The National Aquarium and the well-traveled Power Plant entertainment complex will flank the $30-million edifice. It will be a warehouse-style building with high ceilings and water views. With two tenants already signed on, Cordish's office tower is 75% pre-leased. Baltimore will collect from Cordish an annual $120,000 rent on the land, as per the company's 72-year lease with the city. To further accommodate tenants Cordish plans to erect a 640-space parking garage at Pier 6.

Ernst & Young will leave its current digs in the Blaustein Building, which the company has called home since 1960. Nexgen plans to put out a press release to announce its impending move to the new office space.

"From a development standpoint, it's a very exciting time for this company," says Cordish Marketing Director Allison Parker. "We are also developing in [Maryland's] Prince George's County where the old US Airways arena was. It will be a lifestyle/retail/entertainment complex, and we will break ground on that in 2002."