It’s no secret that Nestor is enthusiastic about the town of Frederick and it’s not just the pastries! Mayor Michael O’Connor returns and explains the cranes over downtown Frederick and progress for business and a new grand hotel to make you stay and play longer in that bedroom community for Baltimore and Washington. Wake and Bake. It’s been done before…

Frederick is growing while trying to preserve its historic downtown identity and expand tourism, business activity, and regional visibility.

Downtown Growth

Michael said Frederick now has about 90,000 residents and is the second-largest incorporated municipality in Maryland. He highlighted a new downtown Marriott-branded full-service hotel with 200 rooms and 25,000 square feet of meeting space, expected to open in late 2027 or early 2028. Michael said the project took about a decade because of historic-district oversight, site remediation, constrained construction conditions, and the need to assemble city, county, and state funding; he said support from the Moore-Miller administration helped unlock state funding.

Economic Drivers

Michael said the hotel is expected to increase overnight visits and support downtown restaurants, craft beverage businesses, and small shops. He also pointed to major employers and investment, including AstraZeneca with a $1 billion biologics manufacturing investment, along with the influence of Fort Detrick, the Frederick National Laboratory, and the National Cancer Institute in strengthening the city’s life sciences and biosciences base.

Identity And Access

Michael emphasized preserving Frederick’s 40-square-block historic core as central to the city’s identity, even as growth continues at the edges and within the Washington metropolitan area. He said commuting patterns shifted during the pandemic as remote work made Frederick more attractive, though I-270 remains heavily used and Route 15 is being widened to address a traffic bottleneck. He also highlighted the return of affiliated minor league baseball after Maryland Stadium Authority invested $40 million in upgrades to Harry Grove Stadium.

Open Questions

• How much additional regional tourism will the new downtown hotel generate once it opens?
• Can Frederick maintain the balance between outer-edge growth and preservation of the historic downtown core?

City Growth

• Michael described Frederick as a city of about 90,000 residents and said it is the second-largest incorporated municipality in Maryland.
• He said the city is growing quickly while trying to act more like a larger city without losing its historic character.

Hotel Project

• Michael discussed a new downtown Marriott full-service hotel project with 200 rooms and 25,000 square feet of meeting space.
• He said the project faced historic-district oversight, remediation costs, constrained construction conditions, and a complex city-county-state funding structure.
• He said support from the Moore-Miller administration helped secure the state funding needed to move the project forward.
• Expected opening: late 2027 or early 2028.

Downtown Economy

• Michael said the hotel should bring more overnight visitors into downtown.
• He expects benefits for restaurants, small retailers, and craft beverage businesses.
• He framed the downtown historic core as the city’s defining asset.

Employers And Infrastructure

• Michael cited AstraZeneca’s $1 billion investment in biologics manufacturing.
• He also noted the importance of Fort Detrick, the Frederick National Laboratory, and the National Cancer Institute to the local life sciences economy.
• On transportation, he said I-270 remains heavily used and Route 15 is being widened to reduce congestion.

Tourism And Baseball

• Michael highlighted Frederick’s preserved 18th- and 19th-century architecture, walkability, and history as major tourism strengths.
• He said affiliated minor league baseball returned after a $40 million Maryland Stadium Authority investment in Harry Grove Stadium improvements.
• He positioned the city as both a destination and an employment center, not only an outer suburb of Washington or Baltimore.

Nestor Aparicio 0:00
Welcome home. We are WNST AM 1570 Towson Baltimore. We’re Baltimore positive. We are positively here in Ocean City, Maryland. I got my pen Tom Prolazo gave me. We’re at Mako, which is the annual Maryland Counties Conference. We’re going to have Chris Van Hollen going to be joining us. Mayor Mihan has been on various mayors, former mayors. I wanted to be a mayor. This guy’s a mayor. He’s the mayor of Frederick, Maryland. One of my favorite little towns. I think that’s how I got to know you a little bit. Is I’m like, you know, they have another name for it, right? Like Dundalk doesn’t need a nickname.

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Michael O’Connor 0:36
I don’t. I don’t. Yeah, Dundalk doesn’t

Nestor Aparicio 0:37
need a nickname. The

Michael O’Connor 0:38
other nickname I hear sometimes, I don’t love it. So

Nestor Aparicio 0:41
people call it that, and then I have gone out there specifically on my crab cake tour about five six years ago, and I spent a night in Frederick. I had some beers. My wife and I walked around. We had delicious food. It was where I was the night that Dobbins ripped his knee up against the the Washington Commanders. I was in the corner downtown having a crab cake. Tasting them. Yes, thank you. Upscadge. This is the mayor of Frederick knows these things, Michael O’Connor. So, but then I discovered Bakehouse. I’ve discovered your cute little burg. I’ve walked and done. I’ve got my little chocolate things, my pasta shop, the pasta palate gone, but I loved it. Rest in peace. Rest. I love pasta palate. So I’ve discovered your town, and I guess I’m a walking postcard for driving around and saying things are growing. Got baseball back again. You got cranes in the sky, but I like your little town. So I like having you on and give you a chance, at least to my audience. And you can drive out there in 2030, minutes from most places in Baltimore, 40 minutes, and have a different kind of an experience for an afternoon, a day, an event, a concert. You got concerts there. Almost came out to see Air Supply, but it didn’t. But there you go. Is that good?

Michael O’Connor 1:53
It’s we like to think of ourselves as that little town that’s still out there, you know, on the western frontier. But we’re 90,000 strong now. We’re the second largest city in the state, and trying to act in all of the ways that a big city should act. So that crane that you referenced is building. Well,

Nestor Aparicio 2:12
you said second largest city in the state. Did you say that? That is true. It’s a true. Hold on, hold on. I drove through

Michael O’Connor 2:19
incorporated municipality.

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Nestor Aparicio 2:20
I’m just saying. I drove through Salisbury, Cambridge, Easton. Yeah, they that would Hagerstown, Cumberland. You’re definitely bigger than Cumberland because I’ve driven through there and not much. Annapolis,

Michael O’Connor 2:32
bigger.

Nestor Aparicio 2:32
Belleair

Michael O’Connor 2:35
not incorporated.

Nestor Aparicio 2:36
Got it. Okay. Yeah, I, I, I mean, wow. I, I think I’m smart. Like, if somebody would have asked me, what’s the second biggest thing, and I probably would have said Annapolis. I just off that top, I said, well, Baltimore, then Annapolis, and maybe Salisbury, maybe Bel Air, maybe Frederick. Mayor

Michael O’Connor 2:58
Mayor Mian likes to say Ocean City.

Nestor Aparicio 3:00
Oh, he does. Okay. Now

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Michael O’Connor 3:02
they only have about I don’t know 10, 15,000, maybe.

Speaker 1 3:08
But today, as we sit here right now in the summertime, the population

Michael O’Connor 3:12
of Ocean City swells to about 300,000.

Nestor Aparicio 3:16
And that would yeah, that would be second. That

Michael O’Connor 3:17
would be second. How many

Nestor Aparicio 3:18
people in Frederick? 90. Okay. All right. Well, you. Yes. I’m already learning. I mean, we’re we’re growing. So

Michael O’Connor 3:25
we’re we’re building a new downtown hotel and conference facility. We spent a decade working through lots of processes to get that project out of the ground. It’s one of the biggest private investments in our downtown in its history. What makes it so hard to get that done? I mean, we’re in a historic district in downtown Frederick, and so you have to deal with another level of oversight and and regulation that does not make it cost less to build. That drives up those costs. Remediation, historic sites, building in a constrained environment affects the cost of that. And in order to make a project like this work, we needed city, county, and state money all to be in the project, and we struggled to get state money until the Moore Miller administration came in, and that helped to open up new funding stream for the project, and has made all the difference.

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Nestor Aparicio 4:17
What does it mean for Frederick? So, what is this? Tell me. I don’t. I haven’t read up on it. I’m new to it. You’re building a what I would say was when the Hyatt came to the harbor, it was the a grand hotel, an anchor, massive hotel.

Michael O’Connor 4:34
It won’t be that big. Okay, it’s it’s 200 rooms. Okay, it’s 25,000 square feet of meeting space, but it is an amenity that the city hasn’t had. A

Nestor Aparicio 4:45
downtown big hotel. We’ve

Michael O’Connor 4:46
not had a downtown hotel. We had not had a downtown hotel until the Visitation Academy hotel opened, and that’s only 67 of those a year. See, I see

Nestor Aparicio 4:56
the hotels that add on 70, right? You know, those aren’t

Michael O’Connor 4:59
in downtown hot. We’ve not had downtown hotel lodging since the Francis Scott Key Hotel closed in the 1970s.

Nestor Aparicio 5:06
Stay and play. Yes, I come out with my wife. We go to dinner at the tasting room or somewhere else. We go to a concert, see Air Supply. What we get a beer down on the on the canal. We walk back to our hotel. We wake up. We go to Bakehouse. We get coffee. We stroll Frederick. We hang out. We’re at what’s the hotel going to be?

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Michael O’Connor 5:25
It’ll be a Marriott.

Nestor Aparicio 5:26
A Marriott. Okay, great.

Michael O’Connor 5:27
Marriott branded full service hotel, the first full service hotel in Frederick.

Nestor Aparicio 5:32
Not a courtyard, not a residence, which I like. Fairmont, very good, but

Michael O’Connor 5:35
select service hotels. This is going to be a full service, upper upscale Marriott branded flag.

Nestor Aparicio 5:42
No, I’m gonna come out stay the first night. And it’s a huge, it’s a huge

Michael O’Connor 5:45
economic driver for the downtown. So it’s gonna bring visitors into downtown in a different way than they come now, which should be good for all of our small shops. It should be good for our restaurants. It’ll be good for our craft managers. It’s just gonna be good for the mom and pop small business operations that are the lifeblood of Market andPatricksTree.com.

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Nestor Aparicio 6:05
Michael Connors here. He is the mayor of Frederick, Maryland, and the second biggest. I’m never going to let you live that down. Now I like being number two, especially with Baltimore. But give me the the postcard for for you and and an annual update for people in Baltimore to say if they come out to Frederick, what are they going to see now? Other than hopefully construction projects soon going on with your hotel and the cranes going on, but Bakehouse is moving. One of my favorite places. I talked about pasta. Some things have changed, but I had a friend out there two weeks ago. I’m like, stop by the candy store there on the corner and pick me up the little rum balls I like there. And I haven’t been out in a while, my wife took her sister strolling when her sister was in town, and I was out of town. I think in May they went out and spent the day in Frederick because they love Bakehouse too. So they went out and did a whole like spent the Saturday out in your town strolling and eating. I think it’s no offense to Annapolis, no offense to Hagerstown or Bel Air or Essex or Dundalk or Towson or anywhere you can go, that’s destination oriented. But I would pick yours. I’m not just saying that because you’re next to me. I invited you here. If somebody said to me, “Let’s go spend a day somewhere, I’d say, “Well, Annapolis is cool, and I don’t dislike Annapolis, but I think Frederick provides a unique experience, especially if you’ve never been there. I don’t want to be the postcard guy for this, but if you haven’t pinged, go check it out. I’m not. I’m not BSing. It’s the reason I brought you on because I thought I discovered something when I went out there that I think people might be missing, but I haven’t discovered much. It’s very

Michael O’Connor 7:28
walkable. There’s great history in Frederick, history, revolutionary era history, Civil War era history, the architecture because of the 40 square blocks of historic overlay. There’s a lot of preserved 18th and 19th century architecture, and you feel

Speaker 2 7:46
it. You feel it when you’re there,

Michael O’Connor 7:48
and that gives it an authentic sense of place, as opposed to building something that looks old. This really it feels

Nestor Aparicio 7:57
like Belleair doesn’t have that. This really like Ellicott City has that, right? Certain places have that old world. Downtown Dundalk, downtown Catonsville has that small town 1940s, 50s, 60s feeling that you can’t build at the Avenue in White Marsh or at the Foundry Row. Nothing wrong with any of those places. But I think going to a place, parking your car, and experiencing that sort of walkable. Let’s spend a day somewhere. You got parking garages. You got street parking. Unique. You’re unique in that way, I think. And we’re certainly growing around the edges. There’s no denying that we’re also one of the fastest growing cities in the Washington D.C. metropolitan. I was going to say you’re considered a D.C. but preserving

Michael O’Connor 8:39
preserving that historic core, or me is the goose that laid the golden egg. So, with the growth that’s occurring on the edges of the city, we don’t want that growth to overpower the strength that our downtown historic core provides to the city as a whole. So, well, as that

Nestor Aparicio 8:55
grows, you need those people downtown supporting it. Well, and downtown needs to be your cheer, and we do it. And we

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Michael O’Connor 8:59
need the employers. We need investment that a company like AstraZeneca has made with a billion dollars in the ground of investment in biologic manufacturing, the life sciences and biosciences that have grown up in Frederick because of the city’s possession of Fort Detrick and that military installation, and what that has meant to life sciences and biosciences in the in the greater Frederick area, the Frederick National Laboratory, doing cutting edge research in infectious disease, cancer, you name it, National Cancer Institute, just really great, high quality anchor employers that I think help to make it an attractive place to live and to work, and we’re trying to build an identity that is about Frederick and not just an identity as an outer suburb of Washington or Baltimore, being only an hour away from two great cities, really great cities. How many

Nestor Aparicio 9:54
people came to Frederick in the last 20, 25 years as the Washington bedroom community that were. Taking 270 into wherever, working in Gaithersburg, Rockville, the DC, and even Northern Virginia, if they’re trying to save some dough and live in Maryland, how many of those people aren’t driving up and back forth anymore? Where they’re working like my wife is from her office. She used to drive in. She we have to drive the Silver Spring these days at Verizon. She works in Towson and where she lives, right? Like where we live, I would think there’s a lot of that now. Where mommies and daddies who may have had to go into town, maybe now work from home or more hybrid, where they’re just physically in Frederick more than they were on the frigging freeway. Maybe having lunch in Rockville or something. I think we saw a lot

Michael O’Connor 10:36
of that during the pandemic. I think we were a really attractive place for people who could think about a remote job at that point came to a place like Frederick because it offered that high quality of life in all those other areas. Certainly, some of that has stayed. We still have a large number of people who commute down I-270 every day. That is still a crowded roadway that probably needs some attention. We’re widening Route 15 through the city because that’s a pinch point for traffic coming from the north and from the south going opposite directions. But

Nestor Aparicio 11:08
we know those little whirly birds when I get off 70 by the airport. They’re little circles. We got a little little back road to get in on the side door. That’s how I come in from Baltimore.

Michael O’Connor 11:16
We we love our I love roundabouts. Everyone does.

Nestor Aparicio 11:19
Yeah, yeah. No, I’m saying that’s how I get in. That’s how I know I’m there.

Michael O’Connor 11:23
Thank you.

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Speaker 3 11:25
Well,

Michael O’Connor 11:25
right past the airport, we love visitors. Come see us all.

Nestor Aparicio 11:28
Listen, man, you’re the mayor of Frederick, and I’ve only been in a Hindenburg once. I mean, I went up in the Zeppelin. I went up in the Goodyear blimp, and when I went up in the Goodyear blimp as a guest of Brooks Hoff Tire and Goodyear about 10 years ago. I went. I couldn’t take my wife. It was just for me. When I when I sailed up like Willy Wonka over you know Munich at that time, I was over Frederick and the mountains, and we sailed. So that’s I saw Frederick from the Goodyear blimp.

Michael O’Connor 12:00
Yeah, I

Nestor Aparicio 12:00
didn’t get to see Baltimore. I didn’t get to see Washington. I saw Frederick.

Michael O’Connor 12:04
I think it looks as good from the air as it does.

Nestor Aparicio 12:08
You know what I’m talking about. The good you’re blimp, like it

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Michael O’Connor 12:10
tethers in Frederick when yeah, it kind of hangs out. It kind of hangs out. Needs a place to. So yeah, there is stages. There is that opportunity sometimes to just get the random blimp ride. It is pretty great. I’ve not done that yet, but

Nestor Aparicio 12:22
dude, that thing when they-I have video of it. You go on my Facebook and see it. But when you walk out there and then you walk into the little thing, and it’s very bougie in there. You feel like you’re in an airport lounge. It’s very, it’s very carpeted. It’s very smooth the way it moves. But man, you get up underneath of that giant Zeppelin-looking thing. It’s, it’s Nito torpedo, and it involves Frederick for me, and it’ll always be a Frederick memory for me.

Michael O’Connor 12:44
I think the other thing that I would want the region to know, and and you reference it a little bit, is the return of affiliated minor league baseball to Frederick. There we go. We had a Maryland Stadium Authority put in $40 million of improvements to Harry Grove Stadium, which is what we needed to do to meet professional development league standards to get affiliative baseball back in Frederick after five years in the wilderness with the contraction that occurred during the pandemic. Great additions to the stadium in terms of player Harry Grove, right? Harry Grove Stadium, and lucky enough to have the only team in the Orioles system right now with a winning record. Not happy about that, but I’m. You’re enormous fan. Yes, yes. Long suffering. I

Nestor Aparicio 13:26
had Prolazo over here a little while ago. It’s been. It’s almost football season. It is. The mayor of Frederick is here, Michael Connor. We’ve become pals through all this because I like his town, and you like your town as well. What’s the political situation? Are you running? You unrunning? What is your? I just got reelected last year to my third term as mayor. Is that four-year terms? Right. Four-year terms. So I don’t have to think about that. Just running straight for a while. Yeah. When does Marriott get open? We hope, based on the construction timeline, end of 27, early 28. So we are a year and a half out. Yeah. About that ish. All right, and Bakehouse is moving. Let’s most important thing. Let’s promote Bakehouse. Get

Michael O’Connor 14:05
there early, so my advice is: you don’t get there early. They might run out of baked goods by 11 o’clock. Hold

Nestor Aparicio 14:12
on, let me. I haven’t. I know the dude at Bakehouse who has some Baltimore roots as well, and I like I friend of mine says you eat so many pastries, and I literally I have a scone right here from Ugly Pie, and this is in Salisbury. So this is my other favorite bakery. This is in Salisbury with I was with the Secretary of Kindness. I put the video up in Salisbury having Ugly Pie. So so being a skinny guy who does a lot of hot yoga, thank you Planet Fitness. I I you know I eat a fair amount of pastry. I guess I’m out like a lot of crab cake ship. I got to do a crab cake tour. You got to set me up out there. We got to come out somewhere. Taste. It doesn’t matter. We’ll do somewhere. She went to bakehouse honestly, but they’d have to be at seven in the morning. So my wife and I before the blizzard. Remember the blizzard that came where we had the. 14 inches, and then the three inches of ice. January. Think it snowed on Sunday, Monday. On that Sunday morning or Saturday morning, you knew we were going to get snowed in. We’re like, we’re screwed. We’re going to get snowed in. I woke my wife at like six in the morning, and I’m like, hey, we had some coffee. I’m like, you want to make a run for it and just run out to Frederick? It’s 53.6 miles from my house. Okay, like I’m. That is dedication. Okay, so my snowstorm. No, before the snow. This was to have pastries to be prepared for the blizzard. Okay, I’m. I’m giving. I’m not BSing you here. This is serious business. I can even look the date up. This is back in January. I stopped in the bakehouse on the way to Pittsburgh, and I got there about 10 minutes to eight, and I stood in a little bit of a line on the way for the Ravens Steelers game, and I told Luke I was going to pick him up a sticky bun, and I ate it in the car. I ate it at the Royal Farms in Hagerstown. He never got it. So the next weekend was the blizzard, and my wife got mad at me because I brought some stuff home. She’s like, “You didn’t bring enough home. We got to go back. We went back to Bakehouse. It was 15 degrees. It was we knew we needed to get there ahead because when they opened seven or eight, you look it up on the internet. 15 minutes at a time, like 15 minutes will probably be 10th or 15th in line, dude. We got there and I had five layers on, ski mask, coffee in my mug, everything pulled up. Everyone was complete. It was 20 degrees, and it was brutal. Like see your breath, awful. And I’m standing outside in line for a croissant. That’s how good it is. And we stood in line. We only did maybe 15 in the cold. Then we got into the worm and had to peel off. And there’s another half an hour. We were there an hour to get a box of like six items that would survive the next four or five days. That was some people get milk, bread, toilet paper before snow. I go to Bakehouse in Frederick. Is what I

Michael O’Connor 17:08
do. I like it. I like it. All

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Nestor Aparicio 17:10
right. That’s how much they’re moving,

Michael O’Connor 17:11
though, right? They are. They’re. No, they’re expanding Frederick. They’re relocating from where they are next to the creek on Market Street to a slightly bigger location next to the creek on Patrick Street.

Nestor Aparicio 17:22
So tell them I can stand in line inside when it’s 20 degrees. I’m going to come back and get there’s there’s all I love all my pastry shops Woodley everybody that I’ve ever done a pastry but Bakehouse sits at the top for me. I drove a two hour round trip just to get pastries before blizzard. That is dedicated. That is a damn good pastry. Yeah, and a damn fine town. I’m sorry, I didn’t come up for air supply. It’s quite all right. The Oakridge Boys weren’t going to do it. It was something else that was playing there. Wyman, right? Weinberg. Weinberg. I’m sorry, I got the wrong wrong name. I’m sorry. I went to the Hagerstown Theater, the State Night.

Michael O’Connor 17:58
Yeah, so

Nestor Aparicio 18:00
beautiful. I have not been in your theater. I need to change that.

Michael O’Connor 18:03
Yeah,

Nestor Aparicio 18:04
Weimar,

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Michael O’Connor 18:05
100 years old this year.

Nestor Aparicio 18:07
What’s the next big show? Somebody else played. There was a so there were a couple of shows, but Air Supply specifically, I looked at. I think Cheap Tricks played there. I so yeah, get good shows.

Michael O’Connor 18:19
We do, we do. I I should probably know more of that off the top of my. I go up to the

Nestor Aparicio 18:23
Strand in in York sometimes for shows. So I’m a I’m a museum. I went to Dewey Beach last night with Bodine. So you get me the right show in Frederick. I’ll come stay in the Marriott. Well, I’ll make a Frederick staycation. That’s what we want. What we want coming on Friday. You could take in a baseball game. You can walk around our historic. Have a beer. Have a beer and go to a show at the Weinberg on Saturday night. 25 downtown restaurants, at least. Stick around, get brunch on Sunday. Walk around. I like it, and you’re back home in 45 minutes. Mayor Frederick, Michael O’Connor, newly elected, new term Marriott coming up, baseball back, and some damn fine pastry, if I may say so myself. Thanks, man. Coming on, always appreciate you. And we might not have baseball next summer, so enjoy what you’ll have in Frederick, though. You will. Minor league baseball’s gonna happen

Michael O’Connor 19:17
probably.

Nestor Aparicio 19:20
Don’t bum me out more than I’m already bumming. I

Michael O’Connor 19:22
don’t want to bum myself out. I want

Nestor Aparicio 19:24
just more concerts we have to go to out in Fredericton and Merriweather and other places like that. Back for more, we’re Mako, Ocean City, Maryland. The pin says so. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland Lottery in conjunction with our partners at GBMC and Farnan and Dermer. And I want to let Zach Dermer know I am very comfortable here in the Ocean City Convention Center because they put me up on the roof in the outside near the sunset, and I’m I don’t have to have a sweatshirt on. So people say you you know they threw you in the corner, and I’m like no, they made it so I’m comfortable here today in Ocean City. Back for more. We’re at Mako. It is Baltimore positive. Stay with us.