Tourism and government leaders lauded yesterday's opening of the $301 million city-owned downtown convention headquarters hotel, promising that a project that survived years of controversy over its taxpayer-backed funding and its Camden Yards location will provide Baltimore with newfound commerce.
The 757-room Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel, the city's largest-ever public investment, opened to its first guests yesterday morning, nearly six years after Baltimore officials first proposed the West Pratt Street hotel. The hotel was built to enable the city to bolster its sagging convention business and provide a boost to the expanded Baltimore Convention Center.
"Politically, this was far from an easy project," said M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the economic development agency that has long promoted the four-star hotel with a guaranteed block of convention rate rooms as a crucial city development. "This project is changing the perception of the city of Baltimore."
So far, the hotel, which has hired about 400 employees, is more than a third booked for its first weekend and should be more than half full by next week, said Linda Norman, the hotel's general manager.
But the more significant boost is expected to come from large business groups that have bypassed Baltimore in the past because it did not have a hotel connected to the convention center.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors is planning a five-day event at the Hilton in June 2011, including up to 600 attendees who are expected to stay at the hotel. It will mark the first time that Baltimore hosts the annual meeting, which brings together mayors from across the U.S.
'Definitely helpful'
"The fact that this new hotel was in the works was definitely helpful in the decision process," said Elena Temple, a spokeswoman for the Conference of Mayors. City officials made the unusual and controversial decision three years ago to both develop and own the hotel, selling $301.7 million worth of revenue bonds in January 2006 to finance the hotel.
The hotel's net operating income will be used to pay the debt service on the bonds. In case of a shortfall of projected hotel revenue, the city is pledging $7 million in annual city hotel occupancy tax receipts as a backup.
At the time, city development officials said they had no acceptable proposals from private developers that would not have required city subsidies.
