Baltimore Convention Center

The Baltimore Convention Center is a convention and exhibition hall located in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. The Center is a municipal building owned and operated by the City of Baltimore. The facility was constructed in two separate phases: the original Center, with 425,000 square feet of exhibition and meeting space, opened in August 1979 at a cost of $51.4 million. A $151 million expansion, which increased the Center's total size to 1,225,000 square feet was completed in April 1997. The 752-room, city-owned Hilton Baltimore hotel opened in August 2008, connected to the convention center by an enclosed skywalk bridge. Another expansion to the Baltimore Convention Center has been proposed at an estimated cost of $400 million that includes a new 500 room hotel and an 18,500 seat arena; this project is estimated to cost $900 million, this proposal is no longer active and considered dead. As of March 2016, the State of Maryland is going to explore expanding the Baltimore Convention Center for an estimated cost of $600 million and build a new hotel attached to the expansion. As of August 2016, the proposal of having a combined expanded convention center, arena and hotel has been revived. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake requested a $1 million feasibility study from the Maryland Stadium Authority which was approved on August 2, 2016. As of September 2017, Phase 1 of the feasibility study has begun with the release expected to be sometime by the end of 2017. On July 6, 2018, the Maryland Stadium Authority finally released Phase 1 of the feasibility study. Phase 1 gives the ultimate recommendation of demolishing the 1979 eastern half and the Sheraton Inner Harbor hotel and replacing it with an expansion and a new hotel to replace the Sheraton. An arena was ultimately determined to be unfeasible due to "significant operational and construction related challenges." As a result of the Phase 1 recommendation, the Mayor of Baltimore requested the Maryland Stadium Authority to start Phase 2 which the MSA approved in July 2018. Phase 2 started in fall 2018 and will "outline preliminary design, cost estimating , and financing modeling." As of February 4, 2020, it was reported by the Baltimore Business Journal that the proposed expansion will not occur as a revised cost estimate for just expanding the convention center is more than $1.5 billion so the proposal has been scaled back significantly to only modernize the convention center, not expand it as previously proposed.

As was the case with Harborplace, which opened in 1980; the Maryland Science Center, which opened in 1976; and the National Aquarium in Baltimore, which opened in 1981, the Convention Center was intended to be a catalyst for tourism, an important part of the City's post-manufacturing economic development plans. An Abell Foundation report in June 2005 describes the Convention Center as having been "built as an economic development tool to attract to Baltimore conventions, trade shows, and meetings that would leave in the city millions of dollars spent on lodging, food, entertainment, and other services." A report on economic development in the area, entitled Subsidizing the Low Road: Economic Development in Baltimore, states that "public and non-profit facilities such as the Maryland Science Center, the World Trade Center, the Convention Center, and the National Aquarium" were part of then-mayor Schaefer's "focus on real estate, retailing and tourism sectors" , as areas for growth, as well as his utilization of "'public/private partnerships' to pursue economic development" .

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