Convention Business

Despite strong support this week in the House of Delegates for doubling the size of the Baltimore Convention Center, doubts remain among some senators about the wisdom of this $150 million project. With just over a week to go before adjournment, legislators should place passage of this bill at the top of their priority list.It would be foolish for senators to turn down this proposal. Why? For one thing, it won't cost the state anything. All of the state's $100 million contribution will be paid out of the added tax revenue generated by the expanded convention business -- plus another $12 million a year in profits.

BALTIMORE MAYOR Martin O'Malley is going to get his convention center hotel after all. After weeks of contentious debate, deliberation and concessions by Mr. O'Malley, nine City Council members gave the mayor the votes needed to approve a publicly financed 752-room hotel. Now it's up to the mayor's convention and tourism team to use the project to sell conventioneers on Baltimore. For starters, a major marketing and sales campaign should be launched to win convention business and inaugurate the new Hilton in 2008.

THE O'MALLEY administration's development team has taken a beating before the Baltimore City Council recently. Members opposed to a proposed publicly financed $305 million convention center hotel have been pounding away at the deal's lack of private investment. Their criticism has focused on whether the city actually needs another hotel, whether that hotel would invigorate Baltimore's convention business, and whether the city's investment in the project might be better spent improving conditions in blighted city neighborhoods.

Last summer, when Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke traveled to San Francisco to woo convention business, he flew in the private comfort of a corporate jet -- the Crown Central Petroleum Corp. jet, courtesy of the company's chief executive officer, Henry A. Rosenberg Jr.There, the two men stood together on the deck of the Pride of Baltimore II, the promotional clipper ship, greeting executives who, they hoped, would be so impressed with the city's hospitality that they'd favor Baltimore with their lucrative convention business.

AS THE Baltimore City Council prepares to consider the publicly financed convention center hotel, I thought I'd add my two cents' worth of observations to the debate over the $305 million project. First, the vote over whether to approve funding for the project looms as the first real political test for the reconfigured council, which took office in December. Individual accountability was a key reason community groups such as ACORN and the League of Women Voters pushed the ballot initiative to change the composition of the council from six three-member districts to 14 single-member districts, in each case with an at-large president.

If Baltimore manages to build the $900 million convention center expansion and arena proposed for the Inner Harbor, business and civic leaders say, the city will join a growing list of destinations competing to woo lucrative convention business with bigger, better facilities. If it cannot, they warn, the city could fall off the map as a potential convention choice. Those are the stakes officials likely will weigh in considering the proposal, which has appeared to gain momentum with the announcement last week that more than half the project cost could be privately financed.

Thirty local business leaders signed up on the spot yesterday to be ambassadors for Baltimore after the head of the city's convention bureau appealed to them to help bring meetings and conventions here. Leslie R. Doggett, president and chief executive of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, said the new initiative is aimed at overcoming a recently identified weakness in booking convention business - selling the city's assets at the board of directors level, where decisions about meeting destinations are made.

Would-be tourists might opt to stay home and sip lemonade on their back porches. Businesses might cut travel budgets.But economic hard times are not expected to discourage the convention and trade show business.So a panel appointed by the governor earlier this year has recommended that the state proceed with plans to double the size of Baltimore's 11-year-old convention center.In many industries, businesses rely on trade shows and conventions to make contacts and peddle their wares, said Robert Hillman, who headed the Baltimore Convention Center Authority.

With the opening of Baltimore's $301 million convention headquarters hotel a month away, city convention officials said yesterday they have booked a record number of convention room nights for future years. The Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association said it booked 451,608 room nights in city hotels through 2017 during the fiscal year that ended June 30, an 18 percent jump over last year's bookings. The number beat the goal of 400,000 room nights - an achievement BACVA officials credited to the new Hilton Baltimore, a city-owned, 757-room convention headquarters hotel on West Pratt Street set to open next month.