November 07, 2002|By Kimberly A.C. Wilson | Kimberly A.C. Wilson,SUN STAFF
Baltimore's largest cultural institutions can move forward on capital projects that range from new zoo exhibits to major museum renovations after voters overwhelmingly approved proposals to sell $120 million in bonds for citywide improvements.
Some of the city's most popular tourist draws, such as the Walters Art Museum, the Lyric Opera House, the National Aquarium and the zoo, will split $12 million of the bond money earmarked Tuesday. The rest of the money will help fund a variety of efforts at schools, libraries and parks.
"The arts are what gives the city its character," said Carroll R. Armstrong, president and chief executive officer of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association. "Number one, this shows that the community has become much more educated in terms of the importance of those types of venues to the economy as well as to our everyday lives."
Nineteen million visitors to Maryland have an $8.3 billion impact statewide, according to the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, which oversees the state's tourism development.
Therefore, $750,000 to the Baltimore Museum of Art to update its air conditioning system, $500,000 to expand exhibit space at the Port Discovery children's museum, and $2 million to increase the size of the Lyric Opera's stage house represent an investment in the city's future, said Karen Glenn, a department spokeswoman.
"It's just very important to improve our attractions and make them more visitor-friendly. Anything that can increase visitorship in Maryland is a good thing," she said.
The Walters recently began fund raising for a $75 million expansion. The $750,000 that voters approved this week will begin a decade-long capital improvement to add exhibit space to a museum that has outgrown renovations completed last year.
"We are bulging at the seams right now, like a kid in its teen-aged years who is growing out of his clothes," said museum director Gary Vikan.
The zoo is also in the midst of a capital campaign. Two-thirds of its $60 million plan is being funded by city, county and state funds, including $2 million earmarked Tuesday to help complete a new exhibit for polar bears, arctic foxes and snowy owls, set to open next fall. The money will also help fund the relocation of the reptile and amphibian exhibit by early 2004.
"We're redoing sewage lines, power lines, telephone lines, everything you would expect would need to be done at a 126-year-old institution," said Ben Gross, public relations manager for the Baltimore Zoo.
The bond measures will be paid out over two years, beginning July 1.
State, county and private money will supplement the city bonds for most of the cultural improvements, said Tom Stosur, the planning department's manager for capital improvement.
"A lot of these, particularly for the cultural institutions, represent a little bit of money that the city can contribute to a much larger project that is drawing on significant state, county and private dollars," Stosur said. "In order to raise other funds, they need city funds to show private investors they have the city's support. That's everybody's question: You're in Baltimore, what is the city doing to provide funds?"
City voters passed 14 bond issues in all, including measures to build schools, renovate parks, demolish vacant eyesores and upgrade a downtown senior citizens center, continuing an unbroken record of bond approvals dating to 1975.
The largest bond issue makes $43.5 million available for community development projects. That includes $7 million to encourage home buying, $9.7 million to raze abandoned blocks and $300,000 to repair the roofs of elderly residents on fixed incomes.
About $27 million of the bond money will go toward economic development projects, ranging from the cleanup of environmental hazards to redevelopment on the city's west side.
Another $5.8 million is earmarked for improvements to parks and the Enoch Pratt Free Library system.
Baltimore voters also supported spending $32 million for school construction, renovation and equipment.
City officials credited the wide margin of support for the bond issues to a strategic effort to educate voters about what the $120 million could do.
The Department of Education sent letters to parents explaining how the school loans would help convert Southern High School into a $6 million citywide technology high school and construct a new $4.5 Lexington Terrace Elementary and Middle School and a new $3.5 million Southeast Elementary and Middle School. Videos on Cable 45, the city's public television station, and a half-page ad in The Sun also helped educate voters.
"We just we wanted to make sure the public was informed so there was no misunderstanding," said Gloria Griffin, manager of special projects for the planning department. "We worked very hard to inform the general public about the bond issue and we were hopeful that the voter approval would be overwhelming, which it was."
Passage of the bond issues ranged from 73 percent voter approval for renovations to the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, to 92 percent approval of expansion to the Pratt central library in Mount Vernon.
