Stringer Bell (Pic: HBO)
New Enterprise Associates is a Baltimore-based venture capital firm. Through various funds (they’re up to Fund XI, having started in 1978), the firm has $8.5 billion under management. Focused on IT and healthcare, past investments include 3Com, HealthSouth, and WebEx.
The firm has called Baltimore home for 30 years, but they’ve finally had enough.
After the jump, the reason for the departure (and, of course, the BigLaw connection).
Fans of HBO’s The Wire will recall Russell “Stringer” Bell’s efforts to gentrify the Baltimore Harbor area (and if you’re not a fan, you really should be).
Apparently, the city is as bad in reality as it appeared on the show. NEA staff have had their cars stolen or vandalized, there has been a series of violent crime, and early arrivers have been treated to “drug needles and used condoms” left on the stoop. Mayor Tommy Carcetti never would have let things get this bad. But real Mayor Sheila Dixon has to deal with police allegedly coercing crime victims into claiming gangs are to blame.
General counsel Louis Citron delivered the company’s message to the mayor (below) that they were taking their $200,000 in neighborhood revenue and moving to the burbs. Citron started his career in BigLaw at Kramer Levin. He has also done turns at ING and Deutsche Bank.
Outside counsel NEA has used include Ora Fisher of Latham & Watkins and Orrick for IP due diligence.
Dear Mayor Dixon,
My name is Louis Citron and I am the General Counsel at New Enterprise Associates. We are a venture capital firm located at 1119 St. Paul Street and have been located in the mid town/Belvedere hotel area for nearly 30 years. We have approximately 35 employees located at this office. I also live in Roland Park.
We would like you to know that New Enterprise Associates has decided to move its Baltimore city office to Timonium. We calculated that our decision will cost the merchants in this neighborhood at least $200,000 per year in revenue as we are terminating, among others, our cleaning service and security guard, and will no longer be paying for parking spaces in the local garages, and no longer buying our lunches from local restaurants and the Maryland Club.
Our decision was a result of the high level of crime in our neighborhood. Over the last several years, many of our cars have been broken into resulting in very expensive repairs, our employees have been robbed at gun point, drug needles and used condoms have been left on our front stoop, and psychotic homeless people have menaced our employees and threatened to kill them. We have voiced our frustrations to the local community leaders and police, but the environment has only worsened. The recent local beatings by roving teenagers during the day in this neighborhood, the raucous club in the basement of the Belvedere, and other gang violence throughout the city reinforces the appropriateness of New Enterprise Associates’ decision to move in order to protect its employees.
At this point, our decision is set in motion and cannot be reversed. However, we sincerely hope that you and the city council are able to rectify these problems as we are certain other businesses also will leave the city over time. Further, now that I no longer work in the city, I might move my family out of the city too if violence and crime continue to increase in the Roland Park area. I pay too much in taxes now to live in fear and to have sewer lines back up on a regular basis into my home.
We wish you and the city only the best of luck in addressing these issues and hope that you are successful. It is in no one’s interest to see Baltimore be viewed by the nation as a crime ridden and violent city that is totally out of control.
I would be happy to further discuss at your convenience.
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Hamsterdam! Hamsterdam!