SPARROWS POINT, Md. — The little shovels are out today, but the big ones stand ready to start construction on a 1.8 million square foot center, McCormick’s largest in the world, to begin shipping its spices from Sparrows Point.
With COVID-19 blanketing the globe, that’s saying something.
“When you layer on the fact that COVID has had so many others slowing down or stopping operations, the fact that McCormick has confidence to keep moving forward here in Baltimore County here in the State of Maryland is a really big deal, and I don’t want to undersell it at all,” said Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski.
There’s not much danger of that since it wasn’t that long ago that Maryland risked losing the company, which started here in the state more than 130 years ago.
“I said I just couldn’t imagine Old Bay being made in Pennsylvania or anywhere else so we had to keep them here and that was five years ago,” said Gov. Larry Hogan.
McCormick joins Amazon, Under Armour and a host of other companies at the Tradepoint Atlantic Industrial Park, and it will bring 200 new jobs with it to go along with an estimated 8,000, which have already been created there.
“We’re seeing across the country, local governments and state governments are seeing significant revenue reductions, because of COVID,” said Olszewski. “Anything that has construction jobs and ongoing jobs as this project will have we welcome with open arms and we welcome the partnership with the State of Maryland, private business and local government.”
Along with its new headquarters in Hunt Valley, the new distribution center will represent a nearly half-a-billion-dollar investment for McCormick right here in Maryland at a time when it needs it the most.
