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Baltimore businesses battling bad image

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BALTIMORE – A penguin takes a big bite of a fish and swallows it whole.  It’s something to see, and fortunately, there are visitors who get a glimpse.  That’s was Wednesday May 27, more than four weeks after the Baltimore riots.

“The day after the riots, we had 72 people in the zoo.  We had more staff working here at the zoo than we did guests,” Jane Ballentine, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, said.

On a normal day in April and May, 3,000 people visit the zoo, many of them are school kids and adults.  We caught up with the group from George Fox Middle School in Pasadena.

“Seeing all the CVS that burned down and everything, it was scary going past that,” said Brittnee DeLucca, seventh grade, George Fox M.S.

Madison Hobbs, another seventh grader, added, “we saw a lot of places just burned down and broken windows and stuff like that.”

Because Mondawmin Mall, the center of the chaos, is about four blocks away from the zoo, Sandy Bailey is coming back to Baltimore with some caution.

“If it was just me and the girls, I wouldn’t have came. I feel safer if it’s a large group of people,” said Bailey.

At Civic Works, a nonprofit that puts young people to work through community service, the clean-up after the riots got them more attention.

“Because we’ve always been focused on that, we have opportunities to hire people and give them job training.  So we were out there alongside folks giving hugs when they were needed but also handing out to those who were looking for jobs, job applications,” Earl Millett, COO of Civic Works, said.

From the fires, the Abell Foundation gave Civic Works a grant to hire 20 additional high school students.

“The need for good quality high-paying jobs is a base issue that’s needed to be resolved in Baltimore City,” said Millett.

Back at the zoo, the goal is to keep people working.

“With no one here, concession sales and gift shop sales were down,” said Ballentine.

But now the sales are picking back up with crowds returning to the zoo, watching those penguins.

We also heard back from Wonder Fly Events, a small event planning company that lost about $5,000 when one event was postponed and another was canceled.

The owner says he will feel it for a few months.