Scuba Diving Training Business Coming to Sykesville

A business that teaches and certifies people how to scuba dive and snorkel is leaving Finksburg in favor of Sykesville, which the co-owner said does more to promote local merchants.

Undersea Outfitters, operating in Finksburg for 11 years, is co-owned by Westminster resident Laird Brown and Sykesville resident George Carter.

The business is leaving its strip mall location at 2025 Suffolk Road and relocating to an 800-square-foot space at 7552 Main Street in Sykesville, formerly occupied by a hair salon.

It’s opening its doors noon Monday.

“Sykesville does a lot to promote business.They have events that bring customers there,” Brown told Patch Thursday. “The location we’re at now is in a little strip mall. … Nobody sees us. Nobody comes here.”

Brown also highlighted what he said was a little known fact about Carroll County: Many people use the Hyde’s Quarry, halfway between Westminster and New Windsor, for scuba diving, more so even than in Ocean City, he said.

“You think of Carroll County, you think of cows and farms and small towns,” he said. “We’re actually the dive capital of Maryland.”