Convention Business

Carroll R. Armstrong, the head of Baltimore's lagging convention effort, will be replaced amid growing dissatisfaction with his performance, sources said yesterday. Clarence T. Bishop, chairman of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, is expected to step in - at least temporarily - to succeed Armstrong as president and chief executive officer, one source said. Bishop, who most recently served as the second-ranking executive for the group that headed the region's unsuccessful bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, has called a special meeting of BACVA's review and evaluation committee today.

THE PUBLIC torment of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke over where to build a new hotel offers at least one political lesson:A leader needs to be a salesman and an educator, particularly when he's about to do something that seems to defy common sense.Schmoke's problem was clear months ago. He wanted a new downtown hotel, and he wanted the builder to be John Paterakis Sr., a wealthy Baltimore baker with many financial interests.Paterakis wanted to build at Inner Harbor East, a mile or so from the city's newly renovated Convention Center, perhaps the heart of Baltimore's tenuous grip on economic viability.

A Houston hotel company yesterday finalized the purchase of the twin-towered Omni Inner Harbor Hotel for $25 million, the largest sale of a downtown lodging property in five years.The Gencom Group said its interest in the 707-room Omni stems from improved occupancy and room rates for local hotels, as well as the anticipated boost to the area's $1 billion tourist industry after the completion of the Convention Center's $150 million expansion."As a reasonably priced convention destination, Baltimore is a great area," said Lee Grossbard, a Gencom vice president of operations.

The developer favored by Baltimore to build a publicly subsidized, 900-room hotel complex at Inner Harbor East portrayed the project yesterday as a linchpin in the long-standing effort to spread the glitz and vibrancy of the downtown tourism district.John Paterakis Sr., the politically influential baking mogul whose company's $112.2 million proposal topped two others for downtown megahotels, brushed aside doubts about whether the site lies too far from attractions and the Baltimore Convention Center.

With the passage this month of legislation allowing lucrative tax breaks for downtown hotel developers, city convention officials are set to begin selling Baltimore in earnest.The Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association plans to pitch the 750-room Wyndham International Hotel, now under construction on the east side of the Inner Harbor, as an enticement to meeting planners worried about Baltimore's inventory of hotel rooms. And convention officials are optimistic that the legislation will spur an announcement on a Westin hotel on Pratt Street in the Inner Harbor soon.

OCEAN CITY -- Convention business could double here when the $29.4 million expansion and renovation of the convention center is completed in May 1997, Mayor Roland "Fish" Powell said recently.The project is expected to increase the number of visitors to the city during the slower months at each end of the summer season -- from March through June and September through November.Total space will be expanded from 69,000 square feet to 170,000 square feet. The number of events could jump from 64 to 112 when the project is finished, Mr. Powell said.

The new Oriole Park baseball stadium is a hit with downtown hotels.Although precise figures are not available, hotel managers say the stadium has boosted business, which had been lagging because of the recession and flattening of the convention business."

WASHINGTON -- They came from all over America to show off their towns in all their splendor -- ballparks and steamboats, aquariums and casinos, golf courses and gourmet restaurants, beaches and mountains, cattle ranches and battlefields.All just a short walk or cab ride from convention centers.Cities and towns courted in earnest at a three-day trade show targeting enormously influential customers: meeting planners who decide where to book in the high-stakes, $50-billion-a-year convention business.

C OFFICIALS OF Baltimore County and the Timonium Fairgrounds are saying the right things about a proposed expansion of the fairgrounds and how it would affect business at the Convention Center in downtown Baltimore. Fairgrounds operators want to undertake a $4 million project that would increase the total amount of building space at Timonium to 270,000 square feet. At this preliminary stage of the planning, they envision signing up regional consumer and trade shows, leaving large-scale national gatherings to the Convention Center, which is currently being doubled in size to 300,000 square feet.

Stanley Turrentine, a world-renowned jazz saxophonist, is going to help promote Baltimore convention business through a video he and his ensemble are recording for the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association.Turrentine, considered a jazz giant and one of the finest tenor saxophonists in modern times, will play an original score created specifically for this project.The four-minute video, produced by Pennant Productions, will be used to sell the Baltimore area to potential groups that hold conventions and meetings on the East Coast.