An article in Sunday's Business section incorrectly reported that the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore said financial, real estate and insurance jobs have grown by 15 percent in the past year. In fact, only financial services jobs increased by that number.
The Sun regrets the error.
I'd like a vodka and cranberry and 100 shares of Coca-Cola, please."
While the talk may not be urbane, Baltimore financial junkies will soon have a new hangout to scan corporate annual reports, do securities research, watch Wall Street's gyrations on television and grab a sandwich or a drink at the same time.
But the Coleman Craten Financial Club won't be just another posh social setting filled with soft leather chairs, rich carpeting and expensive suits.
Scheduled to open on the ground floor of 7 E. Redwood St. downtown early next month as part of a comprehensive renovation of the 73-year-old building, the club's owners envision it as an investment-oriented place where members can buy and sell stocks or bonds, plan their estates or seek advice on where to invest.
Its owners tout the club as the first of its kind in the United States, modeled after a similar haunt in London.
"Baltimore is a very clubby town," said Monica L. Coleman, the firm's 42-year-old managing partner and a Baltimore native who graduated from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Law School.
"We have the Center Club, the Marketing Club, the Maryland Club; there's a club for everything. So we believe there's a need and that Baltimore can sustain a financial club, too."
Like the Maryland Club and others catering to high-wealth individuals, though, the Coleman Craten financial retreat will offer at least a few accouterments considered traditional in such tony environs. And like the Maryland Club, the Coleman Craten club will have a hint of exclusivity: In the near term, at least, membership will be limited to Coleman Craten clients and their guests.
Coleman acknowledges that she hopes the club will act as a magnet for Coleman Craten's stock brokerage and financial planning operations, which began in March.
If all goes according to plan, clients will do their research and have fun in the club downstairs, and then move to offices upstairs to get down to business.
And as with American Express, membership will have its privileges. In addition to the tuxedo-clad doorman, members will have use of an in-house restaurant and bar, billiard tables and a library stocked with 23,000 financial prospectuses, annual reports and other literature.
And of course, no modern financial club would be complete without a "stress reduction room," where frazzled investors can take classes in tai chi, kick boxing and other techniques to eliminate stress.
Coleman and senior partner John G. Craten, 51, hope to distinguish the club by making it a quasi-working setting, filled with Internet-wired computers, Bloomberg and Morningstar monitors that serve as electronic libraries for public companies and mutual funds, televisions broadcasting CNBC and conference rooms.
Downstairs, the duo plan to add touches from the New York Stock Exchange. Coleman Craten financial specialists in red jackets will be available to give advice to members and answer questions.
Coleman Craten is also working to turn the building's vault -- the second-largest downtown -- into a kind of financial museum, with displays of rare stock certificates and other valuable documents on loan from various sources.
But to fully envelop visitors in the club's ambience, Coleman Craten is painstakingly restoring 7 E. Redwood St.'s first two floors -- a former First National Bank of Maryland branch that has been closed for five years.
Woodwork is being restored, antique-looking paint is being applied, chandeliers polished, and marble blasted clean, all to make the property look as it did when it opened in 1925.
$300,000 project
The firm expects the renovation work to cost more than $300,000. Although some of the cost is being absorbed by the city through a standard tenant improvement allowance, Coleman and Craten are funding most of the work, Coleman said.
The city, which bought the 20-story building two years ago for $5.6 million as part of a deal to keep Legg Mason Inc.'s headquarters downtown, is also hoping Coleman Craten will help spur a turnaround of downtown's sleepy financial district.
"It'll put real life and activity to the first floor of the building, which has been one of our goals since we acquired it," said M. J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's economic development agency.
That life could spread, especially if plans for a $120 million skyscraper across the street at the site of the Southern Hotel reach fruition. Developers there are working on a 35-story tower that will include offices, a 267-room hotel, parking garage and retail space.
In the past year, financial, real estate and insurance (a sector know collectively as FIRE) jobs have grown by 15 percent, according to statistics compiled by the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore Inc., a public-private economic development group.
But most of that growth has resulted from the unprecedented bull market on Wall Street. As worldwide markets cool, Coleman Craten could find itself in the same predicament as BT Alex. Brown Inc. in the wake of Black Monday in 1987, when the firm was forced to cut workers and relinquish a significant chunk of office space.
The company also has yet to obtain a broker/dealer license from the National Association of Securities Dealers, although it expects the necessary paperwork to be finalized in the coming months.
Moreover, the numbers on recent sector growth may be a bit misleading. According to a regional study by the Greater Baltimore Committee and the Greater Baltimore Alliance released earlier this year, Baltimore ranked 20th out of 20 cities for creation of FIRE jobs between 1996 and 1997. Charlotte, N.C., topped the list.
And over the past five years, Baltimore ranked next to last when it came to FIRE job growth, the result of bank mergers and an economic recession that crippled the city's real estate and insurance industries earlier this decade, the GBC and GBA noted.
Some analysts contend that it is almost never a bad time for brokers to strike out on their own, especially if they offer a unique product or service.
"The securities industry is a very relationship-oriented business," said Mike Flanagan, president of Financial Service Analytics Inc., a Philadelphia firm that tracks the industry. "If a broker feels confident with their clients, the chances of being successful are pretty good, regardless of the point in the economic cycle."
Company to hire 400
Coleman Craten hopes that rule holds. The company plans to hire as many as 400 people by June, including 120 financial advisory professionals and stockbrokers. The club will account for the largest chunk, with as many as 150 employees, Coleman said.
"It's heartening to me that in an atmosphere of mergers and acquisitions in the financial services sector, that downtown will have a new headquarters," said Laurie Schwartz, president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore Inc.
"It kind of bucks the trend in that regard," Schwartz added. "If it comes off, it'll be good for the rest of the city, too, because research shows that financial services companies tend to have the greatest spin-off effect in terms of new jobs."
Coleman Craten has snatched up eight floors of the 157,000-square-foot building and is eyeing another five, renovating a floor a month to keep up with its expanding work force that stands at 50, said Joan Scruggs, the firm's facilities coordinator.
With Coleman Craten, 7 E. Redwood St. is more than 60 percent occupied, far from the vacant state the building was in after Legg Mason moved out last year.
White-collar jobs
Coleman Craten, which joins First Maryland Bancorp and Mass Mutual Life Insurance on the building's tenant roster, will pay a market rate of more than $3 million for its 47,000 square feet of space through 2003.
"This continues the white-collar job growth downtown in the financial services sector," said David J. Downey, a principal at real estate firm Colliers Pinkard, which the city retained to lease 7 E. Redwood St.
Although Coleman Craten was launched this year, the company has been in development for more than two years. The concept dates even further back: Coleman and Craten began working together at Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc. more than a decade ago. Today, Coleman Craten manages roughly $500 million of clients' money.
At Legg Mason, the duo crafted a specialized approach to dealing with wealthy clients with investment assets of more than $250,000. Coleman, an account representative, formulated a method of stock picking that looks at stocks and other securities from a perspective of how they will perform in different economic climates, rather than simply how they will perform relative to their competition and other market conditions.
"She's done a fantastic job for us," said John Conelius Jr., a high-technology electronics manufacturers representative now retired in Savannah, Ga.
"The stock market is one of those things that can drive you crazy, but we don't worry about it."
Since Conelius and his wife, Miriam, began investing with Coleman in 1985, the couple has seen their investments grow exponentially, racking up 40 percent annual gains in the past few years.
Meanwhile, Craten's 14 years of experience managing money at Legg Mason dovetailed nicely with Coleman's vision of a "hands-on" approach to client services.
"As the vision for what we wanted to do got bigger and bigger, we felt that to do it justice we really had to go off on our own," Craten said.
Computer innovations
"Our clients want to understand not only what we're doing, but how the process works and why we're doing what we're doing with their money," Coleman said. "People investing in securities today are looking for an increased level of services, and they want financial acumen."
New computer innovations helped, too. Unlike traditional brokerages, Coleman Craten has eliminated the need for a mainframe computer to process trades. Instead, each broker will have a networked PC on his or her desk.
"Traditional firms are having a harder and harder time providing a higher personal level of service, especially as they find themselves squeezed from discount brokers," Coleman added. "We plan to fill that niche."
If the plan works, Coleman Craten will attempt to go public in the next five years, Coleman said.
Whether the plan to sell stock to the public works or not, Coleman Craten will certainly have an exquisite home base.
After all, where else can one shoot a game of pool, read up on the latest market trends, relax with a drink and invest money, all in the same space?
Pub Date: 11/15/98