Baltimore Development Corporation

The Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) is a nonprofit corporation and public-private agency contracted by the City of Baltimore to promote economic development.

The BDC is the result of mergers between the former Baltimore Industrial Development Corporation (BIDC), the Baltimore Economic Development Commission (BEDC); merged with in 1974-76 to form the new Baltimore Economic Development Corporation (new BEDCO), later the Howard Street Market Place; Charles Center–Inner Harbor Management (CC-IHM) (descendents of the famous re-development public-private agencies from the 1950s and 60's which transformed the old downtown and waterfront districts of the City, under the D'Alesandro,[Jr.]-Goodman-Grady-McKeldin-D'Alesandro,[III] city mayoralties) and the Market Center Development Corporation (which had merged with CC-IHM in 1989 to become Center City-Inner Harbor Development, Inc.) The BDC was eventually formed out of these agencies, commissions, corporations and groups in 1991.

The merger came in the wake of an expansion of the Open Meetings Act provoked by the City Council's frustration with the opacity of CC-IH.

The BDC is not directly accountable to the municipal government of Baltimore. However, its Board is appointed by the Mayor, and many of its economic programs require approval from the Baltimore City Council.

The BDC has a complicated legal status because it is a public-private status agency, also a non-profit organization, but also closely involved in City business. Criticisms of the BDC's secrecy and its predecessors since the early 1980s amid infamous charges then of a "shadow government" against the administration of then Mayor William Donald Schaefer, (1921-2011), [served 1971-1986], by the then Baltimore City Council President Walter S. Orlinsky and long-time financial/political "gadfly" Comptroller of the City, Hyman A. Pressman, (1914-1996), which circulated in the Baltimore media, including especially The Baltimore Sun, resulted in a 2006 Maryland Court of Appeals case titled "City of Baltimore Development Corporation v. Carmel Realty Associates".

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