McDonald’s sells historic downtown property

With development looming next door, McDonald’s Corp. has sold a historic property in downtown Baltimore for $1.5 million, according to land records.

The buyer, 101 East Baltimore Properties, shares an address with the Washington real estate investment management firm Madison Marquette, one of the companies working on the 28-story 1 Light Street office and apartment tower in the same block. Madison Marquette and Metropolitan Partnership Ltd. have been working on plans for the building for more than a year, including erecting it around the McDonald’s building. Recently, it has altered designs to add office space and reduce the number of apartment units.

Though the developer already has demolished some properties on the site, the most recent presentation to the city’s design panel ended in another stalemate, after concerns about landscaping and the relationship between the new tower and the former McDonald’s property, a brick structure in the French Renaissance style. Representatives of Metropolitan and Madison Marquette did not respond to requests for comment Monday morning about how the 101 East Baltimore acquisition might change the proposal, which did not initially include the McDonald’s building.

Metropolitan is also the developer behind the conversion of 10 Light Street into apartments. The 419-unit building, which opened last year, is about 55 percent leased, according to a recent market report by Delta Associates.

“Quantitative image analysis is at the cutting edge of cancer research,” said David West, CEO of Proscia, in the announcement.

The announcement was made at the Digital Pathology Association’s Pathology Visions conference in San Diego. Proscia said its system allows for faster and less costly analysis of a tissue sample by digitally comparing it to an array of similar samples. The system is capable of spotting minute differences that might not be observable by the human eye.

The firm aims to partner with academic medical centers, research organizations and biopharmaceutical companies to put its pathology database to use in the fight against cancer. In July, Proscia received $1 million in seed funding from a group of venture capital investors led by Emerald Development Managers. Other participants included Robin Hood Ventures, TCP Venture Capital and A-Level Capital.