MARYLAND

After a 2018 exodus of eateries, Harborplace’s Pratt Street Pavilion is set to add a new one next week in Mason’s Famous Lobster Rolls.

The franchise will hold its grand opening next Wednesday, March 13. Mason’s specializes in the rich-tasting New England fare of lobster meat placed on a top-sliced bun, and also offers a shrimp salad roll and snacks like mac and cheese, clam chowder and assorted others.

The location will Baltimore City’s second, to go with the one that opened at Belvedere Square in 2017, and Maryland’s fourth, joining the flagship Annapolis spot opened by founder Dan Beck in 2014 and another later added at National Harbor in Prince George’s County.

Beck, a former seafood buyer who relocated from North Carolina to Annapolis, has also opened franchises in Rehoboth Beach, Reston Town Center in Northern Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina. The Harborplace one is part of an ongoing expansion that’ll soon include others in Raleigh and Miami.

Per a 2016 write-up in The Capital, Beck “uses his connections with lobstermen in Maine to get the freshest lobster.” The reported path for the crustacean supply: They’re caught in Portland, Maine, placed in a pressure steamer to crack the shell and get the meat, which is then sent to a Boston seafood complex and delivered to a facility in Jessup.

Mason’s will hold a celebration on its opening day in the Inner Harbor featuring coupons for return visits and a contest in which an avid seafood consumer can win a free lobster roll every week for the next year.

Mason’s is coming aboard at a Harborplace after a tough 2018 that included the departures of M&S Grill, The Fudgery, Five Guys and Noodles & Co as tenants. An executive for the tourist-frequented plaza’s owner, Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., told the Baltimore Business Journal in December that it had nearly a dozen new leases in the works, assuring, “It’s going to fill in really nicely.”