Convention Bureau

Gov. Parris N. Glendening ordered a truce yesterday in the escalating struggle over control of Baltimore's convention board, warning that tampering with the agency that promotes tourism locally could risk the state's sizable investment in the city's Convention Center.The governor's move came on the morning the Baltimore convention board was debating whether to end its 13-year contract with the city. The emergency meeting was prompted by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's recent maneuvers to seize control of the board.

An increasingly strained relationship between the city and the Baltimore Convention Bureau prompted the mayor yesterday to threaten cutting off $2.4 million in municipal funds, the bulk of the downtown convention center's $3 million budget.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke asked for a marketing plan detailing how the convention center will spend its money next year. If the plan is not satisfactory, the city could effectively stop funding the convention center on July 1.In a letter sent yesterday to Henry A. Rosenberg Jr., chairman of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association Inc., Mr. Schmoke said that he was keeping the city's options open.

Leslie R. Doggett, a senior tourism official in the Clinton administration and an industry veteran, has been picked as the new chief of Baltimore's beleaguered convention bureau, city officials confirmed yesterday. The announcement of Doggett's appointment as president and chief executive officer of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association is expected at a news conference this morning with Mayor Martin O'Malley and other senior city officials. The appointment ends a five-month search for what is seen as a critically important leadership role in the city's lagging effort to build convention and tourism business.

After a tumultuous nine months without a permanent director, Baltimore's convention bureau will soon be headed by a San Diego Convention Center executive who grew up here, sources said yesterday.Carroll Armstrong, the San Diego center's marketing director, began his career in the convention industry as sales manager for the Baltimore Convention Center in 1978. Yesterday, he finished ahead of more than 100 other applicants in the search for a new executive director of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association (BACVA)

Baltimore's convention bureau, which scrimped for years on a fraction of what competitors spent to lure business, says a long-awaited budget increase is paying big dividends -- hundreds of millions of dollars in bookings.But even with $650 million in convention business booked last fiscal year -- a $270 million increase -- bookings still remain far short of projections used to justify the Baltimore Convention Center's publicly financed, $151 million expansion.Leaders of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association attribute the spike in bookings to a spending increase that doubled its budget to $6 million, significantly narrowing the gap between Baltimore and competing cities.

Two executives at California convention bureaus and two officials at the Baltimore Convention and Visitors Association have emerged as candidates to lead the city's convention bureau.The search for new leadership comes at a critical juncture for BACVA, which has been dogged by controversy since Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke ousted its governing board in June in the midst of a major expansion that will double the convention center's size.BACVA has been without a permanent director since Wayne C. Chappell resigned at the height of the feud over spending and control to head the Kansas City (Mo.)

After years of squabbles over spending to attract tourists and conventions to the city, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has agreed to a compromise that would put funding for marketing Baltimore on a par with that of competing cities.The agreement, expected to be introduced as state legislation sometime next week, would funnel 40 percent -- or about $4.6 million for the next fiscal year -- of annual city hotel tax revenues to the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association and limit the room tariff to 7.5 percent.

In the two weeks restaurateurs have chewed on a proposed meal tax that would raise millions to lure conventions and tourists to Baltimore, opponents have become supporters, supporters have become opponents -- and just about everybody seems more than a little ambivalent.Even some of the strongest supporters of the 1 percent tax, which would be levied at about 125 restaurants in a proposed "tourism district," view it as decidedly unpalatable, but necessary. Even some of the biggest opponents acknowledge the need to increase spending for the nonprofit Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, which receives millions less than competitors in other cities to sell Baltimore beyond its borders.

WHAT COULD BE a huge generator of local jobs and taxes, the enlarged Convention Center, opened last week. It offers exciting potential for an impoverished city. The first thought should be: How do we maximize its vast potential?When you've got a sparkling gem, promote the heck out of it. That's a no-brainer. But not to Mayor Kurt Schmoke. Instead, he undermined efforts to draw conventions. He has refused repeatedly to find the money for a first-rate promotion drive in the hotly competitive convention industry.

As Wayne C. Chappell prepares to leave his job after 17 years as convention director, downtown's tourism leaders fear he will be hard to replace because the city spends so little to lure conventioneers."