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 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 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.
In March 2016, the State of Maryland announced it was 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 also included building a new arena. On 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 of 2024, an expansion for the Baltimore Convention Center is back on the table and a state-level task force was formed to study the Baltimore Convention Center and the tourism industry of Baltimore City and a final report was released which made three recommendations with regards to the future of the Baltimore Convention Center and the city's tourism industry. (See the Future subsection "Baltimore Convention Center Modernization and Expansion Project (2024-Present.)" for more information on this current effort.)
History 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." (Controversy, 2005, p. 3) 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" (Subsidizing, 2002, p. 11) were part of then-mayor Schaefer's "focus on real estate, retailing and tourism sectors" (p. 10), as areas for growth, as well as his utilization of "'public/private partnerships' to pursue economic development" (p. 11).
During the next two decades, due in part to the success of the Convention Center and the other attractions, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards, M&T Bank Stadium, Power Plant Live!, and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History, have joined the area, creating a ten-block plus entertainment and cultural destination at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, further increasing tourist dollars flowing into the region.
A June 2005 Greater Baltimore Committee report on tourism in Baltimore illustrates the importance of tourism in the current Baltimore region's economy: Hospitality and tourism and the convention industry are vital components of the region's economy. According to the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association (BACVA), spending from domestic travelers in 2002 was $8.476 billion statewide; $2.8 billion in Baltimore alone. This spending supported $719 million in state and local taxes while providing over 44,000 regional jobs. (Voices, 2005)
One major convention held in the convention center was Otakon, a convention that focuses on anime and other facets of East Asian culture. The convention had resided in the Baltimore Convention Center between 1999 and 2016. In 2013, the convention attracted 34,211 people. However, organizers of that convention announced at the close of the 2013 event plans to move to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., for at least five years starting in 2017. Convention officials cited space concerns, along with the uncertainty of construction plans for the convention center and a new arena. According to WBAL-TV, Baltimore's local NBC news affiliate, due to the pending departure of Otakon in 2017 to Washington, D.C., concerns were mounting regarding Baltimore's economic future when it came to tourism. In 2016, Otakon's final year in Baltimore, 29,113 people attended, a decline from its peak attendance of 34,211 in 2013.
The Convention Center is also viewed as important to the recent development on Baltimore's West Side. According to Ronald M. Kreitner, executive director of West Side Renaissance Inc., the "Convention Center will help contribute to the success of the theaters and the retail," referring to the development of the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center/Hippodrome Theatre, as well as new retail ventures in the area. (Renaissance, 2003)
By 2013, the center was playing a major role in the city's tourism growth, with conventions, seminars, conferences and exhibitions helping boost visitor numbers that year to 23.9 million, and expenditure by visitors to $5.15 billion. Visit Baltimore President Tom Noonan noted in July 2014 Baltimore was leading other cities in terms of future convention center bookings, through until 2021.
In early 2017, a Baltimore Sun article revealed that Otakon wasn't the only large convention that Baltimore City lost due to the current size of the Baltimore Convention Center. The article reports that as of the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2016, Visit Baltimore hosted 415 total events with a combined estimated economic impact of $180 million, the city usually hosts 20 to 30 large conventions annually however city officials are now stating the convention center is too small to be competitive with other cities. The article also reports that at least 10 large conventions have left Baltimore due to outgrowing the convention center and these conventions were held at the convention center during the previous 10 years and the total of 10 large conventions includes Otakon which as of 2017 will be held at the much larger Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The article also reports that future conventions are at risk of leaving Baltimore as well.
Future Despite the continuing growth and redevelopment in the area, the expanded Convention Center has not met expectations with respect to the number of conventions and people it attracts each year. Irene E. Van Sant, then-manager of the Convention Center Hotel Project for the Baltimore Development Corporation, Baltimore's former Mayor Sheila Dixon, and Governor of Maryland Martin O'Malley—feel that a hotel adjacent to the Convention Center will make it a more appealing site for conventions. The completion of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., and the National Harbor project in Prince George's County intensified the debate.
In general, supporters of a convention hotel say that for the Convention Center to be viable in the future, and compete with other cities for conventions, a new "Headquarters" hotel is necessary to guarantee enough rooms for group meetings. Opponents of the hotel project have either questioned the necessity of a new hotel altogether or objected to the use of public dollars to finance the project. The Baltimore Convention Center hotel, named Hilton Baltimore, broke ground in February 2006 and opened in August 2008. It has 752 rooms and is the city's largest hotel, connected directly to the Convention Center via sky bridge. Baltimore City used public revenue bonds to cover the $301.7 million cost of building the hotel.
First proposed arena-hotel-convention center project (2010–2016) When the 1996 expansion to the Baltimore Convention Center opened, the convention center was ranked 28th largest in the nation in terms of exhibition and meeting space. By 2011, the convention center plummeted to 73rd largest and, as a result, Baltimore is losing convention business. Visit Baltimore reports that the Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel that opened in August 2008 is helping, but since the opening of the Hilton the city has lost over 700,000 hotel-night bookings due to the convention center being too small to meet the needs of a group or the dates the group wanted was not available.
It has been argued that if Baltimore does not expand its convention center, the city could "fall off the map as a potential convention choice." Nearby cities have or are in the process of expanding convention and hotel space, such as Washington D.C. (opened the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in 2003 with plans to open a 1,175-room Marriott Marquis hotel with of convention and meeting space in 2013) and Philadelphia (expanded its Pennsylvania Convention Center in 2011 of over of meeting and convention space).
Visit Baltimore proposes an expansion of the convention center, reasoning that it would allow the city to accommodate multiple large meetings or conventions at a time. Additionally, the Greater Baltimore Committee estimates that with the proposed arena-hotel-convention center, Baltimore could accommodate as many as 300 new convention groups that cannot utilize Baltimore currently due to the size of the convention center.
In fall 2010, the Greater Baltimore Committee, a local influential business group, proposed an estimated $900 million project that would demolish the 1979 wing of the Baltimore Convention Center east of Sharp Street, plus the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel on the same block, and replace the buildings with a four-story, convention center expansion, an 18,500-seat arena that will replace Baltimore's existing 1st Mariner Arena over two levels of underground parking, a new 500-room Sheraton hotel and stores and restaurants facing Pratt, Charles and Conway Streets. At the time, the $900 million price tag was the only obstacle with the proposal.
However, on May 25, 2011, at the annual meeting for the Greater Baltimore Committee, the owner of the Sheraton Inner Harbor hotel, local business and construction magnate, Willard Hackerman, made an offer that he would be willing to finance more than half of the proposed $900 million price tag and would be willing to build the hotel and the arena which is estimated to cost $500 million and the remainder, $400 million for the convention center expansion would need to be financed by the State of Maryland and Baltimore City, the offer is contingent on whether the city and state can move the convention center expansion project forward. The offer received a positive reception from both Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley who both have submitted requests to the Maryland Stadium Authority to conduct a feasibility study on the project that is due by the end of 2011.
Visit Baltimore, the architects involved and others have said that this project is unique in that no other cities in the nation would have a combination arena-hotel-convention center the size of the proposed project in Baltimore.