As Baltimore gets down to hard negotiations with the developer proposing a taxpayer-subsidized, 750-room hotel a mile from the Convention Center, some competing cities are well ahead with plans to open hotels much closer to their convention centers.
The most dramatic and threatening example of the flurry of hotel development aimed at snagging a bigger slice of the intensely competitive $83 billion annual meetings business lies just about 100 miles north, in Philadelphia.
There, newly approved plans to add 2,000 rooms within two blocks of the Pennsylvania Convention Center by 1999 -- a 1,200-room Marriott already is connected by walkway to the center -- give the city a major advantage over Baltimore, convention experts here and elsewhere say.
Alarm over the prospect of the lack of a convention headquarters hotel costing Baltimore millions in potential business at the under-booked Convention Center has intensified here since Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke chose the $112 million hotel proposed by a team led by John S. Paterakis Sr., the politically connected baking magnate. Granting Paterakis exclusive negotiating rights in February for an Inner Harbor East hotel, just south of Little Italy, Schmoke rejected the recommendation of his economic development agency's staff, its chairman, the city's convention bureau and an expert panel appointed to study the proposals.
All of them favored an 800-room, $173 million Westin Hotel proposed by New York's Schulweis Realty on the former News American site that Schulweis controls about four blocks from the Convention Center.
Carroll R. Armstrong, president of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, reiterated the marketing agency's stand that the city desperately needs such a hotel -- with 800 to 1,200 rooms -- as close as possible to the newly expanded, ailing center. Hotel development in Philadelphia and other competing cities underscores the need, he said.
"Philadelphia will eat us for lunch if we don't play catch-up quickly," Armstrong said. "They'll take all our business. It's a major red flag."
In Philadelphia, final plans announced last month will bring six new hotel projects, all developed by converting vacant buildings, the largest a 600-room Loews inside the historic PSFS Building, said Tom Muldoon, president of the city's convention bureau.
