders, which he used to overcome its deep lack of qualification or capacity,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to find the land agreement void and order the developer to pay back any improper payments it made to the city, with proceeds used to invest in Poppleton. It  seeks to force the city to restore to Poppleton at least the value taken from the neighborhood through eminent domain. Prevas estimates that value at least $15 million.

The lawsuit also aims to have the city abolish “illegal land use practices that abuse civil rights and impose disparate treatment
of minorities,” such as urban renewal plans and land banking, the practice of acquiring land for potential future community development use.

Tide Realty Capital, a Baltimore-based developer that bought the mall last year, plans to revitalize one of the largest shopping centers inside Baltimore’s beltway, starting with a $4.5 million entrance and façade renovation. The owner has begun improving security and plans additional upgrades to boost occupancy at the 750,000-square-foot center. Eventually, the developer hopes to attract new entertainment and restaurant tenants to the current mix of shops and offices.

The mall has struggled with a lack of identity, inattention from institutional owners and inadequate security, said Aaron Loeb, president and founder of Tide Realty, which purchased the center for $48.3 million in November.

Loeb, a Baltimore native, grew up shopping at the now-defunct anchor stores Caldor and Hechinger in the 1990s when he lived blocks from the mall.

“Retail is dynamic and changes, and this property has had its ups and downs, but the needs of the community haven’t changed,” Loeb said in an interview.

With investment and community support, Loeb said, the mall is poised to become a gathering spot where people can shop, work and be entertained. Developers also expect to continue offering space for community and nonprofit groups to hold events.

The timing makes sense, in part, because the state plans a mixed-use, transit-oriented development nearby on nearly 26 acres of underused, state-owned parking lots near the Reisterstown Plaza subway station. Loeb said he believes shopping center revitalization will become a catalyst for that project.

Plans for that separate project, led by the  Maryland Department of Transportation, call for housing, retail and public parks. Transportation officials released a “vision plan” for the area in June, when the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the state nearly $4.7 million in grant funds for preliminary design and environmental work.

Officials hope to turn the site into a mixed-use “destination” and transit hub with improvements for pedestrians to encourage the use of mass transit.

The mall currently has office space that’s fully leased by state agencies and store anchors such as Giant, Home Depot and Planet Fitness. But when Tide Realty bought it, the center was 20% vacant on the retail side and “coming apart at the seams,” said Loeb, whose company acquires distressed and underperforming properties and owns Alameda Marketplace in the city.

“Crime and safety is the number one thing that we … have really been working very hard to turn around,” Loeb said of Reisterstown Road Plaza. “We want to make sure it’s a place where everybody feels comfortable and safe.”

The property has gone through several transformations since it was built as an outdoor mall on 50 acres in 1962. It was later enclosed. In the 1980s, the Reisterstown Plaza metro station opened, a Stewart’s department store anchor closed and state agencies began leasing space remade into offices. Previous owners last renovated the center in the early 2000s and “de-malled” part of the structure to add stores with exterior entrances.

The first phase of renovations, to start later this year, is expected to be completed in eight to 10 months. Besides a new entrance and façade, work will include improvements to a 60,000-square-foot vacancy created when Burlington left about eight years ago. Burlington later returned to a smaller space in the mall. Tide Realty has been in discussions with potential tenants, Loeb said.

He expects the mall turnaround to take about five years and to work with community groups on planning future phases.

The company has partnered with CHAI, a nonprofit housing and community development organization serving northwest Baltimore, to apply for a state neighborhood improvement grant. It also has applied to the city’s Baltimore Development Corp. for a façade improvement grant.

The state’s TOD development plan for the metro site is moving ahead as well, part of Gov. Wes Moore’s focus on transit-oriented development as a way to spur economic development and address housing shortages. The state is looking into other development sites near metro and MARC lines where it owns land zoned for development, said David Zaidain, chief of real estate and TOD for the state transportation department.

Besides the mall and its businesses, other major employers near the Reisterstown Plaza metro station include some Maryland Transit Administration facilities, a Social Security Administration office, a city district courthouse and the American Red Cross.

The state’s plans for the metro station site for more than 800 units of housing, including multi-family, market rate units, workforce and senior housing and for-sale townhouses, and neighborhood retail.

Plans are currently moving through the city’s planning approval process, while the state expects to start negotiating an agreement with Wabash Development Partners, a group led by developer Dean Harrison.

With the help of the federal grant, work on improving the site’s transit accessibility and connectivity to surrounding homes and businesses is expected to start next year, Zaidain said. The state plans to work with the city to improve pedestrian access and road safety throughout the area.

“That piece is really where there’s a connection between the mall redevelopment and our site,” Zaidain said. “We want to make sure that the accessibility between those projects works…and provides access to the transit.”

“We’re excited to see the investment in this area of the city,” he said. “We think the projects will be complementary.”

SmartEnergy, which signed up electric customers in Maryland’s competitive energy marketplace after they responded by phone to postcard ads, says the Maryland Public Service Commission wrongly found that it violated the state’s telephone solicitation law.

The commission, which licenses nonutility gas and electric suppliers, had ordered SmartEnergy to cancel contracts and give refunds to all 32,000 customers who signed up after calling a toll-free number on 6 million postcards sent in Maryland from 2017 to 2019. The commission found the New York-based renewable energy supplier engaged in unfair, false, misleading and deceptive marketing and trade practices, including failing to get contract signatures on those telephone orders.

An attorney for SmartEnergy said Thursday that the case, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, could have far-reaching implications for businesses that take telephone orders for goods or services, such as delivery of pizza or flowers.

“You could see a class-action lawsuit against Pizza Hut or Domino’s, or any company that advertises in the newspaper or sends mailers to people, and then the consumer calls and orders pizza … and they don’t have to sign for it,” said Douglas Gansler, attorney with Washington firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. “It’s got such huge ramifications for commerce in Maryland.”

The commission does not comment on pending litigation, said Tori Leonard, a PSC spokeswoman. But she noted that the commission’s decision has been affirmed by three Maryland courts, including the Maryland Supreme Court.

The head of the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, the state agency that represents energy consumers, said the lawsuit has no merit.

“SmartEnergy has been engaged in litigating this at every level and seeking to delay responsibility for conduct that the commission has found in violation of not just the telephone solicitation act but also core consumer protections,” such as “misleading postcards, misleading telephone solicitation, numerous violations of consumer protection laws,” Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp said.

A public service commission order in 2021 found that SmartEnergy failed to follow guidelines under the Maryland Telephone Solicitation Act, which requires customers to sign contracts. The order said the law applied to SmartEnergy even though the company placed no outbound calls and instead only took calls from customers.

Gansler said the act, passed in 1988, was intended to protect consumers from telephone marketers who might sign them up for goods or services without their consent and does not apply if a customer makes the call.

“No one’s ever questioned whether the MTSA could apply when the customer calls the merchant,” said Gansler, a former Maryland attorney general and Democratic candidate for governor.  “Every state in the country has a telephone solicitation act, and no state in the country has ever applied it to where the consumer calls the merchant.”

The commission’s order said the act does apply to some inbound calls that are made in response to a supplier or merchant’s marketing in cases where postcards, flyers or other forms of advertising are found to be deceptive and misleading. The commission said in its order that some deceptive practices included SmartEnergy failing to disclose restrictions related to offers of “free electricity.”

The lawsuit counters that the commission’s order is based on an “erroneous interpretation” of the telephone sales law. It says SmartEnergy never made any outbound calls to drum up business.

It argues as well that the PSC had repeatedly told SmartEnergy the telephone law does not apply to inbound calls. The PSC’s order contradicts the law “as uniformly and consistently interpreted in the State of Maryland, as well as in every other state and by the federal government, in past decades,” the lawsuit says.

However, the commission’s consumer protection division found that SmartEnergy relied on bait-and-switch tactics. In Maryland, consumers can choose to have electricity and gas supplied by a third party or utility, though utilities handle distribution of energy.

The supplier “subjected unwitting consumers — who were tricked into calling the number that the Supplier provided on its postcards — to a pressurized and highly misleading sales pitch aimed at convincing customers to switch their energy service from the utility to SmartEnergy,” the division said in its March 2021 order.

The lawsuit counters that SmartEnergy has one of the best electricity supplier records in the state’s history and accuses the PSC of levying fines meant to punish the company rather than compensate customers. The supplier is seeking a jury trial.

SmartEnergy estimates refunds could total $15.97 million, a penalty more than 30 times higher than any ever imposed by the commission. The PSC staff has proposed an additional $15.97 million in fines if refunds are not paid, the lawsuit says, though fines have not yet been imposed. The lawsuit argues proposed penalties would violate a constitutional protection against excessive governmental fines.

The proposed penalties “erased years of SmartEnergy’s  business  operations, threatening to bankrupt SmartEnergy entirely, and disrupted the business relationships with the 99.9% of customers  who had expressed absolutely no dissatisfaction with SmartEnergy’s renewable product,” the lawsuit says.

SmartEnergy’s disagreement with the commission is playing out amid changes in Maryland’s decades-old competitive energy marketplace. Last year, the commission launched an unprecedented enforcement blitz against deceptive practices by third-party gas and electric suppliers after consumer complaints spiked. During the most recent legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill designed to better protect consumers in the energy marketplace. Energy suppliers have said that law will effectively end gas and electric choice for Maryland residents.

SmartEnergy said that during the time period covered under the PSC order only 34 of 32,000 new telephone sales customers submitted any type of complaint to the PSC. The company was licensed in 2017 as a supplier of renewable energy to homes and businesses in the distribution territories of five utilities across Maryland, including Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.

SmartEnergy is still doing business in a dozen states and Washington, D.C. It was ordered to terminate all Maryland accounts enrolled via telephone, return them to service offered by their utilities and refund all Maryland customers the difference between SmartEnergy’s supply charges and a utility’s charges.

While SmartEnergy’s case has moved through the courts over several years, Lapp said, “customers who paid hundreds to thousands of dollars in overcharges above the standard [utility] rate are still waiting for relief.”