Baltimore Convention Center

About Baltimore Convention Center

The Baltimore Convention Center is a convention and exhibition hall located in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. It is managed and operated by the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, a semi-private association started in 1980 by former Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer. The facility was constructed in two separate phases: the original Center, with 425,000 square feet (39,500 m²) of exhibition and meeting space, opened in August 1979 at a cost of $51.4 million. A $151 mllion expansion, which increased the Center's total size to 1,225,000 square feet (113,800 m²), was completed in April 1997. Construction has begun on a convention center headquarters hotel (the Hilton Baltimore) directly across from the western-half of the Baltimore Convention Center that will be connected via an enclosed skywalk bridge. The hotel will have 752 rooms and a large amount of meeting space that event planners who have events in the Baltimore Convention Center can use for overflow space. The Hilton Baltimore hotel is planned to open in August of 2008.

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.