Baltimore's Convention Center Blues

"When Baltimore began attracting throngs of people to meet, sleep in downtown hotels and shop and eat in the Inner Harbor, officials decided that only one thing was missing from the city's renaissance: a first-class convention complex that would act as a magnet for visitors. That required spending $151 million to expand the existing center, with the promise that one national convention would overlap the next in Baltimore - bigger conventions than ever before, more people than ever before, more spending and tax revenue than ever before. In April 1997, the transformed center, with three times the exhibit space, opened. Officials waited for the people to come. They haven't. More than five years after the new complex opened, the convention center is drawing smaller crowds than before the multimillion-dollar expansion." Leaders of the area's Convention and Visitors Association say that a lack of a large adjacent hotel is responsible, and that combined with another expansion is need to make the center a success.

Thanks to Christian Peralta